I am a
huge Bill Maher fan. Every Friday night at 11 during
Real Time with Bill Maher I am glued to HBO. Admittedly, his current season had been pretty unsatisfying, but that was up until last week. His interview guests were Bill O'Reilly and Jesse Jackson Sr. His panelists were Cordell West, Alec Baldwin, and Whoopi Goldberg. Not even a hint of a moderate on the panel, let alone a conservative. My kinda show.
I won't drag you all through the entire show. There were definitely moments, with Alec Baldwin's repeated assertion that Tom Delay has his "lips superglued to the ass of the religious right" and Whoopi Goldberg's comment of the Democratic party that they "don't have a ball between them". The high point of Bill Maher's show last week (and, usually, all of his shows) is his segment "New Rules". Make the flip if you want to laugh.
For the uninitiated, "New Rules" almost always deals with items pertinent to events that occurred the previous week. Maher's concluding new rule last week was entitled "Taint Misbehavin'" and dealt with the subject of an 8 year study of teens who took an abstinence pledge. Here's what he had to say:
MAHER: And finally, New Rule: Abstinence pledges make you horny. In a setback for the morals/values crowd, a new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take virginity pledges wind up with just as many STD's as the other kids. 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?
So, 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 2 - 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.
And, let me tell you, there is a lot worse things than teenagers having sex. Namely, teenagers not having sex. Here is 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." But among the puritans here of the 21st century, the less said to kids about sex, the better. Because people who talk about peepees are "potty-mouths."
And so, armed with limited knowledge and believing that regular, vaginal intercourse to be either immaculate or filthy dirty - these kids did with their pledge what everybody does with contracts. They found loopholes. Two of them, to be exact.
Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian right actually got their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly-scrubbed boyfriends, "Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass... And then I'll blow you, I promise." Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box.
I almost fell off the sofa laughing. No, it's not good that young girls, no matter how willingly, are performing these (ahem) acts. But it's somehow funnier when it's the daughters of these preachy, sanctimonious wingnuts.
Hope this gives everyone a Friday chuckle.
*ADDED* Berns19 was kind enough to include a link to a clip of the "New Rules" section in his comment below. It's worth watching - thanks, Berns19!!