"New Rules" by Bill Maher

      With many conflicting political ideologies that exist in the highly volatile political age, it is common to have commentators and comedians who capitalize on it. Some speak of modern politics through fear mongering, strategizing, and reporting; others, such as comedians, use satire, underreaction, and overreaction to communicate their points. Bill Maher, host of HBO’s hit talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher”, uses his book, “New Rules”, inspired by a segment on his show, to communicate his political beliefs to his audience. In his book, he uses the above rhetorical strategies, including satire, underreation, overreaction, and irony to convey his motif.

     Maher states in the foreword of the book that he does not intend on telling anyone how to live their lives. “This is a simple, humble collection of rules that basically points out how everyone but me has their head up their ass.”(VI) He expresses his distaste for the utter disregard for limits that the general public has and because “it seemed about time that this “structureless” society of ours to get back to the idea of rules, limits, and boundaries.”(VI) Maher goes on to say that the general American public has confused the meaning of “freedom” as to mean “without rules or boundaries”. He ties rules in with rights of American citizens by saying, “Rules are the signposts that define where our rights end and those of our fellow citizens begin.”(VII) He implies that courtesy, consideration, and common sense are unfortunately outdated for a “self-obsessed, success-by-all-means, get-mine culture” (VIII) as ours has become.

     Throughout his book, Maher uses nonpolitical jokes to give his work a playful theme and lighten the mood because it is, after all, a book about politics. Some of them have absolutely no bearing on problems of society, but are common problems or annoyances that many people deal with frequently. A demonstration of this is his malcontent with news organization advertising, “News organizations have to stop using the phrase “We go beyond the headlines” That’s your job, Dummy. You don’t see American Airlines saying “We land our jets on the runway!”(140). Some of his other ‘rules’ are still problems that affect people often, but  have societal meaning behind them, “The big oil companies must stop running ads telling us how much they’re doing for the environment. We get it: You rape the earth, but cuddle afterward. It’s insulting…” Maher begins his rant, so to speak, with an actual problem that many people can identify with, the over exploitation of the earth and its natural resources. “…like a killer dumping a body by the road side then adopting a highway. If you folks at Shell really are serious about cleaning something up, start with your restrooms” (75). He then adds humor by way of an anecdote about the cleanliness of gas station restrooms, which are notorious for their lack of cleanliness. Through this method, he creates somewhat of a rapport with his readers which allows him to engage them better.

     Maher also uses irony to help his point. In a rule he wrote contending the National Rifle Association, Maher lists some organizations that are antigun. The list includes the American Medical Association, the American Trauma Society, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, among similar others. The rule is in response to the NRA listing these organizations as “enemies”. The rule up to this point is mainly using rationality and pure logic: If all of these medical and psychological organizations are antigun, then guns must be bad. He continues the syllogism, false or not, with, “Hmm. What could all these organizations have in common? Oh yeah! They’re sick of cleaning up after the NRA!”, which adds satire and a biased twist to the rule.

     In rules that Maher aims toward political issues, he uses humor to show his utter disdain for an issue, reveal an inconsistency, or to illustrate how completely erroneous and misguided an issue is. When Maher takes on a political issue that he completely despises, he uses the some of the techniques he used in his other rules. For example, when writing about gay marriage, he uses some of the buffoonery that has been thrown around in the media by skeptics. “Gay marriage won’t lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant interspecies coupling.” He then uses two metaphors. The first metaphor fits the scenario well, although the second is more for humorous purposes, “When women got the right to vote, it didn’t lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal rights clause to salmon.” His final statement is one used that has been used and manipulated by many comedians to poke fun at marriage, however, Maher uses it to his advantage, “And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it’s the same sex”(113). When Maher addresses the subject of inconsistent and incongruous beliefs and statements that have been made, he gets right to the ‘meat’ of his point, as he did when he wrote about America’s malcontent and contempt of the French, “No more bitching about the French. At least they’re standing up to the Bush administration, which is more than I can say for the Democrats.” His remarks about the Democrats are included to show that he is not connected to any political party, which is important, as he is bashing the epitome of right-wing politics. “And it doesn’t make me un-American to say I’d rather live in Paris than in some place where cheese only comes in individually wrapped slices”(69). His last comment is meant, like his other rules, to ‘tie the knot’, so to speak, of his rule with a joke which also acts as a statement about American consumerism. At times when Maher challenges unfounded and fallacious, and even just morally wrong statements or actions, he gets right to the point. When an issue is of high importance, Maher doesn’t like to pussyfoot around. In a rule speaking out against Pres. George W. Bush, he states, “Stop claiming you have an “agenda”. It’s not an agenda; it’s a random collection of laws that your corporate donors paid you to pass.” Maher accuses Pres. Bush of selling out the American people and only living up to the whim of the corporate donors that finances his campaign. He follows up his accusation with a snarky piece of evidence, “The American people aren’t clamoring for a cap on medical malpractice awards.” Again, to send his rule home, he ends his statement with a humorous anecdote, “If a surgeon leaves an Altoids box in my chest cavity, I want to see him in debtor’s prison” (213).

     The concept of “New Rules” was not to tell people how to live by a sort of binding arbitration so painstakingly sown onto the pages in a blend of humorous anecdotes and mildly funny clip-arts, but to create a guide to navigating the real world; a world full of nonsense, lies, and plain out bullshit. Maher aims to reintroduce rules, limits, and boundaries in our lives and in our culture, which, he has quite accurately describes as “structureless”. Maher does so with the use of overreaction, underreaction, satire, irony, humor, and comedic anecdotes. He pounds the eloquent nail in the rhetorical coffin by mixing his rules so that the purely funny rules are between political rules and rules that have to do with more serious sociological problems.