The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (23 page)

Read The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass Online

Authors: Bill Maher

Tags: #Humor, #Form, #Political, #General, #Topic, #Political Science, #Essays

BOOK: The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass
2.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
RIND RAGE
 
New Rule:
If you’re too lazy to peel your own fruit, get scurvy and die. Hoping to appeal to teenagers who say they’re too busy to peel oranges, Sunkist is introducing a new pre-cut, pre-peeled snack version. Not to be outdone, Baskin-Robbins has created a new coneless ice cream that your mother pre-chews and spits down your throat.
ROBO POP
 
 
New Rule:
Sci-fi nerds must finally accept that if it really was possible for a heartless robot to go back in time and prevent someone from being born . . .
 
. . . Arnold totally would have done it.
ROCK SUCKERS
 
New Rule:
Coal companies have to stop calling coal “energy.” That’s like a lumber company calling wood “fire.” Or Budweiser calling beer “urine.” Okay, that one kind of makes sense.
ROGER & MEA CULPA
 
New Rule:
Michael Moore has to be given a lifetime achievement award to make up for all the members of the Academy who booed him in 2003 for accusing George Bush of going to war based on a “fiction.” To all the people that night who said, “Michael picked the wrong place and the wrong time,” I say, “So did George Bush.”
ROUGH TRADE
 
 
New Rule:
Ain’t no party like a Wall Street party, ’cause a Wall Street party don’t stop. If we’re really going to reform Wall Street, can we start by figuring out a better way to do business than having a bunch of sweaty guys screaming and waving pieces of paper with numbers on them? This is supposed to be the most sophisticated financial system in the world, and they look like they’re trying to lay bets at a cockfight.
RULES OF ENRAGEMENT
 
New Rule:
Stop telling me not to do things I wasn’t thinking of doing. Really—we don’t add water to soup anymore? There’s no smoking on airplanes? Gosh, you take a quick twenty-five-year nap and they change
everything
on you! I’d better get out there and learn about this brave new world, right after I eat one of these fancy mints that came with my new DVD player.
 
BI-FURIOUS
 
New Rule:
You can’t use the statement “There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here’s a word President Obama should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People care about that only in theory, not in practice. The best thing that happened this year was when Obama finally realized that and said, “Kiss my black ass, we’re going it alone, George W. Bush–style.”
Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, “The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.” Well, if it’s dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi.
And yet even before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap they were being warned not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats: Do a shot, and then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do.
Don’t listen to the people who are now saying nothing else big should be attempted for a while, because health care was so rough. Wrong—because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the right lose this one: When they’re losing, they squeal like a pig. They kept saying things like the bill was being “shoved down our throats” or the Democrats were “ramming it through.” The bill was so big they couldn’t take it all at once!
And I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something: Tiger Woods’s sext messages to his mistress, in which he said, and I quote, “I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I fuck that ass that I own. Then I’m going to tell you to shut the fuck up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise.” Unquote.
And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party: “Shut the fuck up while I slap your face for making noise—now pass a cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me: ‘Global warming is real!’”
The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if a cap-and-trade bill isn’t popular; neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.
So don’t stop: We need to regulate the banks; we need to overhaul immigration; we need to end corporate welfare, including at the Pentagon; we need to bring troops home from . . . everywhere; we need to end the drug war; and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts, starting with Dick Cheney.
Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which, in their case, is the nineteenth—and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how’s that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?
 
 
—March 26, 2010
 
SCARE PIE
 
New Rule:
Domino’s Pizza must be renamed The Pizza of Last Resort. Everyone’s got their favorite place downtown. If that’s closed, you’ll go with the frozen one in your freezer. Out of those? You’ll make your own pizza out of English muffins and an old bell pepper. It’s late, you’re drunk, and you’ve locked yourself out of your apartment? Ah, screw it. Let’s order Domino’s.
SCHLITZ FOR BRAINS
 
 
New Rule:
We don’t have to play a drinking game—we can just drink. Really. And besides, if I’m hoping your balls land in my beer, I’m already hammered.
SCHLOCK THERAPY
 
New Rule:
Scientists must explain why people will watch crap on Netflix streaming that they would never otherwise watch in a million years. It’s like the movie version of picking up some random stranger at a bar at closing time. The whole time you’re thinking, “Why am I doing this? I don’t even like this movie. I’m a better person than this.” And when it’s over you take a long shower and tell yourself, “Never again.” And then you watch a documentary about lobsters.
SCHNOOKS ON A PLANE
 
New Rule:
If you’re stuck on a plane that’s not moving for more than five hours, you get to punch a baby.
CARTOON NUTWORK
 
New Rule:
Although America likes to think it’s number one, we have to admit we’re behind the developing world in at least one thing: Their religious wackos are a lot more wacko than ours. When
South Park
got threatened by Islamists incensed at their depiction of Mohammed, it served—or should serve—as a reminder to all of us that our culture isn’t just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists. It’s better. Because when I make a joke about the Pope, he doesn’t send one of his Swiss Guards in their striped pantaloons to stick a pike in my ass. When I make a Jewish joke, rabbis may kvetch about it, but they don’t pull out a scimitar and threaten an adult circumcision.
It’s true: When it comes to scary-ass religions, extremist Muslims are like Godzilla, and we’re like
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Sarah Palin is an evil dingbat who thinks God opens doors, but she never tried to poison-gas a girls’ school—as the Taliban does in Afghanistan.
Think about the craziest religious wackos we have here in America. The Mormons. I’m kidding, that’s not a religion. No, take the “Christians” who bring their “God hates fags” signs to soldiers’ funerals. Now multiply that by infinity and give it an army—that’s the Taliban. I’ve been known to make fun of Christians, but I have the perspective to know they’re a lot more evolved than people who target girls for going to school. Why, the worst thing our priests ever do is smother children with kisses.
Even with the latest Catholic horror story, Muslims could teach Christians a clinic in how to be fucked up about sex. That’s because Muslims still take their religious leaders seriously, whereas we have the good sense to blow them off. Catholics, for example, don’t follow the Pope—in overwhelming numbers they divorce, have premarital sex, and masturbate. And unlike the Koran, no one here seriously considers following the Bible literally—guys don’t look over their fence on Sunday morning and see a neighbor mowing the lawn and think, “Working on Sunday? I really should kill him.”
Now, Christianity, of course, went through a period like that, where religion had too much influence—it was called the Dark Ages. For centuries, either you joined the Church or you were killed. Nowadays, when a Jehovah’s Witness comes to the door, you turn the garden hose on them.
Now, it should in fairness be noted that in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace. But civilized people don’t threaten one another. We sue one another. Threatening is some old-school desert shit, and I’m sorry, you can’t bring that to the big city. I’m very glad Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, and I know Muslims living in America and Europe want their way of life to be assimilated more. But the Western world needs to make it clear some things about our culture are not negotiable and can’t change, and one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another—not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here, and you can’t beat them—not negotiable. This is how we roll—and it’s why our system is better, and if you don’t get that, and you still want to kill someone over a stupid cartoon, please make it
Garfield.
 
 
—April 30, 2010
 

Other books

Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson
Death of a Hot Chick by Norma Huss
John Fitzgerald GB 06 Return of by Return of the Great Brain
Women in Deep Time by Greg Bear
The Witch's Desire by Elle James