The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (30 page)

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

 

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 people 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