“New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me.This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants.This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one.I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: If we want to find a place to cut government waste, we must start with the DEA rubber duck. Yes, on the DEA’s website you can buy a rubber ducky with a DEA badge and a cop’s hat. Which I recommend doing, because they’re a great place to hide your weed.”
— Bill Maher
“Faced with our addiction to oil, what does our leadership say? Get more o”
— Bill Maher
“It is not a surprise that a person would want to be a prophet. What’s ridiculous is that other people let him.”
— Bill Maher
“Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries where they live longer than us…they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you’re not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you’re coughing up freedom!”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Stop leaving couches on the sidewalk. Besides being lazy and ugly, it’s animal cruelty. You teach your dog not to pee on the couch, and then when you take him to the place he’s supposed to pee, there’s a couch.”
— Bill Maher
“We preach about capitalism and the beauty of unfettered market forces determining price–but not when it comes to gas. When it comes to gas, we need it cheap, and the president had better get it for us, or else, we don’t care how.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: You’re never going to pick up women at a coffee shop pretending to be working on your laptop. You don’t look like you’re sensitive, you look like you’re homeless.The last guy to pick up a chick with an Apple was Adam. And when you sit across from another dateless loser with a laptop, it still doesn’t look like you’re working–it looks like you’re playing Battleship.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Stop putting psychedelic screensavers on computers. I sit down to check my e-mail, and the next thing I know it’s three days later, I’m in the desert, I’m banging on a drum, I’m naked, and somebody’s pierced my dick.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: You can’t force the ATM to do something it doesn’t want to do. Excuse me, lady in front of me at the Citibank ATM, but you’ve been standing there punching buttons for ten minutes–what are you trying to do, write a novel on it? You hear those beeping noises? That’s the ATM saying, “Stop it, you’re hurting me.” A chicken would have gotten forty bucks out of that thing by now just by pecking the buttons randomly.”
— Bill Maher
“Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us.Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP.Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber.And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!”
— Bill Maher
“We were asked to do very little, and we responded. That’s the bargain we tacitly make with our presidents: we won’t ask too much of you, if you don’t ask too much of us.”
— Bill Maher
“This is the opposite of the free market.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Apple’s next device must be a computer that you control with your tongue. Thanks for eliminating the keyboard and the mouse, but pointing and pushing at things already seems too complicated and tiring. We’re Americans–and until you free our hands from the computer entirely, we can never attain our ultimate goal: Web surfing while eating and masturbating.”
— Bill Maher
“Claiming “the budget can’t allow it” reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o’clock and they say “the kitchen is closed.” For years I would hear this, and think, “damn, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I guess it’s Denny’s ag”
— Bill Maher
“Do not fuck with gun nuts because they are nuts about their guns.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: America has every right ot bitch about gas prices suddenly shooting up. How could we have known? Oh, wait, there was that teensy, tiny thing about being warned constantly over the last forty years but still creating more urban sprawl, failing to build public transport, buying gas-guzzlers, and voting for oil company shills. So, New Rule: Shut the fuck up about gas prices.”
— Bill Maher
“It’s not that we don’t care–it’s just that that we’d prefer not to get involved.”
— Bill Maher
“After September 11th, I never much liked the trend of everyone and his brother wearing the hats and jackets of the NYPD and FDNY. Only the people who do the job should get to wear the hat. Would you wear someone else’s Medal of Honor? Yes, it’s a tribute, and sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people. But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn’t yours.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Food companies must face the facts: One container equals one serving. Look, we’re Americans, and that means once we open the bag, there’s no stopping us until we’re licking stray bits of powdered cheese off the carpet. So stop trying to give us nutritional information based on a fraction of the package. It assumes a talent for two things that we’re really not capable of: restraint and math.”
— Bill Maher
“Every day in America is a day with a shooting.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Conservatives have to stop rolling their eyes every time they hear the word “France.” Like just calling something French is the ultimate argument winner. As if to say, “What can you say about a country that was too stupid to get on board with our wonderfully conceived and brilliantly executed war in Iraq?” And yet an American politician could not survive if he uttered the simple, true statement: “France has a better health-care system than we do, and we should steal it.” Because here, simply dismissing an idea as French passes for an argument. John Kerry? Couldn’t vote for him–he looked French. Yeah, as a opposed to the other guy, who just looked stupid.Last week, France had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote. Eighty-five percent turned out. You couldn’t get eighty-five percent of Americans to get off the couch if there was an election between tits and bigger tits and they were giving out free samples.Maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem cell research, or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it’s not a drawback. The electorate doesn’t vote for the guy they want to have a croissant with. Nor do they care about private lives. In the current race, Madame Royal has four kids, but she never got married. And she’s a socialist. In America, if a Democrat even thinks you’re calling him “liberal,” he grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill some”
— Bill Maher
“America is bad at discriminating between danger likely to strike again, and red herrings, the freaking helpings of disaster that no man or plan can prevent.”
— Bill Maher
“We’re a complacent society, hard to get riled up in the first place, and then when we do, it’s misdirected.”
— Bill Maher
“Brave Americans in past wars didn’t die for the actual flag–they died for the freedom it represents, including the freedom to burn it.”
— Bill Maher
“It’s a funny thing about Americans, we love to bitch about paying too much for the things we really need and are really a bargain, like gas and postage stamps, but we willingly shell out outrageous amounts for unnecessary crap like gourmet coffee and soap to make your crotch smell good. Two dollars a gallon to go ten miles is too much, but five to the parking valet to go ten feet is okay.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach “intelligent design” alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is “just a theory.” Then the president renewed his vow to “drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the e”
— Bill Maher
“Fascism is when corporations become the government.”
— Bill Maher
“I’m not a Christian, but I have read his book.”
— Bill Maher
“New Rule: Americans have to come up with a better cheese to represent the nation than American cheese. I’m not even sure American cheese is cheese. I think it’s aged Jell-O. And it doesn’t need to be individually wrapped in plastic, either. You’re thinking of condoms.”
— Bill Maher