Free New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer by Bill Maher

like sporting events. NBC aired 1,200 hours of Olympic coverage, 400 times more than they gave the Democratic convention, but what the heck, that was just about war and peace in the nuclear age—the Olympics are about swimming. Oh, if only they were! If only we could get the swimming without the three-hankie immigrant parents, the latchkey kids, the single moms, and all the brave athletes who rose before dawn and traveled hours in the frosty silence of the Iowa winter just to meet their drug dealers.
    The Olympic Games are that rarest of events, a coalition of a great variety of nations coming together for a purpose other than killing Iraqis. So please, media barons, just give us one channel where it’s simply about the competition and the belief that how high a man can hop is also a measure of who has the best country.
    And this way you can keep the focus-group-approved drivel disguised as in-depth analysis where it belongs: in the coverage of presidential elections.
     

BILL MAHER O
     
    NEW RULES
     

Only Begotten Sony
     

NEW RULE
     
    If you have to set up a big-screen TV and show the Daytona 500 to get people into your church, as one church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, does, then your flock is not worshipping Jesus; they’re worshipping Dale Earnhardt Jr. And there’s a difference: One is the son of god, and the other died on a cross for your sins.

Ooh la Lame
     

     

NEW RULE
     
    Someone must stop the Cirque du Soleil. If we hate the French so much, how come we gave them Las Vegas? There are now six Cirque du Soleil—related shows on the Strip. Six! Who wants to spend 2 hours watching a bunch of French chicks fold themselves in half? You know what, scratch that. New Rule: We need more Cirque du Soleil. 147

Operation Dessert Storm
     

NEW RULE
     
    Ice cream should stay nonpartisan. Some right-wingers started an ice cream company to counteract the lefties at Ben & Jerry’s with flavors like I Hate the French Vanilla, Iraqi Road, and Smaller Govern-Mint. I know, I know, anything to get Ann Coulter to eat. But they’re missing the whole point of Ben & Jerry’s—hippie ice cream is fun because you eat it when you’re stoned.

Osama Been Hidin’
     

     

NEW RULE
     
    The president must stop saying that Osama Bin Laden “can run but he can’t hide.” Boy, can he hide. We can’t find him with cruise missiles, satellites, or million-dollar bribes—although, oddly enough, he is reachable through Classmates.com .

Oscar Nod
     

NEW RULE
     
    The Oscar broadcast must come in at some time under 6 hours. The Oscars are like having sex with someone on coke: It all starts out very exciting but, several hours in, you really just want them to finish.

Taint Misbehavin’
     

     

NEW RULE
     
    Abstinence pledges make you horny. In a setback for the morals/values crowd, a new 8-year study reveals that American teenagers who take “virginity” pledges wind up with just as many STDs as the other kids do. But that’s not all—taking the pledge also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex and four times more likely to allow anal. Which leads me to an important question: Where were these pledges when I was in high school?
    Seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn-star sex the same year I took Algebra II simply by joining up with the Christian Right, I’d have been so down with Jesus, they would have had to pry me out of the pew.
    There are a lot worse things than teenagers having sex—namely, teenagers not having sex. Here’s something you’ll never hear: “That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, nonstop. All that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened.”
    The theory of the puritans of the 21st century seems to be: The less kids know about sex, the better. Because people