American Etiquette: Failing Upwardly In A Fox News Nation

Introduction

I am first and foremost a stand-up comic. Hence, I work in the arts and I am constantly surrounded by artists. Most of the people that I am friends with are strong believers in equality, individual choice and the overwhelming idea that America is not what it could be. Many of my colleagues tend to compare America to other countries and find its inherent shortcomings baffling. They cite the idea that we need better health care, we need to solve racial issues, poverty must end, quality education must be available to all regardless of financial class, our foreign policy needs to be better suited for a global economy, our war-mongering has invited the threat that is ISIS and our health care professionals are ill-equipped to deal with impending doom from abroad which will spread to the homeland. All of these thoughts are relevant for the liberal media and I used to be consumed with trying to figure out the answers to these political quandaries. Most intriguing of all, with regards to my interest in the American political system is that fact that I am still technically a Canadian Citizen; even though I have been a resident of New York City for several years. My interest in American Politics stems not only from the fact the fact that we are on constant alert thanks to Fox News, but that American politics are interesting. I came from Canada where talk ruled the day and action was a result that could only be achieved via years of parliamentary moderation. In America, change can happen. In Canada, change is more of a natural progression that doesn’t ‘happen’ so much as ‘occur slowly over time’. I consider it an honor to be in this country where I can feel my dreams coming true one day at a time.

I lived in Hamilton Heights, Harlem for two and a half years and got to see how socio-economic status affected behavior. During these deplorable days, I thought everything was about ‘me’ needing to experience variances of the human condition in order to become a better artist. I was wrong. It was about seeing how America worked and what was wrong with it on a face to face basis. Harlem is the belly of the beast; a microcosm of structural segregation for all of America. New York is such a wealthy city and to see the contradiction of so much poverty and simplicity geographically concentrated above 125th street was a wake up call. I had no cable in my fifth floor walk-up on 154th street so I watched Netflix and drank a lot. I would go through roughly three bottles of red wine a day to get through the struggle. February 23 2014, I realized that I was an alcoholic and had to stop drinking. I just stopped. Then, in August I moved to Astoria, Queens. Astoria is the most diverse neighborhood in the 5 boroughs. I got cable. I saw Fox News. My view on America has changed. Or has it?

Here is Fox News statement of purpose from their website….

"The Fox Nation was created for people who believe in the United States of America and its ideals, as expressed in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a community that believes in the American Dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One that believes being an American is an honor, as well as a great responsibility – and a wonderful adventure.

This is a place for people who believe we live in a great country, a welcoming refuge for legal immigrants who want to contribute their talents and abilities to make our way of life even greater. We believe we should enjoy the company and support of each other, delighting in the creativity, ingenuity, and work ethic of one and all, while observing the rules of civility and mutual respect and, most importantly, strengthening our diverse society by striving for unity.

The Fox Nation is committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news. It is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship.

We invite all Americans who share these values to join us here at Fox Nation."

WOW. America!

There are many people to thank for this book becoming a reality. Danny Mendlow for being such an astute technician and a great pal and Ricky Letovsky for his work on the cover. Everybody at CH ENTERTAINMENT; CRIS, PAUL, DAVE, PATRICK and all of the staff at the STAND NYC for giving me a place to develop and constantly evolve my voice. ARTIE LANGE for being such a gracious host and talking Bukowski on TV with me. There are so many great comics that took time to read my work, passed it off to their spouse or merely inspired me with their own hilarity… NICK DIPAOLO, BIG JAY OAKERSON, GARY GULMAN, JESSICA KIRSON, RORY ALBANESE, JIM GAFFIGAN, DAMIEN LEMON, JORDAN CARLOS, RACHEL FEINSTEIN, ADRIENNE IAPALUCCI, CHRIS DISTEFANO, MONROE MARTIN, SHERROD SMALL, KURT METZGER, LOUIS AND SAM AT CAROLINES and far too many more to list……

Oh Yeah. Christine. She’s smart and she makes me laugh.

Here’s what watching Fox News taught me…..

Blame the President

"If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost." -Barack Obama

So what if you didn’t turn out the way that your parents wanted you to turn out? You never became an astronaut, a rock star, a movie producer or the President of the United States. You became an average hard working American who pays taxes, puts food on the table for the family and you support this great country of ours by waving the flag at any given opportunity. You watch breaking news to find out what’s going on in our country, whether it be civil injustice, governmental fraud or just to find out who stars are dancing with. You are a true hero. Granted, you may not be a first responder to any tragedy, but you watch the news and you learn about these tragedies and inevitably all of these tragedies can be traced back to one source. They may be international, national or regional tragedies, but you know one thing for certain and that is….the President of The United States is to blame! You may have voted for him (or in the future, her), you may have voted against him, or like many proper Americans you may not have even voted, after all, you got American stuff to do; you can’t be running out to the polls at all hours. One thing remains untouchable, no matter what happens in the realm of negativity in this country, we all can safely blame it on the President. Here’s why……..

The President is the head of state and the head of government, he is also the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces and leads the executive branch of the federal government and for these simple tasks he is paid 400,000 US dollars a year. Not 400 thousand Canadian dollars, not 400 thousand rupees, 400 thousand US dollars. What is this guy??? A mid-range baseball player or an undiscovered rapper??? No! He just does Presidential things. He doesn’t drop albums or hit .235. Crazy, right? 400 K? All he has to do is make decisions about the well-being of a country of 316,000,000 people and then a bunch of unaccounted-for illegal South American immigrants. This seems a lot easier than sampling a track about dancing in Miami or striking out chasing pitches more often than not. So, he has to go on TV regularly. You would love to be on TV. Most of you would pay dearly for the exposure he receives. You would sacrifice your first born for 30 seconds on TV.

Next, he has a 50,000 dollar expense account. 50 grand!!! What do you have for an expense account? Whatever you can hide from the government and lie about in your tax return is what you have! That’s a big difference. Hell, you probably don’t even make 50,000 dollars a year. He gets to expense what you get to make. Your salary is an expense to this corporate cog in the wheel of capitalism. Anything is an expense to him, except his publically known bad habits which have to be taken out of his 400K.

He gets $100,000 annually for travel. Travel. Travel!!!! You get whatever is left for you in your great aunt’s will when she dies. Even then you’ll probably just take some hokey Carnival Cruise and with your luck it’ll crash or you and your family will catch some new strain of Ebola only previously known to the Philippines which was passed to you from sous chefs on the buffet line. This President guy is starting to think that he’s way better than you with all of his money and his expense account and his travel, but wait it gets better.

He only gets 19,000 dollars yearly for entertainment. Oooooh, what an equalizer! You get to spend everything you make on ‘entertainment’ because you are constantly trying to escape the hell that is your life compared to the President. Every dollar in your pocket goes to your cable/internet bill, booze, movies, the lease on your car; all these things are entertainment to you because you need to try and mentally escape the fact that you are so subservient to the government run by this guy flaunting his wealth and travel habits in your face.

More…..He gets to live in a mansion with a guest house and hang out with movie stars and celebrity chefs (most of the chefs will turn out to be racist at some point). He has a plane, access to 35 helicopters and his own security force called the secret service. Now you may try and console yourself by saying, well this guy only has a maximum of 8 years in office of living the highlife and then he’ll be just like me. WRONG! After he retires he gets to ‘perform’ at public speaking events and make more money than he ever did as president of the United States. So suck on that, America!

But know this: every time you have to pay more tax or you lose a right that you held dear to you, or you squirm as men marry other men and women marry other women, or you watch visible minorities pass your far less qualified cracker friends and blame it on affirmative action, or the price of your sports package on cable goes up, or gas prices skyrocket, or you feel inadequate as a man…you can blame it on the President. Even though it may not have directly been his fault, he probably instilled some type of change that trickled down to you and Joe Plumber.

Whenever your wife cheats; President.

Caught in traffic; President.

Elected official turns out to be gay; President.

Kids touched by priest; President.

You get the gist. The man with all the power and all the toys has ruined your meager little existence. However, when anything goes well; like you win 15 bucks in a scratch off lottery ticket, or a hot chick acknowledges your broken down, middle-aged, used to be attractive ass in the supermarket, maybe your kid goes to sleep one night without screaming and ruining your anniversary erection, hell maybe we even bomb the right people once in a while; when all of these good things happen, whether politically influenced or not, it’s because of YOU (or GOD). The President had nothing to do with any of these good things. It was YOU or GOD (or the hard working men and women of the armed forces), and you and God are very American. More American than the President!

Become a major sports star and then it is okay to break the law

"Success is not defined by becoming an NFL football player. It’s more defined by what you become in life." – Ray Rice

When you were children you were taught the value of organized sports as a formative tool to accept rules, boundaries and respect for others. Whether it was baseball, hockey, football, lacrosse or even the gay sport of swimming; you learnt about competition, fairness and the notion of equality through performance. Sport united you all as one. Through competition you became colleagues. Many of you grew out of your sports phase and became real men. You decided that games were for children and you pursued the American belief that men were meant to work, but aside from your vocations you could have hobbies. Many of you took up golf or the occasional game of pick-up basketball. Along the way you got decent looking wives who popped out a few children; and you grew to dislike yourself and your life as a whole. However, some people didn’t evolve into men and they kept playing sports into their 20’s, 30’s and even in some cases their 40’s; they are professional athletes. They fought the good fight and came up through the inner city ghettos and wrangled themselves past injuries and college scouts and pro deals to the big time. When your entire life is based around a game that is all about rules, man tends to find a way to break the rules outside of his chosen arena.

A pro athlete goes from high school phenomenon, to a ‘full ride’ at a college. During college, he is rewarded with oodles of women who act as both tutors and mistresses to his first love, the game. He will begin to see sex as a distraction to his true goal, making the pros. Throughout college, he may be mired in scandal when offered money to help get him through this 4 year tenure at Nebraska state. He knows it is wrong to take money but this kid grew up in the hood where his friends take money from confused tourists at gunpoint. So maybe taking a check from a recruiter in a suit isn’t that bad? It’s not like it’s a criminal offense, it’s just the breaking of a bylaw. So he may have to sit in front of a committee of adjudicators and face his fate which may be at worst; a three game suspension, but he’ll be back in time for the playoffs – because commerce runs everything at a collegiate level. Finally, he’ll become a huge pick in the draft. Draft weekend will be a big blowout and he’ll get a couple of hookers and some blow to celebrate but his drug test isn’t for a few months and he’s got mason jars full of a friend’s urine that he stores back at his mama’s house in Compton. So he may choke a hooker on draft weekend, that’s what hookers are for, banging and choking says his collegiate coach. But Darnell needn’t worry. He’s on his way to ‘The Show’ in another town and is only in Chicago for the weekend. One hooker choked… many more to come.

Eventually, Darnell will go to church and feel bad about his thoughts towards women as a distraction, but he can’t love men because homophobia is so frowned upon as blasphemy in black communities that it makes murderers sick to their stomachs. So eventually Darnell gets married and Entertainment Tonight and ESPN Sports Center cover the fancy Malibu affair. Darnell may have married a black woman but he’s still got a taste for white hooker meat, and as Darnell has learnt it’s not cheating if it happens on the road. So Darnell acts happy for a while in his relationship and has a few kids and goes to church every Sunday when he’s not playing ball. Eventually Darnell’s wife checks his iPhone 7 prototype and finds all kinds of women’s first names like Rachel and Jennifer and White Michelle, White Michelle 2 and Mulatto Michelle and she thinks as many wives would, Maybe these are work friends. Then she realizes that Darnell works in a male dominated field and that all of these women’s last names are ‘Escort’. She confronts Darnell about his infidelity and he explains to her that she would be nothing without him and his contract and that she had better shut up. As a black woman is one to do, she stands up for herself via exaggerated hand act-outs and tells Darnell that this is wrong and that they made an agreement under the eyes of God. Darnell, without skipping a beat gives ‘wifey’ a couple of hard swings to the talk hole while he thinks about how every woman in his life has let him down, especially Tupac Shakur’s mother who was a crack-head. Darnell runs out to get some white hooker meat and then feels bad and apologizes to his wife. He may buy her a Bentley.

Things will be okay for a while and then Darnell’s wife will get uppity again and ‘smackety-smack, don’t talk back!’ Darnell’s wife’s face now looks like a Rorschach drawing made out of bruises. Sooner or later Darnell’s wife’s mother will call the cops and Darnell will get taken in for Domestic assault charges a la Mike Tyson. Darnell wonders what all of this kerfuffle is about as he goes to church and scores many points on the court and his team is playoff-bound. This must all be a misunderstanding, he thinks. The charges will be dropped and Darnell will now celebrate his freedom and botched record with booze and cocaine and a drive in his high speed Italian automobile. Then Darnell will get pulled over and get a DUI and as a result, he will hit his wife again. If Darnell is convicted, he may be suspended with half pay for three games. Oh, Darnell should learn from this. See, entitled athletes get punishment just like normal people, except it’s the exact opposite of