Is It Just Me?: Or is it Nuts Out There? (15 page)

Chapter 56
Think It, Don’t Say It

There’s an old joke about this guy named Joe. Joe was having a terrible, hard life full of one tragedy after another. After years of this, the poor guy finally has had enough and climbs to the top of a mountain. Joe stands there on the summit and cries out to the heavens, “Why God, why me?” And the clouds part and the voice from above booms, “Because, Joe, you fucking piss me off.”

God gets a lot of great jokes, have you noticed that? But what are you going to do? It’s God.

Now without the “fuck,” that joke isn’t so funny.

Unless . . . unless the delivery is exceptional. And the “fuck” is subtext. So it can still be funny . . . Just think the “fuck.”

Think the “fuck,” don’t say it.

You try it.

“Because, Joe, you . . . Piss. Me. Off.”

I wonder how many fights could be avoided, how many hurt feelings would be spared, if people just didn’t say every little thing that came into their heads. Hey, we all think nasty things. But saying them? I dunno . . . The wrong word to the wrong person at the wrong time can turn ugly in a hurry. The beauty is, you can still think it. Just don’t let it come rolling out of your mouth.

And that’s something that I’ve had to learn on
The View
. I have to think it. Say it with a look. Or shade the meaning when I say something so you just
know
I am thinking that word . . . but not saying it.

After all, it is Daytime TV.

Now that you know my secret, you can enjoy the show on a whole new level. But a word of caution. Don’t assume every time I look thoughtful, that’s what I’m thinking. ’Cause sometimes when I look like I’m thinking . . . it’s just gas.

Chapter 57
A Civil Person’s Handy List: Things to Think and Not Say

The world does not need another fight. Especially if you start it. Look around, there’s enough SOBs with no manners out there jump-starting arguments by slipping out with the wrong words. Don’t you be one of them.

All you have to do when you talk to people who push your buttons is to be cool. Just be a better actor.

• Think the “fuck,” don’t say it.

• Think the “what an asshole,” don’t say it.

• Think the “I could deck you with one punch,” don’t say it.

• Think the “no way those boobs are real,” don’t say it.

• Think the “dipshit,” don’t say it.

• Think the “slut,” don’t say it.

• Think the “you’re drunk,” don’t say it.

• Think the “scumbag,” don’t say it.

You get the idea. It’s the best of both worlds. You don’t swear, but you sort of do. You sort of stealth swear by just thinking it.

And next time you see me sitting there, just smiling quietly, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m just busy thinking.

Chapter 58
Buddy Is the New Nigger

Have you noticed how rarely we have a conversation about race in this country? I think the whole race thing hits a raw nerve.

BUT
. . . Get out the Advil, because we’re going to have one now.

Racial to me in my age group, and racial to other people, may mean two different things. Like people under the age of thirty. They don’t get what you’re talking about when you’re saying, “That’s racist.” They say, “Well . . . what’s racist?”

The word “nigger,” to my granddaughter, does not mean what it means to my grandmother. That word does not have the same connotation. Know what’s happened? The kids were smart. They took it out of the realm of insult and made it . . . familial.

If you’re not black, how many times have you been waiting in a line, or in a coffee shop, or hanging around near black people and were surprised to hear them call each other nigger? Come on, sure you were. And I’m betting it wasn’t just once. Not even just once in a sentence. It’s like, “. . . And so I said, ‘Nigger, what’s going on . . .’ ” “Come on, nigger, I’m not going to do that . . .” “Nigger, you crack me up.”

The word may not mean to him what it means to other people. It’s a term of endearment to him. It’s familial. Fraternal. He was using it like saying, “Hey, buddy.”

Buddy is the new nigger.

I told a joke on a Bravo special because they had just buried the word “nigger.” And I said, “Well, I want you to tell me if this joke is funny. And if it’s funny because the word ‘nigger’ is in it . . . or if it’s just a funny joke. So I will tell you the joke.”

A little black cherub is up in heaven and is kind of cruising around, and God comes walking by, and the cherub flies over and says, “Hi, God!”

God says, “Hey, how are you doing?”

The cherub says, “Fine. God, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” says God.

“Am I an angel?”

God says, “No, nigger, you a bat.”

Now, do you think that’s funny? . . . OK, but what makes it funny? Is it the word “nigger” that makes it funny, or is it the idea that God is walking around heaven and some little cherub wants to know if he’s really an angel, and God, in His infinite wisdom, says, “No, idiot, you’re a bat.”

So what makes the joke funny?

The right word . . . and you can’t pretend you don’t know it is.

It’s like “Take my wife—please.” You kill the joke if it’s “Take my wife.” See, to me, the “take my wife” is not funny. It’s the “please” that gets me. So it is the word. It is the right word.

But see, now, this is what I’d say to you. There are times when racial jokes are funny. I know it’s bad to say that, but it’s true, and I hate, hate, hate to laugh . . . but I do.

And people freak themselves out over the angel joke because it
is
funny. It’s a funny joke. But on that special they freaked out because they didn’t know
why
they were laughing. They didn’t know whether they were laughing because I said “nigger” in the joke, or because it’s an angel. They didn’t know. And so, if you were watching when I told it, you saw people go HA! And then recoil and cover their mouths.

But, come on, it’s funny.

Am I right, buddy?

Chapter 59
Just Because I’m a Catholic, Don’t Assume That a Priest Has Touched Me

Were you around in the 1970s to watch one of the great TV series,
The Odd Couple
? There was this line in one episode that was so cool, I’ll never forget it. You can still hear folks quote it. Check out the Internet, you can even find the clip floating around there. It went like this . . . Felix Unger was warning someone about assuming things. His line was, “You should never assume, because when you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME.”

Brilliant!

But I have to ask, why are we all still doing so much assuming?

Example? How about the Tiger Woods situation? You have the incident that Thanksgiving night at his place in Florida. The story is that he comes out and he hits a fire hydrant and a tree. Then a rumor flies around that he and his wife were fighting about another woman. And then a rumor comes out that there are other
women
. And then all these women start showing up. We all pretty much know about the rest. The separation, the sex rehab, the press conference, the divorce decision. We don’t need to get into all that.

What we do need to remember is this . . . What the Tiger story was all about for months—months—was rumor. And speculation. And, wait for it . . .

Assumption.

Folks were assuming he was doing this. Folks were assuming his wife was doing that. They were assuming he was in seclusion. Then they were assuming he was on his boat. Folks were assuming everything, and you know why? Nobody knew.

Look, whether it’s Tiger Woods, or Governor Somebody, or that neighbor or nice aunt who suddenly checked into rehab, here’s what we need to remember. Nobody really knows what happens in a personal situation except the people involved. But that doesn’t stop anybody from assuming. Making ASSes of U and ME . . .

Well, I’ll tell you what we should be doing instead. We should be saying, “We don’t know. ’Cause we’re not there.”

So it sells newspapers to put the pictures of some chick on the cover with the screaming headlines saying this is the woman, and all. But the bottom line is:

. . .
And?

For me, I want to ask those “journalists” why they try to give me information that they don’t actually
have
—and call it news. And why am I accepting of that as fact? People would have much less to talk about if they had to stick to the facts. And then what the hell would the tabloids do?

The reputable newspapers have a policy of verifying facts with independent sources. Doesn’t mean they always do it. But that’s what they’re supposed to do. And then it makes you wonder—or should—what it means when they report something but won’t name their source. When they do that, they say they’re reporting news, but what they’re really saying is this is what we
hear
happened. Look for the wording. It’s usually something like, “A source close to this says this is what happened.” Or “Sources with knowledge of the situation indicate . . .” Hey, if you trust your newspaper or news station . . . that may be all right for you. For the reputable media, what they are doing is using careful language to say that they have done their homework and have verification. They just can’t name the names.

But not all media are to be trusted. I
know
. Can you believe that?!?

And even the trustworthy newsrooms are cutting back so much on staff that the verification can get sloppy. They mean well but don’t have the bodies to do the homework. And then it goes out.

And these days, once you put it out there, it’s out. It’s out there for a lifetime. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It doesn’t matter what the innuendo is. Hell, for some, innuendo isn’t shameful . . . it’s their specialty. They should have promos that say, “We’re your twenty-four-hour source for rumor and innuendo!”

Innuendo sticks . . . sticks like bus station TP to the bottom of your shoe. Smells about as good too.

There was plenty of innuendo with Michael Jackson. The frowning newscasters with the big voices said, “The FBI followed Michael Jackson for seventeen years.” And the people watching TV all nod and say, “Uh-huh . . . You know what
that
means, don’t you?” No, I don’t know what that means.

The FBI also followed Dr. King. They also followed John Lennon. Yeah, they followed a lot of people. And, as I understand it, Michael had one trial and he was acquitted. Now, some people say he paid someone twenty million dollars. Well, what was he paying twenty million dollars for? To keep them quiet? Obviously that couldn’t have been all. So maybe he was paying twenty million dollars to just have them stop messing with him.

I don’t know. Know why? Because I wasn’t there.

So unless we were there, we can’t take it at face value. Unless we were in the house with Tiger and his wife, or unless we spent time with Michael . . . unless we were there . . . we don’t know.

We can only assume.

Ask Felix Unger what he thinks of that.

Oh, wait . . .

Chapter 60
There Aren’t Enough Jails

Picture this. Some guy driving the car in front of you is just sitting there after the light turns green, not moving. So neither are you. He’s got his head down in that “I’m texting” pose. Five seconds pass. Ten seconds. Somebody leans on the horn but he’s still too busy thumbing an urgent message about the egg salad he had for lunch. Wouldn’t it be great if—Bam!—a cop shows up and yanks him out of the car and takes him away to jail. And the jail is right there, of course, so we could all see and enjoy it.

Wouldn’t it be great?

Maybe this would work: For a minor infraction—you know, the bad manners–bad hygiene–bad language stuff—we could do what they do in hockey. Blow a whistle and stick the selfish jerk in a penalty box for a short period to reflect on his assholian behavior. Yeah, but those things would fill up awfully fast . . . So maybe not.

It’s one thing to get pissed off at folks who transgress. The problem is what to do with them.

Don’t we believe that the punishment should fit the crime? Isn’t that what justice is? Lately, though, I wonder if we’ve gotten more into vengeance than justice.

I got thinking about all this when Ted Haggard and his wife, Gayle, were on
The View
one day. In case you don’t recall, he was that evangelical minister who got caught up in a scandal. Hm . . . guess I’d better be more specific. His was over accusations of homosexual behavior and drugs. If I say “meth and massages,” does that ring a bell? Thought so.

Anyway, hearing the Haggards talk about their lives now, and how they, along with their five kids, had fallen on hard times, got me thinking about the belief of Christian forgiveness . . . and how none of it seems to have gone to him. Not by his own congregation. He was cast out and now is scrambling to make ends meet. Couldn’t they have just sent him away for a year to rehabilitate? Instead, he was kicked out with a small severance and gets nothing more from his church in support. This was the pastor of a Christian church.

Is there any forgiveness? If somebody does something wrong, we now have copped this “off with the head” attitude, which, I confess, feels
great
sometimes, but come on. Why do we paint everyone with the same brush? Why does it seem more and more we want people ruined rather than rehabilitated?

We do forgive some people. Even if it takes a while . . . But we do.

Richard Nixon is getting cut some major slack these days. Back then, what does he have . . . ? He has his Watergate burglary and cover-up. He gets rid of the tapes. He resigns before he is impeached and leaves office in disgrace. But while Nixon was president, he was a foreign policy genius. He opened China. Engaged the Russians. Give the man that. Thirty years later, he is no longer the villain he was. A major movie is made about him. His statements are put in a new context. We have sympathy for him as a man. Richard Nixon . . . oh yes, he wasn’t so much a bad man as misguided, and awkward. Oh, yeah and sweaty-lipped. People forgive him.

Ronald Reagan didn’t have all of Nixon’s baggage, not even close, but there were plenty of folks who didn’t like him a bit. He talked the talk all right. He told us it was “Morning in America” and accepted his second nomination: “. . . Recognizing the equality of all men and women, we are willing and able to lift the weak, cradle those who hurt, and nurture the bonds that tie us together as one nation under God.”

. . . But wasn’t he the one who let people out of the asylums, creating a homeless crisis? And busted the air-traffic controllers? And gave no AIDS help? And tried to get ketchup classified as a vegetable in school lunches? And wasn’t his solution to the hole in the ozone layer to tell people to wear hats? And didn’t he have his scandal too, the arms-in-exchange-for-hostages “enterprise”?

I’m just asking ’cause now he’s revered. No one cares that he screwed up thousands of lives. They’re talking about bumping President Grant off the fifty-dollar bill and putting Reagan on it. OK. I have a feeling the people who didn’t dig Reagan won’t be seeing a lot of fifty-dollar bills anyway.

We forgive sometimes, and sometimes we don’t. One thing that’s consistent is, at least in the early going, we love to punish and we need to find a villain.

Is everybody a villain? Or do we need to back up and draw some distinctions here?

THE TRANSGRESSORS

The people who have transgressed fall into two categories. First . . . true
villains
for whom there is no forgiveness. In my book, there are:

THE ASSHOLES:

Hitler

Stalin

Osama bin Laden

Saddam Hussein

Idi Amin

Augusto Pinochet

Timothy McVeigh

Mussolini

Charles Manson

Lee Harvey Oswald

James Earl Ray

Sirhan Sirhan

Ted Bundy

John Wayne Gacy

Jeffrey Dahmer

Richard Speck

Richard Ramirez

Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo

Balkans war criminals Karadzic and Milosevic

Canadian pig-farm serial killer Robert William Pickton

The Connecticut home invasion killers (alleged)

Charles Whitman

Mark David Chapman

Reverend Jim Jones

Ft. Hood shooter (alleged) Nidal Malik Hasan

Truck bombers, including of the U.S. Marine dorm in Beirut

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho

FBI traitor Robert Hanssen

Bernie Madoff

. . . and so on.

We’re talking about context.

Villains are vilified.

Can you really put villainy in the same context as . . .

ASSHOLIAN BEHAVIOR:

Michael Vick

Tiger Woods

Charlie Sheen

Jon Gosselin

Jimmy Swaggart

Ted Haggard

Pistol-packin’ Washington Wizards players Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittendon

Plaxico Burress

Balloon Boy’s parents

Pat Robertson

Rush Limbaugh (for the Haiti comment)

Heidi Fleiss

Pete Rose

Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa (and all of the ’Roidian Slicks in sports)

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Eliot Spitzer

Ex-Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig

Andy Dick

Jesse James

Whoopi Goldberg

Or . . .

Your name here?

. . . Just asking.