The Rants, page 2
But I think I speak for the general public, guys, when I say, "Take your nit-picking, neurotic little rules of evidence and stick 'em up your understanding ass," because, quite frankly, I haven't seen judgment this bad since I lost to Sinbad on "Star Search." Yeah, yeah, not that I dwell on that.
The frightening reality is every day this society seems to make its legal decisions in much the same way the Archies picked their vacation spots—blindfold Jughead, give him a dart, and spin the globe.
And what do most of these mindless decisions have in common? Well, twelve things—the jury.
The entire American legal system is based on the premise of trial by jury and the only way you can get on a jury is if you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't know shit about the case you are about to try. And you know something, after we've picked them, we then load juries down with such a yoke of admonition, stipulation, and cautionary notes from the judge that they begin to suffer from the jurisprudence equivalent of sexual performance anxiety. Nobody can go into the jury room anymore and achieve a good solid Code of Hammurabi hard-on because good old-fashioned common sense and a primal notion of right and wrong have been supplanted by lawyers' tricks and haberdashery.
Why should it matter in the least how the Menendez brothers looked in the courtroom? The simple fact that you can sport a nice cable-knit sweater, and trim the hair on the back of your neck to Pythagorean precision, and actually have that help you in the courtroom after you've dusted your mother with a shotgun is an insult to the intelligence of the living and a sacrilege against the memory of the dead.
And you know something, nice clothes are just the beginning. We've got all sorts of reasons to let criminals walk: Imperfect self-defense, temporary insanity, low blood sugar insanity . . .
"Oh, I see, you wouldn't have killed that family if you'd had a Zag Nut bar. Right? Yeah. Dick, Perry, put the mattress away, I found some mini Butterfingers in the fridge."
Watching the trust we had in the legal system disappear has been a sad, confusing experience, like watching smoke from a book-burning taint a cloudless sky. In the past, we revered the legal system as the backbone of democracy. Now we quite frankly fear it—its linguistic fog, the casualness of the brutal transactions, the sheer density of its unconcern. Somebody has their thumb on the scales of justice, folks. "And he's out of order, I'm out of order, the whole fucking system is out of order."
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
sexual harassment
ALL RIGHT, LET'S PUT OUR CARDS ON THE TABLE, we've got a dicey little subject this time around, Sexual Harassment. Now, it's pretty easy for me to come out on my HBO show week after week and do some high-concept screed about how, for instance, I think "violence is bad." Oh, well, thank you, Dr. Insight. But this week, we're crotch-deep in a good old-fashioned quandary, aren't we? The age-old battle of the sexes situated in the au courant Circus Maximus of the workplace.
Look, I should tell you right up front that while I'm sure many of you think of me as the world's most insightful hermaphrodite, I am, in fact, a guy.
So I have to confess that my first thoughts on this issue were, "Well, it can't be all that bad, can it? Certainly; a lot of these cases have to be trumped up, don't they?" But then I flashed on the fact that much of what goes through my head is shot through the dick prism.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what do I really know about what it's like to have some fat, foul-breathed, ham-handed boss leaning over your shoulder while you type, or laying his hands on your waist while you fax something?
I have no idea about how it feels to have some leering, pawing, needy co-worker breathing down your cleavage while you try to keep the best job available in a small town without much opportunity so that you can put your kids in clothes without the help of a deadbeat ex- husband. That has got to be brutal. So, thank you. Thank you.
So all I can really do is be honest with you, and myself, about what I have observed in my forty years of dragin' a penis around this pebble we call Earth. And that is this: I think men, more often than not, are probably guilty of a lot of the shit that they're being accused of.
From my observations, a lot of guys act so badly and so stupidly with women in nightclubs, and at the beach, and on the street, I know that if they got some occupational leverage they would probably use it as a come-on.
Why are men like that? Well, because over the years men have written a rule book—not all men, sit down, Donahue—but, many men have written a rule book that says it's okay to look the other way when certain members of the male herd squeeze, pinch, and demean women.
Well, now the rules are finally being rewritten. And as men and women go through this period of readjustment, the bad behavior is coming back to haunt us, isn't it?
Because nowadays we're hearing more and more stories of men being accused of sexual harassment and instantaneously presumed guilty until proven innocent.
But just because many men are guilty it is dangerous to jump to the conclusion that all men are guilty.
All right, now that we understand our game, let's introduce the duelists: Paula Jones versus Bill Clinton, in the Board of Education building. Do I think something happened between them? I most certainly do. He's a powerful man who also happens to be a tenth-degree horn dog.
And you know something, I think most of you will agree, once you get beyond all this faux-patriotic re-bop about besmirching the presidency with tawdry accusations, the fact is, Bill Clinton probably achieved emeritus status in the Players' Club while governor of the state of Arkansas. There is too much rumor, too much innuendo, and just enough evidence. Bottom line, where there's smoke, there's friction. You know, Stephanopoulos must be feelin' like the guy that Louis B. Mayer assigned to accompany Errol Flynn around town. Georgie, Georgie boy has become a sexual Bed Adair and it appears our good President was sinkin' a whole lot a wells in the mid- eighties.
But having said that, do I think he sexually harassed Paula Jones? Hard to say, and here's why. She did, in fact, receive several salary increases after the incident.
Whatever cheesy chicanery went down in that hotel room it didn't seem to affect her wage-earning ability. I also think it undermines her case a tad that it seems to be so much about the money. Seven hundred thousand dollars? How'd they arrive at that figure? What's that, a hundred K per inch? You know something, there's a fair to middling chance that ol' P.J. is a big-haired opportunist, propped up by small-minded, politically thwarted enemies of the President.
Now, having said that the sexual harassment charge might be specious, do I think that Paula Jones might have been compromised by the clumsy, sophomoric sexual advances of a presumptuous Huey-not-so-Long type lording his power over a backwoods empire?
Yes I do. Do I think that Paula Jones could have been embarrassed by the highest elected official in her state doing a Lurch impression with his Dockers down around his ankles? Yes, I do. But I would say this to Paula Jones—the next time a man drops his chinos in front of you, look him in the eye and say, "Listen, you silly son of a bitch, pull your pants up and start thinking with your big head for a change, okay, pal?"
Look, nobody wants to make light of the serious crime against women that men commit far too often. But isn't that what frivolous complaints like Paula Jones' are doing? We've got to get clear with each other on how our respective gender tribes wield sexuality in this culture. Because some of this stuff should be a no-groiner.
Here are some guidelines. To the women who are ready to haul the bag boy at the Safeway into court because he complimented them on their culottes, take the extra second and try to differentiate the innocuous from the malicious.
And to all the men who don't get the fact that when she says no, she means no. Well, I'm telling you, Quest for Fire boy, she means no!
Okay, it's over. Pack up your encyclopedias and go knock on the next fuckin' door.
Let me also advance the following immodest proposal so we can all get on with our goddamn lives; I think we should pour all our time, energy, and know-how into genetically engineering a third sex that we can both fuck indiscriminately and never feel the need to phone the next morning.
We could. Thank you. We could call them ... Recepticants ... and they would heal the world. And while this solution might appear silly, it's no sillier than what we're doing now, which is a tentative, sexual two-step in which neither partner wants to lead, neither partner wants to follow, and everybody's feet are getting stepped on.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
is intelligence a liability?
ABC NEWS SPENT A FULL HOUR OF NETWORK PRIME time last year talking to Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. Why does something completely inane like that fascinate us? Our culture has gone from "The G.E. College Bowl" to the guy on "Wheel of Fortune" who asks "Is there an F as in pharaoh?"
Is intelligence a liability nowadays? I think we can answer that with one word: DUH. America's never been what you would call highbrow, but these days it seems our collective cranial ridge is sloping like the shoulders of the bar boy at the Kennedy compound.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but we live in an era and a time when calling someone an Einstein is considered to be somewhat of an insult.
Morons are out there in force, making left-hand turns from right-hand lanes, trying to pay for drive-through tacos with a fucking check, calling 411 to get the number for Information. In most of our fine metropoli, the riposte "fuck off" will get you a seat at the local Algonquin round table.
What happened? I'll tell you what happened. First and foremost, as a matter of fact, numbers one, two, and ... what comes after two? We didn't pay enough attention to our education system. We've got to stop paying teachers like the kid who delivers "Grit." You know, these ... for Christ's sake, these are the people who will lead us and our children into the next century and they can't even afford real Yodels, okay, they have to get the 144-count price club steamer-trunk size of the Little Debbie's or the equivalent.
High school kids are entering the job market with an education that barely qualifies them to run the tilt-a-whirl at the traveling carnival. Even those fortunate enough to graduate from Ivy League schools, well, they go on to write movie scripts about guess what, stupid people.
And that brings us to our next reason. Let's face facts. The TV beast ate us, whole, quicker than a dog on a Dreamsicle, all right. Most talk shows are just Bimbo-mercials. Connie Chung actually hosted a network news show for a year. And many sitcoms need two longshoremen with a pipe wrench to twist the canned laughter dial. Bright people whom I really used to respect now stay home to watch "Beverly Hills, 90210." Why bother? You just know that every week Brandon and Dylan are going to let Kelly jerk them around while Donna and Ray are having yet another abusive spat at the Peach Pit. Ohhh, I hate Ray!
TV—TV producers say "Americans enjoy the stupid shit." But hey, it's the same reason Eskimos enjoy blubber—it's the only fuckin' thing available in the Arctic buffet, okay.
Pop—Pop culture has turned the brain into the body's new appendix—no real function, and it could quite possibly blow up and kill you. As organs go, you just don't need your brain anymore!
As a matter of fact, I'm certain in the very near future, people will go to the hospital, or should I say turn on the Hospital Channel, and get their brains taken out, just as a precaution.
Indeed, in the business of television, brightness can often be taken from you and used as the scimitar to cleave your occupational head off. Talk show host Jon Stewart ran a pretty tidy and, might I add, a pretty intelligent little Keebler tree over there, till it was chopped down last year. Now, there are many reasons for the cancellation of a television show, and I'm pretty sure Jon would tell you that the culpability flow chart on the demise of his show read like the genealogy of the kid on the porch in Deliverance.
But I'm reasonably sure it had something to do with Jon's use of words like "genealogy," which I think most Americans believe to be when Barbara Eden visits her ob-gyn.
America, we're at a fork in the road. To the left, you've got books. And to the right, the never-ending horizon of the new technology. I myself am taking a hard left, because if they talk you into hangin' that Rico, the new technology is only gonna make it worse. Now they tell you it's gonna make it better, but if you notice, the voice they tell you that in is always a computer-generated one and it's digitally synthesized, too. That means less work for us, less striving, less brainwork, more stupid, and eventually the King will be the one who just doesn't shit himself.
You know, our reliance on technology is making us soft. And if we're not careful, it will only get worse. Scientists estimate that by the end of this century, via the means of virtual reality, a man will be able to simulate making love to any woman he wants to through his television set. You know, folks, the day an unemployed ironworker can lie in his BarcaLounger with a Foster's in one hand and a channel-flicker in the other and fuck Claudia Schiffer for $19.95, it's gonna make crack look like Sanka, all right.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
inefficiency
WHY IS IT IN AMERICA THAT GOING SOMEWHERE, buying something, calling someone—just about any transaction you can name in America is as nerve-racking as a Bosnian grocery run? Why is it that seemingly everyone with a job along the great service highway is an uninterested sociopath with the interpersonal skills of a wolverine?
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but why is it that I can't seem to go through the simplest procedures without a major hassle? For example, I recently subscribed to a magazine, and after paying for it they sent me another bill. So I called them up to rectify the situation, and they assured me they'd correct the problem. I then started receiving two copies of the magazine each week, one addressed to "Dennis Miller" and the other addressed to "Denise Miller." Now, I want to know two things: One, how can they not know they're sending two magazines to the same address, and two, how did they find out about my cross-dressing?
You know, nowadays, half the people you ask for help say, "It's not my job, man." And the other half don't have a clue about how in the hell to do their job. See if this sounds familiar: Hotel clerks who, even though you requested a nonsmoking room, give you a suite that smells like Denis Leary's index finger; maids who don't give a shit about the "Do Not Disturb" sign and come through the door like Pete Wilson raiding the kitchen for green cards at El Polio Loco; movie ushers who constantly ask you to remove your feet from the seat in front of you, but refuse to even shine their flashlight on the gang-initiation golden shower taking place during The Lion King.
In trendy restaurants from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to West Hollywood the one dish you can be sure is on the menu is attitude. Now I know all these waiters and waitresses have the talent to be the next Luke Perry. Or the next Luke Perry. Couldn't think of anybody else that bad. And excuse me for wandering into your restaurant in a quest for sustenance to jam in my pie hole. But from the time you strap on the Buford Pusser pepper mill to the time you drop your last check, do all of us hungry patrons a favor and use your sense memory to portray a wait-person who gives a shit about the customer they're serving even though that customer rudely insists on not being Mike Ovitz. Okay?
And it's not like I don't sympathize. I've been in the vast service gulag. After I graduated from college, one of my first jobs was as an ice cream scoop at a Village Dairy in Pittsburgh. I'm standing there at age twenty-one in a paper hat with my two fellow employees asking me if they're gonna find the driving test hard and the prettiest girl from my five years ago senior class walks in to order a cone. She recognizes me, and tries to cover her discomfort by making awkward small talk about sugar versus cake, as I think, "Yeah, I'll get laid on this planet ... sure."
And once I had a job cleaning toilets for a living—on the night shift, for chrissakes. Got that? I didn't even rate cleaning toilets during the day. My bosses actually thought to themselves, "Yeah, Miller's good, he's real good. He's just not ready for The Show yet."
I know jobs can be unrewarding, but I'd like to go on vacation for a week, call the paper boy, and ask him to suspend delivery during that time and not come back to nine newspapers sitting outside my doorstep, screaming to every lowlife in the area, "Yoo-hoo! Over here! Nobody home!"
I'd like my groceries in a bag that will actually contain what I purchased, and not open up like the bomb-bay doors on the Enola Gay as soon as my pickle jars are over the cement driveway; I'd like the universal remote I bought to change the channels on my TV and not shut off my neighbor's home dialysis machine.
And you know, while we are on the subject of inefficiency, why doesn't somebody warn you that the "stay hard cream" will short circuit the "auto suck"? Are you with me on that? A little too specific. All right, let go, walk away from it, it never happened.
More important, I've had it up to here with corporations pushing the fucking unions around. You know if you haven't been laid off by now you're working overtime. Companies are lean and mean. And so is the service they give you: lean and mean.
