The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (22 page)

JUST SCREW IT

 

New Rule:
Stop saying “sex addict” like it’s a bad thing. In the wake of Tiger Woods’s heartfelt apology that he gave to his fans, his friends, his foundation—and, just to be safe, Elizabeth Edwards—the media has been interviewing sex addicts: on CNN, one addict said, “The day Mount Saint Helens blew up, everyone was talking about it. But I didn’t even know it happened, because I was having sex all that day.” Oh, the humanity! Please get this man some professional help soon, before he has a hot three-way and completely misses a tornado.

Now, I haven’t commented on Tiger Woods much, because, well, he’s just a golfer, and it took me this long to give a shit. But all this talk about sex addiction now—please—sex addiction is just something Dr. Drew made up because he had no other way to explain Andy Dick. And that’s not just me saying that—it’s also the American Psychiatric Association, which does not list sex addiction in its manual; it does not regard it as a real psychological syndrome, like delirium or bipolar disorder or any of the other things Glenn Beck suffers from.

But before Tiger moves on, there’s one more apology he really should make, and that’s to Buddha, for dragging him into this mess and proving once again that whenever something unspeakably tawdry, loathsome, and cheap happens, just wait a few days. Religion will make it worse.

Now, usually, when famous cheaters are looking for public redemption, they go to Jesus, but Tiger went old school and claimed that sleeping with two-thirds of the waitresses in America had made him a failure as a Buddhist. He said Buddhism teaches you the way to inner peace is letting go of desire—and if that doesn’t sound like marriage, I don’t know what does.

Personally, if I were a golfer, I’d go with Jesus—because he’s a Trinity, so when you walk with him, you’ve got a foursome.

Christianity is for rubes. Buddhism is for actors.

And it really is outdated in some ways—the “Life sucks, and then you die” philosophy was useful when the Buddha came up with it around 500 B.C., because back then life pretty much sucked, and then you died, but now we have medicine, and Pinkberry, and TiVo; we have Vegas and Skype—our life isn’t all about suffering anymore.

Tiger said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves” makes us unhappy, which confirms something I’ve long suspected about Eastern religions: They’re a crock, too.

Craving for things outside ourselves is what makes life
life
—I don’t want to learn to
not
want; that’s what people in prison have to do. Buddhism teaches that suffering is inevitable. The only thing that’s inevitable is that if you have fake boobs and hair extensions, Tiger Woods will try to fuck you.

And reincarnation? Really? If that were real, wouldn’t there be some proof by now? A raccoon spelling out in acorns, “My name is Herb Zoller, and I’m an accountant” . . . something?

 

 

—February 26, 2010

 

HOLLYWOOD RETORTER

 

New Rule:
Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It’s Oscars time again, which means two things: (1) I’ve got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We’re too liberal; we’re out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products—movies—that people all over the world still want to buy.

Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska.

What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sonny Bono? Fred Thompson? And let’s not forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That’s right, Dick Cheney.

I’m not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they’re almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derek with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be “Two Die in Car Bombing.”

The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liberal stars that the right is always demonizing—Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy—they’re just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren’t begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do . . . nothing.

We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: Those people on that screen are only
pretending
to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys.

So please don’t hate on us. And please don’t ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we’re just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.

 

 

—May 3, 2010

 

LEARN NOTICE

 

New Rule:
Let’s not fire the teachers when students don’t learn—let’s fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, “Why blame our teachers?” and “Who’s President Obama?” I think it was Whitney Houston who said, “I believe the children are our future—teach them well and let them lead the way.” And that’s the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten—from a crackhead in the 1980s.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “But Bill! What do you know about raising kids? You don’t have any.” Yeah. I also don’t have any fish, but I know not to fill their tank with Mountain Dew. Or to enter a kid in a beauty pageant. Or to let them be an altar boy. And what you do with your spawn affects me. They’re the ones who run me over while they’re texting, because they’re using an online dictionary to spell “Where U at?”

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It’s just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers’ lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass.

But isn’t it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn’t us, and the fix is something that doesn’t require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It’s so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and, hey, while we’re at it, let’s cut taxes more. It’s the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could come only from a completely ignorant people.

Firing all the teachers may
feel
good—we’re Americans; kicking people when they’re down is what we do—but it’s not really their fault. Now, undeniably, there are some bad teachers out there. They don’t know the material, they don’t make things interesting, they have sex with the same kid every day instead of spreading the love around . . . But every school has crappy teachers. Harvard has crappy teachers—they must, they gave us George Bush.

But according to all the studies, it doesn’t matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number-one predictor of a child’s academic success is parental involvement. It doesn’t even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards.

It’s also been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child’s development. If your home is adorned with nothing but Hummel dolls, DVDs, and bleeding Jesuses, congratulations, you’ve just given your children the gift of duh. Sarah Palin said recently she wrote on her hand because her father used to do it. I rest my case.

When there are no books in the house, and there are no parents in the house, you know who raises the kids? Television. So maybe the problem isn’t the teachers. Maybe it’s the nannies:

 

—March 12, 2010