atlas shrugs
[later in this post: the rant you might wanna hear.]
somebody recently hipped me to an archive board for Loveline, and i’ve been downloading steady, since i’m a fan of adam carolla (left the show at the end of 2005), “dr. drew“, and many of their guests. with plenty of time and personal subjects, no other show will highlight a guest like loveline. they understood that having a celebrity advise callers exposes those celebrities in ways regular interviews can’t. been checking out the shows with mädchen amick (heartbreaker über alles), alanna ubach (yumm!), lisa edelstein (yumm!), andy milonakis, jason bateman, will arnett, etc.
i love both Mr. Show and SpongeBob SquarePants, so it was fun to hear the shows with tom kenny (voice of SpongeBob). in one of them, my boy adam came through with a jewel rant out of nowhere that’s worth hearing. here’s the snippet (MP3, 2.14 MB), or you can listen to the whole show here (scroll down to October 25, 2005). the snippet call begins at ~53:00 in the show MP3.
no, it’s not a pure voluntarist rant, but it comes close — closer than some might realize. understand that he’s approaching it more from an “if you’re going to fuck me up, then here’s what i demand” view. in the transcript, i’ve smoothed out a few rough bits and ignored some minor chuckles and comments, but it’s close to literal (transcript begins about a minute into the snippet MP3, and leaves out a funny bit of Tom Kenny reprising one of his Powerpuff Girls characters):
Adam Carolla: When are we gonna stand up as a society and tell stupid, drug-addicted, retarded people to stop crapping out kids?
caller (Joanne): [laugh]
Adam: Here is the deal…
Drew Pinsky: Why is that funny, Joanne? Why is that funny?
Adam: Because she has the mentality of a nine-year-old, and anything you say is gonna sound funny to her.
caller (Joanne): No it’s not; it’s not really. It’s just the way that you guys just come out and say it. It’s… that’s the… what it really pretty much is, just the way that you guys just say it.
Adam: Well here’s…
[crosstalk]
Adam: Well of course. I mean, look — let’s put everything aside, and let’s just be honest for a second. Drew has three kids. Joanne has three kids. We as a society are not going to need to worry about Drew’s three kids. Why? Because there’s parents, because there’s money, because there’s jobs, because there’s love, because there’s education, because there are good role models,
Drew: Delayed gratification…
Adam: …and delayed gratification, and there’s no meth, and there’s no nothing. We are not going to have to worry about Drew’s kids. We don’t have to build anymore prisons for Drew’s kids. We don’t have to open anymore clinics for Drew’s kids. We don’t have to worry about unemployment with Drew’s kids, or violent crime with Drew’s kids.
Joanne’s kids — that’s another story. That is another story. The chances that one of these kids comes out okay is slim to none with Joanne and her whatever — god knows the guy she’s with — at the helm with these three goddamn kids. That’s what we need to worry about as a society, but yet — never addressed. Never touched. Not touched upon. Oh yeah, “No child left behind.” Whatever the eff that’s supposed to mean. And everyone’s talking about, “Oh, education’s great, more schools, more schoolteachers, more cops, more everything.”
Well here’s the deal: [shouting] Do you think we need more cops for Drew’s kids? Do you think we need more counselors for Drew’s kids? Do you think we need more prisons for Drew’s kids? Do you think we need more social workers for Drew’s kids? Do you think we need more state-funded anything for Drew’s kids? No. Those are for Joanne’s kids.
When are we gonna discuss it? When are we gonna bring it up? When is Joanne crapping out her first kid at 15 years of age… when is somebody gonna step up to the plate and say, “Wait a minute.”
Tom Kenny: “Can’t do that anymore.”
Adam: “Sorry, you’ve lost your right; you’re basically an adult who’s emotionally a 14-year-old and physically a 30-year-old.” You cannot be… You cannot have this kid… The same reason I can’t have a pot plant in my yard, and the same reason I can’t have a llama in my yard.
“I want a llama!”
“You can’t have it.”
“Why?”
“Ya can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not fair to the llama.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not fair to your neighbors.”
Okay. I can’t have a llama. You have three kids and are pregnant with the fourth? Are you high? Are you kidding me? And basically, how long… And here’s the real question, everybody. How fast can Drew and Tom spit out the kids so that their kids can pay enough taxes to support Joanne’s kids? I don’t think that long. Because Joanne has three kids, and she’s 19;
Drew: It’s much easier to spit ‘em out.
Adam: …it took you guys a combined 170 years to come up with five.
Tom: [laughs] Yeah, that’s great.
Adam: You see what I’m saying? Her factory’s cranking out the crap faster than you guys can keep up.
Drew: And hers are coming into action, and taking up…
Adam: Oh, they’ll all be off and running at 12 and a half. Your kids’ll still be in college. And here’s the other problem: They need a hundred of your kids to pay for the judges, and the bailiffs, and the facilities, and the county beds, and the rehab centers. We need… oh, and the cops, and the parole officers… We need hundreds of your kids to pay for Joanne’s kids. And we’re not making ‘em fast enough.
Tom: Right.
Adam: And that’s… and we got a math problem now, people.
Now, we got two plans. Either we can tell Tom and Drew to get to bangin’, and start coming up with more kids to pay more taxes, so we can bail out Joanne’s…
[crosstalk]
Adam: …[or] we can be realistic and talk to the Joannes of the world and get to them.
Tom: Do you think you can get to them? I mean, you know…
Adam: We can’t get to them…
[crosstalk]
Adam: Not with the current administration. Not with any…
Tom: To me, to not even do the beginnings of the math and go, “Wow, y’know” — how having a kid and being a parent is such a huge responsibility. To not give a crap about it…
Drew: Here’s how the politicians look at that.
Tom: …is like committing a violent crime on a child.
Drew: We agree with you, but politicians look at this as five votes. “That’s five votes. Let’s give them what they want, and we’ll get elected, and here we go.”
Adam: Right. No, but the politicians are pussies.
Tom: …they’re showing up at the polls.
Adam: They’re just pussies, and they’re not willing to do anything but focus on being reelected. They must on some level realize that this problem is the paramount problem in this country,
Tom: The festering zit.
Adam: …but they’re gonna focus on “sending a message” to the fat cats in Washington, and a bunch of other BS that has nothing to do with anything, and then once in a while, someone’ll…
Tom: “Let’s investigate baseball.”
Adam: Someone’ll… Yes. They’ll investigate steroid use in baseball, and then every once in a while one of ‘em craps out a platitude like “No child left behind”, which means nothing to anybody.