WASHINGTON – There was a time when I thought “live and let live” was a good guiding principle, a basic ethos with which I was comfortable. It was a viewpoint which gave me some comfort, in that it enabled me to exercise judgment over the decisions I faced in my own life, while not being overly judgmental concerning the choices and actions of others.
That was before I read an important article in the Washington Post called “The Case for Banning Pornography,” which made me realize if I don’t like something, and I can come up with any sort of argument the thing is also generally problematic for society in some vague, not-so-provable way, that thing clearly should be made illegal.
To be clear, the list of shit I don’t like is very, very long, covering everything from alfalfa sprouts to Zac Efron, and some of the cases for banning these things are going to be stronger than others, so I don’t expect the government to simply snap its collective fingers and address my entire list in a single legislative session. They might want to conduct a couple of days of debate, even if just for show, before banishing the New England Patriots to Uzbekistan, for example.
I know what you’re thinking: Don’t the Dallas Cowboys deserve to be banished even more than the Patriots?
One can make that argument, sure — and you are free to do so when it’s your turn to decide who and what should be banned. Right now it’s my turn, so it’s off to Samarkand with Bill Belichick and any players who haven’t recently been indicted on murder charges, or the evidently far worse crime of deflating footballs.
Speaking of inflating and deflating things, I’m pretty sick of ads for stuff like Cialis, so let’s get rid of those, too. As for the rationale behind banning them, I’m pretty sure it’s bad for kids to hear talk about four-hour erections while looking at middle-age people reclining in side-by-side bathtubs, even if The Journal of Speculative Psychological Bullshit has yet to publish any studies on the subject.
You know what? Golf is a fucking stupid game. If I want to fall asleep watching a bunch of ridiculously dressed white guys walking around on grassy hills I’ll move to Scotland and develop a debilitating Nyquil habit. If I miss the whispering which for some reason accompanies all golf broadcasts, I can always kidnap and import Jim Nantz somewhere down the road.
Sure, it would be easier simply not to watch golf (which I already don’t) — but apparently I have a constitutional right to be bothered by other people watching things of which I don’t approve, so stick a great big barbeque fork in golf. It’s done.
Where’s the harm golf is doing to society, you ask? How can we justify such a ban? Well, have you ever heard the term “golf widow?” If porn is bad because it makes men not want to fuck their wives, imagine how much worse golf must be if it’s making women want to murder their husbands and not have sex with them.
I pretty much only like the way a saxophone sounds when it’s being played by a true legend of the instrument, like John Coltrane or Cannonball Adderly. Since all those great jazz guys have been dead for years, I say it’s time to melt down all the existing saxes still floating around out there and mold them into a crypt in which we seal Kenny G before firing him into space, where hopefully he’ll eventually be found, extracted from his brass space-cocoon and eaten by some big, nasty thing that looks like it sprang from one of H.R. Giger’s nightmares.
And what’s the larger societal problem with saxophones we’d be addressing by banning them? Dude, did I not just mention Kenny G? Case closed.
I don’t really have time to get into the justifications for each one of the following items, so just trust me when I say they urgently need to go: Mosquitos, goatees, turning nouns into verbs by appending “ing” to them, United Airlines, young adult fiction, anything with the phrase “Keep Calm And Carry On” printed on it, Skip Bayless, shark fin soup, dabbing, referring to every stupid how-to tip as a “life hack,” Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Houston (the city, not the former porn star), Michael Moore, selfies, state legislatures and Manhattan clam chowder.
This list is far from comprehensive, obviously, as it has been truncated to prioritize only the most pressing concerns facing society today. Lesser threats and irritants, like Anne Coulter, radishes, Birkenstocks and The Real Housewives of Whatever Metropolitan Shithole the Show Goes to Next need to be dealt with too, but they can wait — until July or so, at least.
