Fun_People Archive
19 Aug
Does Anybody Have a Problem With That?

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 96 11:59:58 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Does Anybody Have a Problem With That?

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: Cat Stanton <cat@va.pubnix.com>
From: Bill Maher's "Does Anybody Have a Problem With That?
		Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hits".

Americans long ago fell in love with the concept of rights, and that
includes the right to squabble over whose rights are more important, your
rights or my rights.  It used to be my right to smoke a cigarette anywhere
I damn well pleased, but nonsmokers organized and fought and captured that
flag.  So, good for them.  But the truth is, America causes cancer.  It's
in every unnatural product and process and place in our lives, so to pick
out on noxious fume among the hundreds we imbibe each day probably won't
change the statistics all that much.  Which is fine, except if we're going
to get huffy about people doing things that annoy us, let's not be so
selective about it.

Someone -- let's say me -- might enjoy cigarettes, but not children.  Does
that make me bad?  I think it just makes me different, and not all that
different.  Plenty of people would rather have a cigarette than a child,
and it's about time we stood up and demanded no-children sections just like
they have no-smoking sections in restaurants and airplanes, because a
screaming baby on a Continental red-eye is as hard on everyone's heart and
blood pressure as two packs of Luckys.  Don't make me get the statistics,
beause there are none, which is ridiculous.  If they study the effects of
secondhand smoke, they should study the effects of second-hand screaming
and bratty behavior.

They say everybody loves kids, but that's wrong.  Everybody loves their
*own* kids.  I don't like your kids any more than you like my cigarettes.
In fact, your kids are the reason I smoke.  A parent shares their child's
joy and pain; I just get the pain.  And children under two years old? They
act like such...well, babies.  Like screaming and crying is really a way to
solve your problems.  When I see how a child under two years old is
behaving, I just want to say to him, 'Grow up.  Just grow up."  Even
churches once had crying rooms, and I think we well know that the Church
loves its kids -- sometimes a little too much.  But it only seems fair that
if I can put out my cigarette, you can tell your kid to shut up.  Because
if you don't tell your kid to shut up, the next time, when you're not
looking, I'm gonna give him a cigarette.

© 1996 Peter Langston