The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (26 page)

GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS

 

New Rule:
Someone in America must give me hope that this country can sacrifice anything to get anything done. I refer specifically to SunChips. You know SunChips—the corn-based snack you wolf down at the convenience store when you’re high? Well, this year, they came out with something really cool: a biodegradable bag that won’t contribute to the Texas-size swirls of plastic we now have in both the Atlantic and Pacific—and I couldn’t wait to reward them with my business. Except now I can’t. They stopped making this bag because there was a problem with it—it was loud. Like a porn star, it made a little too much noise when you stuck your hand in it. It crinkled in a disturbing fashion, like Keith Richards’s face.

It’s the sound of jackbooted eco-thugs taking away your inalienable right to be able to hear
Ice Road Truckers
perfectly while stuffing your face!

But unlike plastic,
this
bag would decompose into dirt instead of lying around for the next five hundred years to choke seagulls to death and destroy the ecosystem. Oh, sure, we could have made the ultimate sacrifice and, I don’t know, poured the chips into a bowl . . .

Side note: In Canada, SunChips is keeping the non-earth-raping bag, because they’re not a nation of crack babies, and they get it that sometimes you have to give up small things in order to make the world a better place. Except in America. Where “Have it your way” is the rule for everything, including volume on snacks. You think we’re going to reform Social Security?

There’s a lot of talk since the Republicans won the midterms that the  
adults
are back in charge, having
adult
conversations about budget matters—for example, they say they want to keep the parts of the health-care bill that people like, and repeal the parts that people don’t like. Of course, it is the parts that people
don’t
like that pay for the parts they
do
like. Yes, isn’t it great to have the adults back in charge?

This is America. We don’t have adult discussions. We have Twitter. If you have a problem with the baby talk that serves as our national dialogue, move to Finland—because ultimately it is our fault, not the politicians’. They just do what we tell them to do. If you showed Mitt Romney a poll that said he could win more votes if he became a woman named Mitteesha, he would get a weave and lop off his cock faster than you can say, “Is that thing sterilized?”

 

 

—November 12, 2010

 

PEACE NIX

 

New Rule:
The problem isn’t that there’s too little civility in government, it’s that there’s too much. President Obama’s State of the Union speech is next week, and as you’ve probably heard, members of Congress have agreed, in response to the tragedy in Arizona, to break with the tradition of Republicans on one side of the room, Democrats on the other. Instead, they’ll all sit together. Conservative next to liberal, gay next to straight, nerd next to jock . . . Oh, wait, that was an episode of
Glee.
In any event, the two parties are coming together, and they’ve agreed Joe Lieberman has to sit by himself.

America is such a mystery to me: A lunatic uses a Glock to shoot nineteen people, and our answer is: “Don’t try to control guns or nuts, just be more polite.” I’m just a hockey mom, but it seems to me when a madman kills people, the problem isn’t the First Amendment. It’s the Second.

In his big speech, President Obama said, ”We should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.” The first of which, I’m guessing, would be to live in a country where they don’t get shot when they leave the house. That’s what’s important; who gives a damn if politicians mask their disdain for one another with forced niceties? They do already: “My good friend from the great state of Alabama.” As if they’re really good friends, or anyone outside Alabama thinks it’s a great state.

Oh, it’s a lovefest these days: Conservatives couldn’t stop praising Obama’s speech—of course, because it let them off the hook. The party of assault weapons didn’t get blamed for the assault. Just like the party of oil didn’t get blamed for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the party of deregulation skated on tanking the economy.

Again and again, Obama is given the opportunity to lay some richly deserved blame at the feet of the Republicans, and again and again he just can’t do it, because he wants them to like him so badly—Conservatives, stop worrying, he can’t be a Kenyan; he’s a golden retriever. He’s done everything he possibly could to appease you, short of using bleach.

And when Obama says “find common ground”—oh, here comes the bullshit now. Because whenever a Democrat seeks common ground, he always seems to find it right where the Republican was already standing. Ten years ago we had a ban on extended ammo clips so that people like this walking Thorazine ad couldn’t kill supermarket crowds hassle-free. The Republicans killed the ban, and now the compromise is we can never get it back. I think the old word for that was “surrender.”

Republicans—please note—are not taken in by the myth of common ground—they never move an inch on anything. Gun restrictions are always bad, taxes are always too high, and there’s nothing on earth that can’t be improved by adding either Jesus or bacon. Sarah Palin knows fewer words than Koko the gorilla, but it’s not a coincidence that two of them are “Don’t retreat,” and the other is “Reload.”

 

 

—January 21, 2011