This is the best book review you’ll ever read because afterwards I can effectively GIVE you the book to experience yourself. If you’re hardcore against socialism – and have been therefore fervently buying things from our sponsors to pay for the beauty of my written word – you can choose not to watch the player below, however I view it as being “neighborly” like Obama would say to evade the socialist label.

The book is New Rules: Polite Musing from a Timid Observer by Bill “God, Schmod” Maher, and an attempt to codify common sense morals for a world gone adrift in social relativism. Not quite a revival of the good old social codes of the fifties: tipping your hat to people on the streets and slapping your wife only with the palm side, but just polite considerations to show our fellow humans.

These rules are simple things that point out the ridiculous status of our American culture without being depressingly critical, yet honest enough to be generally insulting. An example: the best place for a cell phone in a movie theatre is set to vibrate and crammed up your ass. He further adds the problem of ubiquitous phones is so acute he can’t hear the Black people yelling at the screen. The book is nothing but these musings – and no one is more the antithesis of a “timid observer” than the author.

Of course being Maher the rules run into political flavored social commentary but stops well short of dominating the book; he saves these topics primarily for his show. And there in lies the rub: if you watch Real Time on HBO, or have access to Youtube, you can enjoy less dated New Rules than the book offers for free and without a trip to the library like I made. Search for “New Rules the movie HOSSER10580″ (or a click here for you lazy asses) and you’ll get a lot of the same material in ten-minute clips like this:

Notice at two minutes and two seconds into the clip, Maher says the same goddamn thing I’m telling you here. In his defense, since Maher is half Jewish, can he really help trying to resell the same product? If you laughed at the black people at the movies line above, yet consider this last sentence offensive, console yourself with some Preparation H for your inflamed sensibilities.

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