by Bill Maher
XXX FACTOR
New Rule: Stop trying to convince me that oral sex is the new handshake. For one thing, that would radically change the job requirements for the Walmart greeter. Plus, how would Hollywood starlets know when the introductions were over and the audition’s begun?
THE PARTY OF STINKIN’
New Rule: Now that it’s become clear that the Republicans, the fiscally conservative/strong on defense party, are neither fiscally conservative nor strong on defense, they have to tell us what exactly it is they’re good at. Because it’s not defense. 9/11 happened on your watch. And you retaliated by invading the wrong country. And you lost a ten-year game of hide-and-seek with Osama bin Laden. And you’re responsible for running up most of the debt, which more than anything makes us weak. You’re supposed to be the party with the killer instinct, but it was a Democrat who put a bomb in Khadhafi’s bedroom and a bullet in Bin Laden’s eye like Moe Greene in The Godfather, raising the question: How many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?
Let’s look at some facts. For you Fox News viewers, feel free to turn down the sound until the flashing “FACTS” light at the bottom of your screen disappears. When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that by the end of the decade, we would have paid off the entire debt and have a $2 trillion surplus. Instead, we have a $10.5 trillion public debt, and the difference in those two numbers is mostly because the Republicans put tax cuts for the rich, the prescription drug plan, and two wars on the layaway plan, and then bailed on the check. So . . . so much for fiscal responsibility.
But, hey, at least they still had the defense thing, right? The public still believed Republicans were tougher when it came to hunting down dark-skinned foreigners with funny-sounding names. But Bush had seven years to get Osama bin Laden. He didn’t. He got Wesley Snipes. Only six months after 9/11, Bush said he didn’t spend that much time on Bin Laden and that he was “no longer concerned” about him. Just as he wasn’t before 9/11, when he blew off that mysterious, inscrutable memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.” In under a year, Bush went from “Who gives a shit?” to “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” and back to “Who gives a shit?” Why focus on the terrorist who reduced Wall Street to rubble when you can help Wall Street reduce the whole country to rubble?
In 2008, the candidates were asked, if they knew for sure that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, would you send our guys in without permission to get him? McCain said no, because “Pakistan is a sovereign nation.” Obama said yes, he’d just do it, and McCain called him “naïve.” Who’s being naïve, Kay? And why can’t you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient, steely nerved, multitasking black-ninja gangsta president? In one week, he produced his birth certificate, comforted disaster victims, swung by Florida to say hey to Gabby Giffords, did stand-up at the Correspondents’ Dinner, and then personally rappelled into Bin Laden’s lair and put a Chinese star through his throat without waking up any of his thirteen wives. That’s how it went down. I saw it on MSNBC.
Thirty percent of the country will always vote Republican—I’m just asking why. Yes, paranoia, greed, and racism are fun, but . . . it’s like when you see someone driving a Mercury. You think: “Did that person really wake up one day thinking, ‘You know what car I want to drive? A Mercury Mariner.’” No, you assume he knows someone who sells them. Or he was molested by a Kia dealer as a child.
I know this all sounds like harsh truth, but Republicans are supposed to be the party of harsh truths. Like there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And speaking of lunch, I think Obama just ate yours.
—May 6, 2011
THY WILL BE GUN
New Rule: If you’re a Christian who supports killing your enemies and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself. Last week, as I was explaining why I didn’t feel at all guilty about Osama’s targeted assassination, I made some jokes about Christian hypocrisy, and since then, strangers have been coming up to me and forcing me to have the same conversation. So let me explain two things: (1) No, I’m not Matthew McConaughey. He surfs a longboard. And (2) capping thine enemy is not exactly “what Jesus would do.” It’s what Suge Knight would do.
For almost two thousand years, Christians have been lawyering the Bible to try and figure out how “Love thy neighbor” can mean “Hate thy neighbor” and how “Turn the other cheek” can mean “Screw you, I’m buying space lasers.” Martin Luther King Jr. gets to call himself a Christian because he actually practiced loving his enemies, and Gandhi was so fucking Christian he was Hindu. But if you rejoice in revenge, torture, and war—hey, that’s why they call it the weekend—you cannot say you’re a follower of the guy who explicitly said, “Love your enemies,” and “Do good to those who hate you.” The next line isn’t “And if that doesn’t work, send a titanium-fanged dog to rip his nuts off.” Jesus lays on that hippie stuff pretty thick, with lines like “Do not repay evil with evil” and “Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.” Really. It’s in that book you hold up when you scream at gay people.
And—not to put too fine a point on it—nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark. Kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace and hating whales. There’s interpreting—and then there’s just ignoring. It’s just ignoring if you’re for torture, as are more Evangelical Christians than any other religion. You’re supposed to look at that figure of Christ on the cross and think, “How could a man suffer like that and forgive?” not “Romans are pussies; he still has his eyes.” If you go to a baptism and hold the baby under until he starts talking, you’re missing the message.
Like, apparently, the president, who says he gets scripture on his BlackBerry first thing every morning, but who said on 60 Minutes that anyone who would question that Bin Laden deserved assassination should “have their head examined.” Hey, Fox News, you missed a big headline: “Obama Thinks Jesus Is Nuts.” To which I say, hallelujah, because my new favorite government program is surprising violent religious zealots in the middle of the night and shooting them in the face. Sorry, Head Start. You’re number two now. But I can say that because I’m a non-Christian—just like most Christians.
I’m just saying logically, if you ignore every single thing Jesus commanded you to do, you’re not a Christian. You’re just auditing. You’re not Christ’s followers, you’re just fans. And if you believe the earth was given to you to kick ass on, while gloating, you’re really not a Christian. You’re a Texan.
—May 13, 2011
Y
YAHOO SIRIUS
New Rule: News radio stations must find sponsors for something other than mortgages, tax problems, bankruptcy, erectile dysfunction, and garage doors. It sounds like a Jeopardy! category: Things in a suicide note. “Darling, please forgive me, but there was no other way out, after the mortgage drove me into bankruptcy, and the IRS slammed my penis in the garage door.”
YANKS, BUT NO YANKS
New Rule: Massage parlors must stop offering happy endings. I’d like to get a massage, but I’m terrified that at the end of it, the middle-aged Chinese lady is going to grab my junk with her rough peasant hands and work it like a piece of farm machinery. It’s my back that’s sore, not my penis. Besides, the whole point of hand jobs is that you can do them yourself.
CORPORATE PROPHET
New Rule: Contrary to what Republican candidates always sell, business experience does not make someone a good president. Honestly, do you people really want to get in this argument with me? George Bush had business experience. There. I win. Now shut up before I mention Donald Trump, the business genius whose companies have filed for bankruptcy three times. By the way, you know what makes a really great businessman? When your father has $400 million and dies. Or, as Trump calls it, “The Art of the Deal.”
Yesterday, Mitt Romney announced he’s running for president, and last week at a rally in Iowa almost two hundred peop
le showed up, leading people to ask, what is the secret to Romney’s almost Lady Gaga–like appeal, that two hundred Iowans would brave a partly sunny day with temperatures in the low seventies just to get a glimpse of the man? Is it because he looks like a model in the 1983 Montgomery Ward catalog? That’s part of it. But his big claim to fame is that he’s a businessman. And in America, saying you’re a businessman automatically makes you better than anyone who’s not a businessman. Obama never ran a business; he was a community organizer. Helping poor people. Where’s the money in that? Stupid loser.
Romney, on the other hand, is all business. You get the impression that he delays orgasm by calculating interest rates. In his speech, Romney said, “Unlike President Obama, I know how jobs are created and how jobs are lost.” Yeah, especially the lost part. Here’s what Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, does: It buys companies and revamps them by “cost cutting”—otherwise known as “firing people”—and then sells them for a profit.
Mitt’s other business success story besides Bain Capital is Staples. Yes, that Staples. The store that sells you ink cartridges. The store you put off going to for as long as you can. The store with zero décor and a flickering fluorescent light that makes you think, “Has my life really come to this?”
You see, businessmen generally make lousy political leaders because government isn’t about turning a profit, it’s about taking care of the things that shouldn’t have to turn a profit. You can’t make everything better with “business.” Business can’t turn coal into diamonds, or crap into food. That’s soy sauce.
So, Mitt, instead of pointing out your business experience, try using the fact that you were the governor of Massachusetts, the most educated state in the country, and your main accomplishment was universal health care. Then again, you’re trying to appeal to the Republican base, so you’ll have to do that in a way that avoids mention of Massachusetts, universal health care, or smart people.
—June 3, 2011
YOU, ME, AND DUPRÉ
New Rule: If your news organization’s website has more than three pictures of Eliot Spitzer’s hooker on it, you’re a porn site. The only difference: On a porn site, “Spitzer” is a verb.
YOU’VE GOT BAIL
New Rule: I understand that we had to bail out this insurance company.
But if the one with the Cockney lizard gets in trouble, just let it die.
HAND SOLO
New Rule: If you’re going to be the pathetic, laughing-stock center of a tawdry, lie-riddled sex scandal, at least get laid. Congratulations, Congressman Shinytits69: In a world of politicians doing everything from having babies with the maid, leaving their wives on their deathbeds, and hiking the Appalachian Trail, you’re guilty of the most humiliating indiscretion of all: You didn’t get any. Talk about Democrats being ineffectual! Edwards and Clinton banged butterfaces, and that’s embarrassing enough—but you came up with just . . . your hand. Your name shouldn’t even be Weiner, you don’t deserve it—Weiners are for closers—your name should be Anthony Hand.
At his press conference, Congressman Weiner was talking about his online flirtations, and at one point he ejaculated, “They are all adults, at least to the best of my knowledge.” Oh, Anthony, it’s the Internet. There’s no such thing as the best of your knowledge. You know that naked coed you’ve got on the line, the one with tits that just won’t quit? This is her:
How is talking to this guy online better than old-school whacking off? Say what you want about a box of Kleenex and the July Playboy, but when you finish, it doesn’t call Andrew Breitbart.
I guess I just don’t get the appeal of sexting, and phone sex, and all that cyber-jacking the kids are into these days when they’re not listening to their hippity-hop records. Call me old-fashioned, but when I have sex I like to have the other person in the room. I find that it helps create a feeling of intimacy.
People say, “Bill, don’t knock phone sex till you’ve tried it.” I’ve tried it. True, it was with a customer-service rep from the gas company, but still. I gave it a shot. And you know what? It’s not sex. It’s not even a little bit like sex. It’s just talking. Even during actual sex, talking is fairly superfluous. Saying “Do me, do me” when I am at that very moment doing you is neither helpful nor essential to the overall experience. And that’s all cybersex is: an annoying person saying “Do me, do me” while you’re a thousand miles away, trying to maintain an erection while the cat walks across the keyboard.
Thanks to you, Congressman Weiner, there is now a new low in what passes for a sex scandal—JFK got Marilyn Monroe. John Edwards got a love child. You got mail. Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but at least when he whipped out his dick on a woman, she didn’t have to wait for it to stop buffering.
—June 10, 2011
Z
ZINE-OPHOBIA
New Rule: Stop trying to make your magazine interactive. Time magazine keeps telling me that if I want to read more about a story, go to their website. Here’s a better idea: Put the rest of the story in the magazine. You know, like you used to do before the Internet? I know you have a website that you’re really proud of, but I’m on the toilet.
ZIP COLD
New Rule: As long as they’re thinking of dropping Saturday service, the Post Office can go ahead and just close altogether. Since about 1998, no one in America has gotten anything in the mail but catalogs, bills, Christmas cards, and anthrax. And I hate Christmas cards. At least when you get anthrax you don’t think, “Oh, shit, now next year I have to send them anthrax.”
NO NEW TEXAS
New Rule: If you think the Republican presidential candidates can’t possibly get any lamer, then you haven’t met the new Republican flavor of the month: Rick Perry. If you’re not familiar with Rick, he took over as governor of Texas from George W. Bush, who’s now referred to as “the smart one.” He carries a gun even when he’s jogging, he wears cowboy boots with a suit, and the boots say, “Come and take it,” which sounds kind of gay. And he threw such a tantrum when Obama won, he actually talked about Texas seceding from the union. Because that’s what America needs: a president of the United States who’s not really sold on the whole “United States” concept.
Rick Perry rented out a seventy-thousand-seat football stadium in Houston for something called The Response—which sounds like a home pregnancy test but actually is, to quote the governor, “a Christian prayer service to provide spiritual solutions to the many challenges we face as a nation.” Or, as stadium employees are calling it, Batshit Day. I guess the idea is to get together in a big group and pray all at once; that way, the signal is stronger and God doesn’t lose you when he’s going through a canyon.
But here on Planet Reality, may I point out that there are no such things as “spiritual solutions” to national problems. If that’s where we are as a country, if our official government policy is “Yee-haw, Jesus, take the wheel”—then we’re dead already. On his Jesuspalooza website, Perry writes, “There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees,” and “Some problems are beyond our power to solve.” What? I thought we were the can-do people. And if Perry thinks only God can solve our problems, then why is he even in government? Why doesn’t he just stay at home and light a bunch of candles, like Sissy Spacek’s mom in Carrie?
Here’s an opposing view: Not only are our problems not “beyond our power to solve,” they’re actually fairly easy to solve. You have a giant budget deficit, like Perry has in Texas? Raise taxes. Federal tax revenues haven’t been this low since 1950—and that, plus two wars and a recession, is the reason we have a huge deficit. It’s not because God’s angry over the gay kissing on Glee. It doesn’t require prayer to solve it; it requires a calculator.
Politicians like to say, “We need new ideas.” Bullshit—“new ideas” is just a secular version of “spiritual solutions”—something that’s going to magically fix everything. What “new idea” is going to solve our health-care crisis? A magic pill tha
t makes obese children crap out gold bricks? We don’t need “new ideas,” we need the balls to implement the ideas we already know work: cut corporate welfare, slash the defense budget, tax the rich, support the strong unions that created a middle class in the first place, build infrastructure, and take the profit out of health care.
By the way, Rick Perry isn’t just talking when he says “spiritual solutions.” Back in April, faced with a devastating drought, Rick did what any solutions-oriented twenty-first-century civil servant would do. He proclaimed a Day of Prayer for Rain. Because we’re ancient Mayans now. Of course, the drought only got worse. In the words of Sister Mary Ignatius, God answers all your prayers. And sometimes the answer is no.
—June 17, 2011
PHOTO CREDITS
Page 12: AFP/Getty Images
Page 21: Getty Images
Page 22: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Page 25: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
