The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (29 page)

BRUCE ALRIGHTY

 

New Rule:
Now that a Cheney, a McCain, and a Bush have come out to support gay marriage, it’s your turn, Obama. Who are you waiting for, the state of Alabama? The Reverend Fred Phelps? Even sixty-three percent of
Catholics
are okay with gay marriage. But then again, they’re used to being fed the body of a man by another man who’s wearing a dress.

This month, America reached a milestone in its attitude toward gays: more than half the country—fifty-three percent—now supports gay marriage. Now, that still means that forty-seven percent of Americans are assholes. After all, if a poll found that forty-seven percent of Americans thought blacks shouldn’t be able to marry a Kardashian sister, the Twit-tersphere would light up like Charlie Sheen just fell down a well. But still, this is remarkable progress, considering that it wasn’t that long ago that just saying the words “gay marriage” made most Americans throw up in their cornflakes.

So I’d like to congratulate the leadership of the Democratic Party, who really stood up for what was right. I’d like to, but I can’t, because other than Gavin Newsom, Dennis Kucinich, and that governor in New Jersey who went all
Brokeback Mountain
with his bodyguard, no Democrat would touch the issue with a ten-inch pole. It wasn’t the Democrats who changed America on the issue—it was television, which in the last five years has gotten gayer than the British Navy. If there’s one thing I know about Americans, it’s that if they see something on TV, it makes it okay. And when they saw real gay couples standing on courthouse steps wearing the same ugly rented tuxedos that straight men wear to get married—suddenly, they realized that the gays were just like them: tacky and overweight.

Recently, Victoria Jackson, the oldest surviving member of
Saturday Night Live,
said the show
Glee
is “shoving the gay thing down our throats.” Besides being the first funny thing she’s said in twenty-five years, it’s true. They
are
shoving the gay thing down America’s throat, and it turns out America got used to it surprisingly quickly. And that shouldn’t shock anybody, because shoving things down America’s throat is what the Republicans do all the time.

Unlike the Democrats, when Republicans believe in things that the public doesn’t—their response is, “Fuck it, we’ll
make
them believe.” Like attacking Iraq to avenge 9/11. Like convincing a country that badly wanted health-care reform that they actually didn’t want it. Like turning global warming into a hoax. That’s what conservatives do—relentlessly push until the unthinkable becomes the consensus. The idea of blaming teachers for our financial crisis, which would have seemed completely lunatic a year ago, becomes the conventional wisdom.

Republicans don’t run from unpopular stances, and they stand by their convictions. Stupid, ignorant, world-destroying convictions based on dis-proven economic fantasies and ancient books full of primitive morality and magic people—but convictions nonetheless.

 

 

—April 1, 2011

 

CHARLIE DON’T SERF

 

New Rule:
As long as we’ve got three wars going, America needs to add one more—a class war. It’s time working Americans told Wall Street the same thing that the good people of Detroit told Charlie Sheen: “This is bullshit, and I want my money back.”

Two interesting things are happening in America right now. Charlie Sheen—a millionaire armed with only a few catchphrases and two porn actresses who smell like ammonia—launched a self-pity tour because he can’t have a TV show, while the Republicans—the party of millionaires—is shutting down the government because they can’t have a tax-free world. As Paul Ryan says, “It’s not a budget. It’s a cause.”

Like slavery. Like supporting one of the luckiest guys in the world in his quest to get all that’s coming to him. Folks, if you go to a show and the guy onstage says, “Sorry, dude, I already got your money,” you’re not in on the joke. You
are
the joke.

You’re not his friend, or one of his chosen people, and you’re not going to
be
him someday in paradise if you drink his tiger blood. That’s Jesus you’re thinking of. This is the guy from the sitcom about making dirty jokes to a fat kid. You can know that a rock makes a shitty pet, but if you buy a pet rock, you’re still an idiot. Ask your dentist—a shit-eating grin doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been eating shit. That’s the difference between being Charlie Sheen’s girlfriend and Charlie Sheen’s fan. If you’re his girlfriend and you get fucked, he pays
you.

And if you think a guy living large and rubbing your nose in it that you’re
not
is funny, here’s one you’ll really love: You have to pay your taxes, and General Electric doesn’t. That’s right, GE, America’s largest corporation, paid no taxes on $14 billion in profit. Why aren’t people mad at them?

If I had to pick a phrase that encapsulates the American economy in the last decade, it surely would be: “I’ve already got your money, dude.”

There’s a law now forbidding credit-card companies from screwing you with fine print and sudden unjustified rate hikes—to which the credit-card companies said, “I already got your money, dude.” Or maybe you lost your job in a recession caused by already rich people who bundled horseshit loans, and then took “too big to fail” pity money from Uncle Sam: “Already got your money, dude.”

Americans need to have a Detroit moment, when they realize they’re pooling their money and wasting it on the richest guy in the room. The richest one percent hoard an obscene amount of the wealth while the average American has to save up to eat at Red Lobster on his birthday. Wake up—because somehow, they’re banging the porn stars, and you’re getting the crabs.

 

 

—April 8, 2011