Read The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass for Free Online Page B

they’re fighting a war on terror or producing the next season of Cheaters. I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope they’ll open it and see what it says.
    So when it comes to sacrifice, don’t kid yourself: You have given up a lot. You’ve given up faith in your government’s honesty, the goodwill of people overseas, and six-tenths of the Bill of Rights. Here’s what you’ve sacrificed: search and seizure, warrants, self-incrimination, trial by jury, cruel and unusual punishment; here’s what you have left: handguns, religion, and they can’t make you quarter a British soldier. If Prince Harry invades the Inland Empire, he has to bring a tent.
    In previous wars, Americans on the home front made a very different kind of sacrifice. During World War II, we endured rationing, paid higher taxes, bought war bonds. In the interest of national unity, people even pretended Bob Hope was funny. Women donated their silk undergarments so they could be sewn into parachutes—can you imagine nowadays a Britney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan going without underwear? Okay, bad example.
    George Bush has never been too bright about furreners, but he does know Americans. He asked this generation to sacrifice the things he knew we wouldn’t miss: our privacy and our morality. He let us keep the money. But he made a cynical bet that we wouldn’t much care if we became a “big brother” country that has now tortured a lot of random people. And yet no one asks the tough questions, like: “Is torture necessary?” “Who will watch the watchers?” and “When does Jack Bauer go to the bathroom?” It’s been five years; is he wearing one of those astronaut diapers?
    After 9/11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden could run but he couldn’t hide. But then he ran, and hid, so Bush went to plan B: pissing on the Constitution.
    Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Do you feel good about America now? I’ll give you my answer, and to get it out of me, you don’t even have to hold my head under water and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. No, I don’t feel very good about that. They say that evil happens when good men do nothing. And the Democrats prove it also happens when mediocre people do nothing.
     
     
    —March 16, 2007
     

DELLBERT
     
    New Rule: You’re never going to pick up women at a coffee shop pretending to be working on your laptop. You don’t look like you’re sensitive; you look like you’re homeless. The last guy to pick up a chick with an Apple was Adam. And when you sit across from another dateless loser with a laptop, it still doesn’t look like you’re working—it looks like you’re playing Battleship.

DESPICABLE HE
     

     
    New Rule: After Sean Hannity brings on Dick Morris, he has to give us time to go wash. It’s like someone took everything that’s wrong with politics, partisanship, cable news, personal hygiene, masculinity, humanity, and reality, and squeezed it into one man. I know he once kept a paid mistress so he could suck on her toes, but trust me, that’s the least scummy thing this guy has ever done. Dick is the type of guy who’s somehow always in the bathroom when the check arrives. But not just because he’s a cheap liar. It’s also because there’s free gum in the urinals.

DESSERT CARP
     
    New Rule: If I can’t suck your milkshake through a straw, it’s not a milkshake—it’s a glass of ice cream. Now blend it again, Welcome-to-Baskin-Robbins-My-Name-Is-Kevin. And this time, give it a minute. You’re in a pink-and-brown smock—it’s not like you have a date later.

DIAL TOME
     
    New Rule: Stop bringing me the phone book. The last time anyone even needed a phone book was 1988. And that was a cop using it to beat a suspect.

DICK CAVEAT
     

     
    New Rule: If somebody asks if you tweeted your penis and your answer is anything other than “No,” you tweeted your penis.