Does Anybody Have a Problem With That? - Bill Maher, 1996

"Someone once defined work as whatever you'd rather not do."

"A civilization is a civilization because it's civil."

"America has fallen in love with Forrest, Forrest Gump, a charming moron whose misguided message is that it's easy to get ahead in life if you're a brain-dead simpleton, and that's bad advice, even if it did work for Ronald Reagan."

In Praise of Drugs

(first aired 10/10/1993)

In the last ten years in America, drugs have gotten a bad name. That's mostly because the headlines go to the people who screw up with them, and then the whole class has to stay after. The truth is, anything you overdo or do wrong will make you sick. Food can kill you if you do too much of it. If you weigh a thousand pounds, maybe a little cocaine is just what you need. Not that I'm advocating cocaine - but I am advocating the belief that everyone in America is a different individual, and different in no place more incontrovertibly than their own physical chemistry, and that what may be a dangerous drug to you may not be a dangerous drug to me, and vice versa. Because it's not like the government forbids citizens from doing drugs - they have their list, and I don't know why their list is better than my list. Why is Halcion - which is banned in most countries and which caused one of our presidents to throw up on a Japanese prime minister - why is that drug and Valium and liquor legal, but not marijuana or mushrooms? Why did God make so many different kinds of mushrooms, and then one kind that's really different? I mean, when one species of mushroom is perfect for a cream sauce, and another for an omelette, and then there's one that makes you laugh for eight straight hours - that doesn't seem random to me. I believe God wanted us to laugh for eight straight hours sometimes, because God knows life sucks. In the Bible, Job says to God, "God, why is there suffering? Can't you take away misery?" And God says, "No. Of course not, don't be silly. If I took away misery, no one would talk to me. But here's what I'll do: I'll give you drugs." This, of course, is a paraphrasing of God's sentiments - which I read in The New Yorker. Nevertheless, God did make a rather perfect world, and it seems positively sacrilegious to question His hand in the creation of any form of life, including herbs that induce giddiness as well as insight and creativity. Drug abuse is a horrible problem, but drug use - well, let's just say it didn't hurt my record collection. Doing stupid drugs or doing any drug stupidly is an abuse of your body. But a case could also be made for a type of mind abuse that ignores natural means put on earth to expand mental vistas. If it's true that the most interesting place you can travel is inside your own head, then some people just never leave home.