New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (18 page)

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Authors: Bill Maher

BOOK: New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer
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The Oscar broadcast must come in at some time under 6 hours. The Oscars are like having sex with someone on coke: It all starts out very exciting but, several hours in, you really just want them to finish.
Taint Misbehavin’
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Abstinence pledges make you horny. In a setback for the morals/values crowd, a new 8-year study reveals that American teenagers who take “virginity” pledges wind up with just as many STDs as the other kids do. But that’s not all—taking the pledge also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex and four times more likely to allow anal. Which leads me to an important question: Where were these pledges when I was in high school?
Seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn-star sex the same year I took Algebra II simply by joining up with the Christian Right, I’d have been so down with Jesus, they would have had to pry me out of the pew.
There are a lot worse things than teenagers having sex—namely, teenagers
not
having sex. Here’s something you’ll never hear: “That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, nonstop. All that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened.”
The theory of the puritans of the 21st century seems to be: The less kids know about sex, the better. Because people who talk about pee-pees are potty mouths. And so armed with limited knowledge and believing regular vaginal intercourse to be either immaculate or filthy dirty, these kids did with their pledge what everybody does with contracts: They found loop-holes—two of them, to be exact.
Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian Right actually got their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly scrubbed boyfriends: “Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass. Then I’ll blow you.” Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box.
BILL MAHER
P
 
NEW RULES
 
Pasta la Vista
 
NEW RULE
 
If you’re in Iraq and you even sort of think you might be kind of near a checkpoint ... stop. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if we shoot your car. Haven’t you seen a single American movie, television show, or news story from the last 60 years? That’s what we do: We shoot cars. Does the name Elvis ring a bell? Richard Pryor? Lee Harvey Oswald? I know it’s hard for foreigners to understand, but in America we shoot first and ask questions rarely.
Pay Ball!
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Stop saying that athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. Bass fishermen do it for the love of the game, which is why so few of them have agents. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O’Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Mlinsk.
Pewsweek
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Time Magazine
has to change its name to
God Weekly.
In the last few years, Time has put out: “The Secrets of the Nativity,” “The God Gene,” “Faith, God and the Oval Office,” “The Bible and the Apocalypse,” “Who Was Moses?” “What Jesus Saw,” “Why Did Jesus Have to Die?” “Jesus at 2000.” If Jesus gets any more free press, he’s going to start thinking he’s Paris Hilton. Look, I understand we have a lot of Christians in this nation, but how about a little equal time?
“Vishnu to Ganesh: ‘Drop Dead!’ ” and “Is There No Pleasing Zeus?”
 
Pie-Curious
 
NEW RULE
 
Homosexuals must be ripped. As news reports covered gay couples marrying in 2004, America was forced to confront a real eye-opener: A gay person can be just as big a slob as a straight one. We saw couples with beer guts and 9-day-old stubble, wearing hockey jerseys. And I don’t just mean the lesbians. Guys, I know you’re new at this matrimony thing, but this is how it works: First you get married,
then
you let yourself go.
Pitt Happens
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Let the two best-looking people in the world have sex with each other. We all knew they’d end up together—we’ve been to high school. He was just waiting a respectable interval for her to shed that Billy Bob smell.
Pluck Off
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here’s how much men care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Okay, we’re done.
Pontiff-icating
 
NEW RULE
 
Don’t get movie blurbs from the pope, like the pontiff’s famous “It is as it was” rave for Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie. What he really said was:
 
“James Caviezel is Christ-errific!”
“Monica Belluci puts the mmm! in Mary Magdalene!”
“She could wash my feet anytime!”
“A rock-hard 10 on the St. Peter Meter!”
Pope Goes Caviezel
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Stop asking Jim Caviezel religious questions. He just played Jesus in a movie. It’s like asking a cast member of
Scrubs
to lance a boil. Why, if everyone on TV was really like the character he plays, no one at church would talk to me, my wife, or my eight kids.
Bi-Definition
 
NEW RULE
 
Y
ou can’t claim you’re the party of smaller government and then make laws about love. What business is it of the state how consenting adults choose to pair off, share expenses, and eventually stop having sex with each other?
Why does the Bush administration want a constitutional amendment about weddings? Hey, why stop at weddings—birthdays are important; let’s put them in the great document. Let’s make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake—you know, to send the right message to kids.
Republicans are always saying we should privatize things, like schools, prison, social security—how about we privatize privacy? If the government forbids gay men from tying the knot, what’s their alternative? They can’t all marry Liza Minelli.
Republicans used to be the party that opposed social engineering, but now they push programs to outlaw marriage for some people and encourage it for others. If you’re straight, there’s a billion-five in the budget to promote marriage, but gay marriage is opposed because it threatens or mocks—or does something—to the “sanctity of marriage,” as if anything you can do in Vegas drunk off your ass in front of an Elvis impersonator could be considered sacred.
Half the people who pledge eternal love are doing it because one of them is either knocked up, rich, or desperate. But, in George Bush’s mind, marriage is a beautiful lifetime bond of love and sharing—kind of like what he has with the Saudis.
But at least the Right isn’t hypocritical on this issue; they really believe that homosexuality is an “abomination” and a dysfunction that’s “curable.” They also believe that if a gay man just devotes his life to Jesus, he’ll stop being gay—because that theory worked out so well with the Catholic priests.
But the greater shame in this story goes to the Democrats. They don’t believe homosexuality is an abomination, and therefore their refusal to endorse gay marriage is hypocrisy. Their position doesn’t come from the Bible; it’s ripped right from the latest poll, which says most Americans are against gay marriage.
Well, you know what? Sometimes “most Americans” are wrong. Where’s the Democrat who will stand up and go beyond the half measures of “civil union” and “hate the sin, love the sinner” and say, loud and clear, “There is no sin—it’s
not
an abomination”?
No one can control how Cupid aims his arrows, and the ones who pretend they can usually turn out to be the biggest freaks of all.

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