Awesome New Rule (as usual) from Bill Maher on why Rick Santorum doesn't want America's children to all have the opportunity to get a college education.
But I bring up the old tale of the poisoned apple — no, not Snow White, that's a fairy tale — (gives audience a pointed look) because the Adam and Eve story is taken literally by half the country, and it's no coincidence that the type of tree which God forbade Adam and Eve eating from was the Tree of Knowledge.
Rick Santorum home-schools his children because he does not want them eating that fucking apple! He wants them locked up in the Christian madrassa that is the family living room, not out in public where they could be infected by the virus of reason. If you're a kid and the only adults you've ever met are mom and dad, well then, they're also the smartest adults you've ever met. Why not keep it that way? Why mess up paradise with a lot of knowledge? After all, a mind is a terrible thing to open. (audience applause)
This is also why Rick Santorum doesn't care much for college. It leads to indoctrination, he says. And I agree. It indoctrinates you into the world of ideas.
Full transcript below the fold.
And finally, New Rule: as someone who's so anti-knowledge, Rick Santorum must learn what the word Catholic means. It means universal. It means interested in everything. Columbus crossed an ocean to bring Christianity to the New world, and it's been all downhill for Italian cruise ship captains ever since.
The Taliban may want to live in the 8th century, but the Christian right wants to go back even further: to Adam and Eve, who screwed it up for everybody when they ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Soon as they did that, those two were like, "Wow, we're naked and alone, let's fuck!" Which I call a happy ending.
But I bring up the old tale of the poisoned apple — no, not Snow White, that's a fairy tale — (gives audience a pointed look) because the Adam and Eve story is taken literally by half the country, and it's no coincidence that the type of tree which God forbade Adam and Eve eating from was the Tree of Knowledge.
Rick Santorum home-schools his children because he does not want them eating that fucking apple! He wants them locked up in the Christian madrassa that is the family living room, not out in public where they could be infected by the virus of reason. If you're a kid and the only adults you've ever met are mom and dad, well then, they're also the smartest adults you've ever met. Why not keep it that way? Why mess up paradise with a lot of knowledge? After all, a mind is a terrible thing to open. (audience applause)
This is also why Rick Santorum doesn't care much for college. It leads to indoctrination, he says. And I agree. It indoctrinates you into the world of ideas. Now, some of those ideas are mundane, like how you can get drunk by pouring vodka into your eyeball, but college is also where young minds are exposed to information that challenges the fairy tales of childhood.
Oh, it's a despicable process, where they first open a young mind, and then they start introducing facts. I mean, it's one thing when they came for our Bibles, but then they came for our guns, but please, don't come for our bullshit!
What people like Rick Santorum are afraid of is that their child will take a class in evolutionary biology and think, "Whoa, turns out what dad told me is a crock! Jesus didn't ride a dinosaur!"
To the Religious Right, the scariest three words are not "Look out, pitbull!" Or "The ship's sinking!" Or "Bill Maher's on!" (audience laughter) Or "low carb diet". (audience groaner) The scariest three words to them are "Here's an idea."
You know, ideas, they are the kind of thing you can catch in college, no matter how many condoms you put in your ears. Explaining how college ruins minds, Rick Santorum said that more than 60% of kids who enter college committed to religious faith graduate without the same commitment. Translation: there is an inverse relationship between knowledge and superstition. (audience applause)
His solution? Ban knowledge. It's like the Republican theory on sex education: teach abstinence only. Don't even expose them to the real world. Just dress them in sexless frontier outfits, and hope they never see MTV or Google Santorum. (wild audience applause) Or catch on that morning sex on Sunday beats church every time.
But relax, parents, if your son comes home spouting disrespectful nonsense and acting like a drug addict, it's not because he's been to college, it's because he's been listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Interesting, next week Bill Maher will have on Oklahoma City mayor
Mick Cornett (R). Looking at his Wikipedia bio, he seems like the kind of rare Republican who actually recognizes that government can help the people. He'll also have on actor Ed Helms, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan, and conservative commentator (and now Glenn Beck TV's news anchor) Amy Holmes.