The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (14 page)

POTUS ENVY

 

New Rule:
The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority-white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that, Canada. Where’s your Nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named
Stephen Harper,
and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named
Barack Hussein Obama.

That’s right, everybody, I take back every bad thing I ever said about the good old USA. I’ve gone from “God damn America” to “Goddamn, America!” I feel like a hockey mom at the state fair getting felt up by Hank Williams Jr. while fireworks go off and Jesus appears in my cotton candy. It would be stupid not to be stupid about it. So I’d like to take this moment,  when we finally got one right, to bask in a little unwarranted, unapologetic, irrational faux patriotism. Or, as Fox News calls it, “regular programming.”

I might regret this. It’s kinda like grocery shopping when you’re high. But here goes, world: We’re Americans. We built the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, and Joan Rivers. We’re the only country that can look at a sandwich made of ice cream and chocolate cookies covered in fudge and think, “Hmm, you think we could fry that?” And you know what? Yes, we can! They may have seventy-two virgins, but we have thirty-one flavors. You know what our favorite burger topping is? Another burger. We invented rock ’n’ roll, jazz, funk, R&B, and hip-hop. Without our music, your iPods would be filled with ABBA, Menudo, and Men at Work. And you wouldn’t have iPods.

Not only did we create the Internet, we’re the ones who filled it up with porn. Jefferson lived here. And Miles Davis. And Gloria Steinem and Frank Lloyd Wright. And a lot of other people Sarah Palin never heard of. In America, strippers and Disney stars have an equal right to be named Hannah Montana, and I was freely able to make a movie saying there’s no afterlife, and you could watch it while eating crap that’ll kill you. But that’s okay, because our corn-fed high school sophomores are bigger than your soldiers. And they’re better armed.

I ask you, in what other nation would they tax young people to make sure old people can afford erections? What you call “football,” we call “soccer.” And what you call “war crimes,” we call “football.” And let me just say it again: We elected a black guy, and it was because he was the best candidate, not because it was some cheap gimmick. And we should know, because we are also the country that invented cheap gimmicks! Yes, America is like Jessica Simpson—sometimes it’s so stupid it embarrasses you, but on the other hand, how about them titties?

 

 

—November 14, 2008

 

DEATH TO MOOCHY

 

New Rule:
Stop pretending that other governments have nothing to teach us. From those socialists in Sweden, we can learn how to fix a banking crisis. And from our friends in China, we can learn how to punish the jerks who caused it. The ones who took bailout money and bought private jets made out of rubies and veal. Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers personally made $500 million in subprime mortgages, and he gets to keep it. While you and I pay off his bad bets. Bernie Madoff stole $50 billion, mostly from Jews. For Jews, this was the worst pyramid scheme since the actual pyramids.

Which brings me back to China. A couple of months ago, some greedy businessmen in China were caught spiking the milk they sold to children with melamine, a plastic derivative that boosted the protein levels and thus their profits. You know what the Chinese are doing to the businessmen behind their milk scandal? They’re putting them to death. Talk about lactose intolerant.

Now, am I saying we should treat the bankers who poisoned our financial markets with tainted investments the way China treated its poisoners? Please, we’re not China. We’re just owned by China. So no, I don’t think we should put all the bankers to death. Just two. I mean, maybe it’s not technically legal, but let’s look at the upside. If we killed two random rich, greedy pigs, and I mean killed, like blew them up at halftime of next year’s Super Bowl or left them hanging on the big board at the New York Stock Exchange—you know, as a warning, with their balls in their mouth—I think it would really make everyone else sit up and take notice.

This crisis is rooted in greed, and if two deaths shocked a society of three hundred million into acting decently enough to avoid this in the future—well, they’d die as heroes. It’s not like collateral damage isn’t built into our assessment of things. Cars kill almost fifty thousand people a year, but we accept that as a fair price for being able to get around without riding on top of an animal. So two dead bankers really starts to look like a bargain, and isn’t that what they loved—bargains?

 

 

—February 20, 2009