Why We Suck (22 page)

    Cialis-the onus of the trophy wife.

    I'll bet Marla Maples filed for divorce from The Donald about eight minutes after she heard Viagra was headed to the open market.

    You have to keep a sense of humor about it all, which can be hard in this country nowadays-pun most definitely intended.

    One thing that drives men crazy is women who arrive humorless into whatever workplace it might be and then can't understand why none of the men they work with will either flirt, laugh or co-operate with them.

    The answers are thus:

        1. Flirting is now considered a form of sexual harassment.

        2. Laughing means you have to have mutual respect, which is earned and not legislated or demanded in a memo.

        3. See Flirting and Laughing.

    

    When men work and hang and eat lunch and work and sweat and laugh and work with each other-as explained earlier in this book-there are several things involved: cutthroat challenges, seemingly endless competition, nicknames and a sense of bust-yer-ass for the team camaraderie. You don't get to pick your own nickname-it's given to you based on your performance. This seems to evade most women. They see the competition and ballbusting and direct eye contact as demeaning and sexist and male. It is. If ya don't wanna run with the big dogs then stay on the fucking porch.

    Men have no guilt gene about being at work instead of at home with the kids-it's the natural order of things. Nine out of ten kids tested will tell you when they fall down, when they are hungry, when they are tired, when they are just plain in a pissy mood-they want their mommies. Knowing that to be a fact-knowing that it is an actual enzyme in your system-you can't possibly be happy not being at home with your children.

    No kids-go ahead and pick a career and chase it down like Lawrence Taylor tearing after an enemy quarterback.

    Kids? Your place is with them.

    You cannot have it both ways.

    Where did the shame in being a full-time, hands-on, always-there-when-they-need-me mom come from?

    I know single gay men who are more willing to stay home and raise kids today than half of their female friends. Which means, of course-the kids'll be better dressed and even the boys will carry lip balm, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. This is:

    I'd have had a lot more respect for Hillary Clinton if instead of launching an eleven-thousand-page listing of All The Important Things She Did When Her Husband Was President, she just simply said-hey, I spent those eight years trying to shield my only daughter from the international media glare. I'd have stepped right up to support her if-rather than bullshitting her way through imaginary snipers in Bosnian airports and peacemaking meetings with Irish officials that were actually only sitdowns for tea (probably Woman Ends The IRA brand), she had coughed up a couple of good cookie recipes and an itemization of how she helped Chelsea get ready for her SATs.

    But no-she wanted to prove that she was more like a man than a mom and that she wasn't just traveling the world in a jumbo private jet to satisfy her own ego-she was out there making a difference. Of course, if she had been at home doting on her husband it may have kept him from trawling for interns.

    No mention of interns in the eleven thousand pages, by the way.

    It's hard for men to have sympathy for The Feminist Movement when one of its arbiters-Gloria Steinem-took the opportunity of supporting Hillary's bid for White House glory to say being a black man in America was easier than being a woman because at least the black man got the vote thirty years before women did.

    Wow. Really?

    I wonder how Martin Luther King Jr. would have responded to that quote?

    Last time I looked, no one's ever tried to assassinate Gloria Steinem because she has tits.

    It's hard to have respect for a woman like Brenda Berkman, who went to court in 1982 to force the FDNY to place her as a member of that department even though she had failed the physical test.

    This goes right to the brunt spine of the argument-you wanna be a firefighter-you have to pass the test. Everyone does. Fat guy, skinny guy, black fat guy, yellow skinny guy-fat Muslim, fat Jew, fat Catholic-race, color, creed and sexual equipment have nothing to do with it. It's the same as saying you wanna play professional football-you want Lawrence Taylor's job? Strap on a sports bra, a pair of shoulder pads and a helmet and get out there to kick some ass.

    Only difference between football and firefighting is:

        a. Fire

        b. Life

        c. Death

    

    The fire test-among many other feats-requires that you run up seven flights of stairs while wearing and carrying over 100 pounds of equipment, pick up a 150-pound human dummy and carry it all the way back down-within a certain number of seconds. Just like you would in a real fire. Brenda couldn't do it. She had to drag the dummy down by the feet for the last five flights. So her lawyer-the noted feminist Gloria All-red-argued that Brenda, by dragging the dummy, had actually helped save the dummy's life because smoke rises and therefore keeping the head on the stairs the whole way down and below the smoke level was better.

    No mention of the fact that five flights of head-banging might lead to a 150-pound quadraplegic. Or the fact that even back then, the only fire victim you're gonna find who weighs less than 200 pounds is either an infant, an anorexic or a crackhead. Unless the fire was in a modeling agency. This is America-most people you are going to rescue in a fire have THIGHS that weigh 150 pounds.

    Doesn't matter.

    Brenda won the case and was then thoroughly dismayed at the lack of respect she received from the guys on the job. She even went so far as to say-immediately after 9/11-that looking at the names of the 343 firemen who died that day disgusted her-because it didn't have one female name on it. That going to the funerals and hearing the words "firemen" and "fireman" and "the brothers" and "the brotherhood" used during the eulogies was "hard to take after twenty years on this job." Not hard to take because 343 genuine American heroes had given their lives in what goes down on record as the single greatest rescue event in the history of the fire service. No. Hard to take because it wasn't about her and her "cause."

    Open vagina-insert head.

    I don't know about you but if my kids or my wife or even me and my skinny, hairless Irish ass are trapped inside a burning building, the person I want running in to get us out could be green or black or a Chinese female midget on steroids-I don't give a shit as long as they can carry us out. And I'd like us all to come out alive and not needing wheelchairs to go get the paper.

    My cousin Jerry Lucey was a kickass firefighter who gave his life in the line of duty at age thirty-eight while trying to rescue a homeless couple from a burning warehouse building in our hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, back in 1999. Jerry was a big, competitive guy who loved his job and in his obituary was called "a firefighter's firefighter" by the men he worked side by side with, a phrase that implies the pride and trust and honor and respect his co-workers felt for him. You cannot be given those words by a judge or a legal brief or a team of spin doctors. You have to do it the old-fashioned way-you have to earn it. I believe that system works just fine.

    But then again-I'm crazy that way. I actually think you need to actually be able to DO the job if you wanna get paid the same as a man.

    And when it comes to equal rights-why are female reporters allowed to roam through men's locker rooms, while the guys are naked and/or toweling off? But guys don't have the same right when it comes to the locker room the girls are in. Hmmm.

    Double standard much?

    There was a case in Boston recently where a group of male FBI agents cracking a case brought in a whipsmart female D.A. and made her a part of their team. She led them into court and argued a brilliant angle that not only won the day, it apparently almost single-handedly guaranteed a conviction. When they left the courtroom, one of the guys was so happy about the job she did, he grabbed her from behind around the head and gave her a noogie. Now-amongst men, giving a guy a noogie is considered one of the ultimate signs of respect. In fact, if you were gonna chart out what various physical signs between men actually mean, it would break down like this:

    

    

    

    The history of The Noogie and its use by men goes back all the way from that courtroom scene through the Three Stooges and every dad and his son and big brothers and little brothers and Little League coaches and probably even Jesus and certain Apostles (odds being firmly against Judas).

    The female D.A. should have considered it the ultimate equal rights tribute. But instead?

    She filed a sexual harassment suit.

    Open vagina-insert noogie.

    Once the suit was filed the three FBI agents-fearing the politically correct era we all slog along in-refused to acknowledge that there was a noogie when they were questioned because they knew by the D.A.'s response when she was given the noogie that she didn't understand the depth and breadth of meaning the noogie brought to the situation.

    Noogies aren't politically correct.

    This is the era we live in.

    No noogies.

    Next thing you know-you give one to your kid, it'll be called child abuse.

    We live in a country where the fireman coming to save you might be a firewoman who may actually do more damage while trying to pull you out of the fire than if she had never shown up at all.

    We live in a country where Don Imus calls the Rutgers women's basketball team a bunch of nappy-headed ho's and gets chastized by former gangbanger and gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, who-when someone compared his lyrics to Imus's statement-said "We ain't no old ass white man sittin' on top a MSNBC-some punk-we talkin' 'bout other ho's-ho's that's in the 'hood that ain't doin' shit, that's tryna get a nigga for his money-these are two separate things."

    We live in a country in which, when Barack Obama calls some working-class voters in Pennsylvania so bitter and pissed off by the lack of help from their own government that they cling to guns and religion and a hatred of immigrants as a way to vent their frustration, those very same bitter, pissed-off voters who cling to guns and religion and a hatred of immigrants vent their frustration by voting for Hillary Clinton, who was BORN in that part of Pennsylvania and knows that what Obama said is true but decides to just jump on the Bullshit Ourselves In Spite Of Ourselves Joytrain and lacerate Obama for being "elitist."

    So that's what they call telling the truth now-elitism.

    You know what I wish I could give Hillary Clinton right now, live on TV for all the world to see?

    A big, fat, full-blown, elitist goddam wedgie.

    Then I'd turn to the camera and say loud and clear:

    Can't we all just get along?

    Speaking of which.

    

    When it comes to overbearing, politically correct crapola and the lengths people in this country will go to in order to bullshit each other and try to force the rest of us to toe the same ridiculous line, racial and ethnic stereotyping is perhaps the most ridiculous area of all.

    We have decided to try and convince ourselves that anytime a stereotype is mentioned or even pops its ugly head up right in front of our faces-it just cannot be true.

    Thus, we are left to believe the following:

    The Irish don't like to drink and fight-mostly with each other.

    The Italians don't have members of their tribe who like to control the construction and garbage collection businesses and will kill any other Italians who get in their way.

    The Chinese are great drivers.

    So are the Japanese.

    French girls like to shave.

    The British have wonderful teeth and no problem at all expressing their feelings.

    Polish people are smart.

    You never see eight Puerto Ricans inside a hot purple Ford Escort so souped-up with motorhead equipment that the rims, the hood scoop, the hemi and the spoiler on the back are worth more than the car itself.

    Black people don't love grape soda, ice cream and fried chicken (although their neighborhoods are full of stores that sell all three from behind the same exact counter).

    The Scottish spend money like it grows on trees.

    Jews make amazing hockey players.

    Canadians don't like ice.

    The Russians love wine, Koreans hate math, the Danish are dancers, the Swiss take a stand, the Greeks don't own diners, Australians drink milk all day and the Germans have an incredible sense of humor.

    But the Mexicans? They, my friend, are out to take our jobs. And Arabs-they all wanna kill us.

    (By the way-the only true false fact in the above batch of bull is the one about Polish people. I've never met a dumb Polack. Every Polack I ever knew had brains and brawn-even my teenaged Polish girlfriend. I think the Polish became victims of a widespread panic when they came to America and showed an outright ability to work hard, attend church and remain polite. All the other immigrant groups felt powerless to slap a label on them so they just picked one they thought you could get away with-dumb. There's gotta be a couple a dumb ones, right? Not in my experience. Besides-the Polish people invented pierogies. And anyone who figures out how to stuff potatoes inside of pasta is okay by me.)

    The Irish love the English, the English love the French, the French adore the Spanish-who just worship the ground the Portuguese walk on.

    Uh-huh.

    And Americans-we just love them all.

    In a country built by immigrants-people who sailed here from other places and then when travel by boat was replaced by the plane-flew here in wave after wave-we have somehow tossed all the amazing individuality aside in favor of one big happy melting smelting pot. 2

    No dice, folks.

    Take it from a guy whose parents DID come here on a big slow boat-the reason we have stereotypes is because the first four generations of each individual tribe ESTABLISHED that behavior when we all arrived.

    I'm Irish.

    We drink. And fight.

    With each other.

    A lot.

    Especially at Thanksgiving.

    I know a ton of Jewish guys and some of them are terrific athletes-only one of them can skate.

    I know a shitload of Canadian guys AND girls-not one of them has the slightest idea how to help me with my taxes.

    And we're supposed to act like these things are not true?

    Like I said-no dice. Which brings us to the Indians.

    Look-we stole this country from the Indians because of two things:

        1. We had more guns.

        2. They liked to drink.

    

    That's it. Oh-and they had a penchant to trade land for very shiny beads. Thus we get the island of Manhattan and they get five really cool bracelets. Plus-they believed all the lies we told them involving trust and faith and blah blah just keep moving west we're almost done building blah.

    So now we give them casinos to assuage our guilt. Casinos filled with statues and displays and historical artifacts explaining the honored traditions of their people.

    Which most Americans would be willing to learn about if-when you were staring at the statue of Sitting Bull-you could drop a coin into his mouth, pull his left arm and have Kennedy half dollars pour out of his reclining red ass.

    It's time we woke up and smelled the Colombian coffee brewing in the Swedish coffeemaker that sits on our Italian marble countertop, which actually comes from Croatia.

    There is no such thing as an American American.

    Afro? Yes. Irish? Yup. Anglo? You got it. But American American?

    He or she does not exist.

    Everyone here came from somewhere else and guess what-they ain't ever going back. The sooner we take a good, long look in the giant American mirror, the sooner we shall see-there ain't no Americans here.

    There's barely any American cash or products-never mind people.

    We borrow money from Chinese bankers to pay for Arabian oil that we put in Japanese cars that are driven by illegal Mexican immigrants who make the rest of us late because they're afraid to drive above the speed limit in case a Puerto Rican cop pulls them over and calls a Jamaican-born CIS Agent who feeds that information into a South Korean-manufactured computer that is watchdogged by a guy sitting at a desk in Bombay, India.

    It's a joke that almost writes itself.

    As is the idea of a wall to keep out the Mexicans.

    Ich Bin Ein Berliner anybody?

    Ronald Reagan taunts Mikhail Gorbachev ring any bells?

    This country has the attention span of a gnat on Non-Drowsy Sudafed.

    For decades we have sent American commanders in chief trotting off around the globe to vilify and verbally abuse tyrants and tyrannical empires who were so afraid of having their own people escape, they had to build walls to keep them in-as if they were only animals.

    So now-well on our way to a bankruptcy both moral and financial-we decide to build one to keep the enemy out.

    First off-the only way the wall gets built is if we use illegal Mexican labor. That's the only fiscal possibility. Let 'em come on into America, hand 'em each a hammer and a free pass and let 'em start pounding away. They'll have it done-seventy feet high, ten feet thick, spanning the whole southern hem of the country from So Cal to Eastern Texas-within a week.

    The only other choice we have when it comes to illegal Mexican immigrants is this-NOTHING.

    Why?

    

    

    Go to McDonald's or Burger King or Wal-Mart or Costco or a Major League Baseball game or a Catholic Mass or just your local downtown gas station or bus stops any day of the week.

    Mexicans.

    Everywhere.

    Los Angeles, California?

    Mexicans.

    Vancouver, British Columbia?

    Mexicans.

    In Scottsdale, Arizona, and downtown Danbury, Connecticut.

    Mexicans Mexicans.

    On buses in cars on planes in trains bicycles mopeds motorbikes Roller-blades pogo sticks horseback Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans Mexicans and wait a minute now-let me look-let's see-yup-more Mexicans.

    You name it they drive ride hop sit or skate on it. Believe me-if Mexicans were out to kill us, we'd already be dead in the ground.

    By the way-ever seen a Mexican eating food at Taco Bell? No. Should that be all the info you need to never eat there again? Yes.

    Here's the deal-we were lucky enough to steal from the Indians a great piece of land that we have turned into the richest country in the world and one of the reasons is location location location-we have two neighbors on our metaphorical block. One group looks like us and acts like us, they just like to play hockey and drink beer and marry our women. The other group? They DON'T look like us but they just wanna work. And pray. And marry each other.

    Wow.

    Do you realize that most of Europe, all of the Middle East and everyone who lives anywhere near China would give their nation's left ball to have even ONE of our neighbors next to them? Anyone else would be handing out free skates, beer and beef enchiladas.

    Not here, though. Fear and financial worry turn someone who doesn't look or sound like us into the enemy at hand.

    I gotta believe if Sweden was located right below Texas and six-foot-tall, long-legged blond chicks in hot pants and halter tops were sneaking over the border just begging to landscape our lawns? Every single senator would be lining up to sign a bill not only allowing them in-but making sure their backyards got worked on first.

    My father came here as an illegal immigrant. So did my mom. As did my Uncle Jerry-who wasn't here a year before he got drafted-a couple of weeks after he got his citizenship. What did he do? He went to Korea and got his newly Irish American ass shot at. Then he came home to become a successful member of society.

    That's the system our forefathers put in place, folks.

    Show up, prove your worth-join in all the fun.

    It says so right on the Statue of Liberty.

    It doesn't say bring us your tired, your poor-but hey-not those goddam Mexicans.

    If anyone has any doubts left-Barack Obama or no Barack Obama-that racism is alive and well in the U.S. of A-the xenophobic attitude toward the twenty million Mexican people already here and the twenty million others trying to get in every single day sends a surefire message to everyone else on the planet-we are not only still racists-we are, in fact, retarded racists.

    Fear fear fear fear-that's where it all begins.

    No one is born with a racist bone in his or her body. Your parents have to put it there. My son Jack hated a lot of people when he was small-the doctor, the dentist, his even smaller cousin who drooled all over his toys. But you know what he hated most of all? Naps.

    When Mel Gibson gets pulled over driving drunk with an open bottle of Patrуn tequila planted between his legs and promptly begins to spout anti-Jewish comments at the cops brandishing cuffs before him-are we really gonna buy the argument that it was the alcohol talking?

    If that was true-that a few swallows of tequila sends you off on an anti-Jewish tirade-then after happy hour started, Mexico would be a No-Jew zone. Bar doors would fling open and previously friendly Mexicans would start screaming anti-Semitic rants and rambles-until they sobered up.

    Not buying it, Mel.

    If alcohol were to blame for all the hatred in the world then the bitter blood feud between the Protestants and the Catholics that almost ate up the Irish countryside would have been easily ended by just taking all the whiskey away.

    "Wow-now that there's no more booze left-I realize how much I like the other side. Who knew?"

    Is Mel Gibson an amazingly talented actor and director with a true gift for storytelling?

    Yes.

    Do I blame the tequila for what he said?

    No. I blame his father. Who runs a splinter-group Catholic church in Malibu that believes the Holocaust didn't happen.

    You can go to twenty-five AA meetings a week, folks-it may keep you sober but it won't keep you sane.

    Yeah yeah-the Holocaust didn't happen, Nixon was just misunderstood and Mariah Carey doesn't look like a prostitute with that brand-new set of tits.

    My father taught me that assholes come in every color-even the ones in our very own family. He didn't give that info over in some kind of Gaelic Martin Luther King speech:

    I have a dream. That one day all the idiots in our very own bloodline will actually figure out just how stupid they are and turn over their tools to someone who knows how to use them.

    He just believed in judging every man on his own individual merits. So wiping the slate clean in America by pretending we are all the same, all one big, happy family with equal rights and equal abilities just ain't owning up to the facts.

    Some people suck. Some people don't. Some people run fast. Some people can't. Some people can sing. Madonna isn't one of them.

    I had a reporter one time tell me he thought the FDNY was a racist organization. When I asked upon what information he based this opinion, his response was-"Well, why aren't there more black firemen?" As if there are FDNY officials roaming the streets yelling-"Hey, we need guys to die in fires-but only white guys." I also asked him why there weren't more white people working as traffic cops in New York City-a job populated to almost 60 percent by African Americans. He had no answer.

    No one becomes a firefighter because of the money-they get paid a starting salary of approximately $680 a week. You try raising two kids and paying a mortgage on that fee. It's a job you do because you love to do it. Not for the perks.

    Listen-people will hate each other for almost any reason. People will break off into separate little groups to point at and gossip about and feed off their fear of other little groups.

    If you think tribal warfare only exists in places like Africa and Iraq-pour an equal amount of alcohol into three New York Yankee fans and three Boston Red Sox fans and then lock them in the same room for forty minutes. The only color involved would be blood, ladies and gentlemen. Broken teeth, bruised sternums and lots of blood.