Dennis Miller's Rant on Intelligence

These are a few excerpts from the show 'Dennis Miller Live' which aired on HBO back in the mid-90s. Miller makes weekly appearances on the O'Reilly Factor now, and is the perfect mix of California showbusiness and surprisingly rational political wit. Note: some material may not be suitable for children and/or the more prude-minded of you who may be reading, though I do love you.
Enjoy :)

Miller on intelligence:
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but we live in an era and a time where calling someone an Einstein is considered to be somewhat of an insult. Morons are out there in force making left-hand turns from right-hand lanes, trying to pay for drive-thru tacos with a fucking check, calling 411 to get the number for information, and in most of our fine metropoli, the reposed "Fuck off!" will get you a seat at the local Algonquin round table. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened.

First and foremost, as a matter of fact, numbers 1, 2, and . . . what come after 2, we didn’t pay enough attention to our education system! We gotta stop paying teachers like the kid who delivers grit! For Christ’s sake, these are the people who will lead us and our children into the century and they can’t even afford real Yodels, okay? They have to get those 144 count price-club steamer trunk size of Little Debby’s, the equivalent.

High school kids are entering the job market with an education that barely qualifies them to run the Tilt-A-Whirl at the traveling carnival! Even those fortunate enough to graduate from Ivy-League schools, well, they go to write movie scripts about, guess what . . . stupid people!
And that brings us to our next reason. Let’s face facts, the TV beast ate us whole quicker than a dog on a Dreamsicle, all right?...
T.V. producers say Americans enjoy the stupid shit. But, hey, it’s the same reason Eskimos enjoy blubber; it’s the only fucking thing available at the Arctic buffet, okay? Pop culture has turned the brain into the body’s new appendix; no real function and it could quite possible blow up and kill you! As organs go, you just don’t need your brain anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m certain in the very near future people will go to the hospital, or should I say, turn on the hospital channel, and get their brain taken out just as a precaution.

Indeed, in the business of television brightness can often be taken from you and used as a scimitar to cleave your occupational head off…

America, we are at a fork in the road. To the left you’ve got books - and to the right, the never-ending horizon of the new technology. I myself, am taking a hard left because if they talk you into hanging that rico, the new technology is only gonna make it worse. Now they tell you it’s gonna make it better - but if you notice, the voice they tell you that in is always the computer generated one, and it’s digitally synthesized too. That means less expected from us, less striving, less brainwork, more stupid, and eventually the king will be the one who just doesn’t shit himself! You know, our reliance on technology is making us soft and if we’re not careful it will only get worse.



Miller on Civility:
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here but we've devolved over the last few decades from a Barry Lyndon gentility to a bunch of thunder domed mooks. Nowadays, thoughtless clods all across this once great land of ours do everything from clipping their fingernails at a funeral to checking themselves for polyps in the buffet line!

As a matter of fact you can't go anywhere without suffering intrusive, inconsiderate incivility. You go to the mall to pick up a smokey linked gouda combo gift set at Hickory Farms…you come out, your car's been keyed and some societal fringe player has left a flyer on you windshield for 10% off on all gay porn films at Dicks Video Shack. You go to the supermarket - you wind up in a line that's clearly marked 10 items or less cash only, and you're waiting behind some ninja drifter with no ID who's attempting to pay for 14 cartons of pudding pops with a personal check from the bank of Tehran!

People no longer understand the basic rules of courtesy.
Rule number 1: You must wait and let people get off the elevator before you can get on the elevator - O.K.!?

Rule number 2: If you call somebody at 3:15 in the morning and get the wrong number don't just say "oh this isn't Charlene" click. Say, "I'm very sorry to have pestered you, I am an assface.

And Rule number 3: Turn your god damn car stereo down! Did you ever think that maybe I don't want to hear the bass line to Baby Got Back resonating in the deepest part of my skull?!

And even when I try to escape the cold rude world and isolate myself in a darkened movie theater for 2 hours of unencumbered escapism, I get stuck behind some idiot faux Trufeau who's gonna cliffnote the entire fucking film for me! And then I miss the flick because I'm trying to decide whether to ignore him or bludgeon him to death with my Anna Nicole Smith size box of milk duds!

But you know the fountain head of all this bad behavior has got to be the day time talk shows. What an intergalactic fucking freak show these are! You tell me what Rusty the Bailiff fan club meeting did they go to to harvest these losers huh? Ricki Lake, Richard Bey, Jerry Springer - these people shouldn't be allowed to own a TV for Christ sake much less be on it! And you know their guests not only aren't ashamed of their asinine antics they positively revel in their own grand-mal-shit-headedness. Screaming in peoples faces, screaming at the audience, the audience screaming back…you know, it's enough to make me want to bag this whole scene, pack up some jerky and go time share with Jeremiah Johnson.
Look, I'm not some tie dyed carma maitre'd trying to seat everybody in the no conflict section. As far as I'm concerned the new age goal of perpetual smiling bliss would be a far worse hell than anything imagined by Quentin Tarantino on window pane. I don't want some vacant headed defanged Quaker land - that's not civility, that's banality. And I'm not talking Amy Vanderbilt civility either, where there's nine god damned forks arranged around your dinner plate like some cutlery stone henge…But you know, I am saying that when civility breaks down the fall of civilization is close behind. Is it surprising to anyone that the least courteous of all countries has 222 million guns. The fact is that it's gotten so weird out there that we've all turned inward, and in the process we seem to have forgotten there are other human beings schlepping around this pebble. That's where civility comes in. Civility is acknowledging that we don't live in a solipsistic universe. We do share this planet with each other and we should strive to coexist in some civilized respectful manner. And so to all of you out there who don't cover your mouth, who don't have the money ready when you get to the toll booth, who do burp so loudly in public that others wonder where the epicenter was; to all of you dwelling out there on the grassy knoll - if you don't want to come and join the rest of us in this noble pursuit of good manners, we all cordially invite you to please…go fuck yourself!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu1uOVUBnE