Part 2 -- PI Transcript, December 31, 1999
Bill: All right, let's -- well, it's our millennium show.
Let's bring on our next two panelists.
She's a troublemaking syndicated columnist, biographer and our pal Arianna Huffington, from the present.
[ Applause ]
Hello, gorgeous, how are you?
And he is the father of psychoanalysis, devini, psychiatrist who's a sex machine with all the chicks, Sigmund Freud right over here.
[ Beeps and whirs ]
[ Applause ]
How are you?
Michael: Hello, darling, how are you?
Bill: Thank you.
Tom: How you doing?
Bill: It is a great pleasure to meet you.
Michael: Listen, thank you for propelling me to 1999.
I get a chance to see the E Street Band again, you know?
[ Laughter ]
Bill: I would have thought there were other things higher on your list.
Michael: No, no, that's number one.
Bill: Well you know what I've been dying to ask you?
Because you died before we had all these chemical methods of getting ourselves happy.
In your day, you had to psychoanalyze people if you wanted to get them up to a certain psychological state.
Now people just pop Prozac.
My question is, why not?
If you can take the chemical shortcut, isn't that just as good as spending years on the couch?
Michael: Well, I think the pill is only to treat the symptoms.
And one must know what's behind the symptoms.
Bill: Why?
Michael: Well, it's like if somebody runs up to you with a little face mask on and says, "Boo," you're going to be scared.
And if you take the face mask off, and there's something worse underneath, then you're going get beat up, no matter what.
[ Laughter ]
So what I'm saying is, your fears, all of your anxieties and all that stuff, they are all symptomatic of something else.
Arianna: But, Dr. Freud, you did not give up your own drug habit.
You went on snorting cocaine.
Michael: Oh, I was getting the best.
Bill: Yes.
[ Laughter ]
Michael: This was not packed, you know?
This was not a lot of milk sugar and baby laxative.
This was good, good, clinical stuff.
[ Laughter ]
Arianna: So what's the verdict?
What's better, the coke or the couch?
Bill: Yeah, but that's a very good point.
There is a little hypocrisy there, because you yourself were doing blow monkey.
[ Laughter ]
Come on.
Arianna: Right.
But, also, where did you get this idea that we have to be happy all the time?
I mean, even the founding fathers --
Bill: From our Constitution.
Arianna: Not at all.
They said, "The pursuit of happiness."
Michael: We can pursue it.
Arianna: No guarantees.
And you know what?
This Prozac, I mean, I hate Prozac, especially for children.
And, frankly --
Gilbert: Well, they have those little tiny Prozacs that look like the Flintstones.
Bill: Flintstones, yes.
Arianna: Terrible for their brains.
And, you know what?
If Joan of Arc were around -- not right now -- when we have Prozac --
Gilbert: But she's not.
That was in another segment.
Arianna: No, but if she --
[ Laughter ]
Gilbert: You got to keep up with the show.
We can't go back and have a flashback of Joan of Arc.
Michael: I've always wanted to ask you something.
Gilbert: Yes?
Michael: When you feel a little crazy, who do you think you are?
[ Laughter ]
I've always wanted to ask you that.
[ Applause ]
Arianna: Actually, I want to ask you something else.
How does it feel have both an inferiority complex and a great dessert named after you?
[ Laughter ]
Tom: Now, you don't --
Arianna: And, excuse me.
Tom: Okay, you want to finish?
Arianna: Yeah, I want to finish.
I have to go back to Joan of Arc, because I create my own reality escape segments, okay?
So Joan of Arc, if she were around now, and she said that she was hearing --
Gilbert: Maybe she hasn't left yet.
Arianna: Okay.
Gilbert: I saw her getting in her car.
I can go get her.
[ Laughter ]
Arianna: I'll ask her --
Gilbert: I can grab her now, if you want.
Michael: She's in a Cabriolet.
Gilbert: This is the Napoleon pride segment.
But if you want, I'll get Joan of Arc.
I can get Hitler, if you want.
I can go in the time machine.
I'll find him for you.
Talk about the people who are here.
Don't you understand?
I'm Napoleon!
He's Freud!
[ Applause ]
He used to go to bed with Roseanne!
This is what you got to work with!
Not Joan of Arc!
Arianna: I want to know -- I want to ask Joan of Arc what is --
[ Laughter ]
Tom: He's going say you've been --
Arianna: I want to ask Joan of Arc, "What did God sound like," okay?
Gilbert: Like me!
He had a voice like mine.
[ Laughter ]
Arianna: Did he have an annoying voice like yours?
Gilbert: Yeah, he had a voice like mine.
That's why people didn't accept him.
Michael: That's why no one listened.
[ Applause ]
Gilbert: Hi, I'm God!
Tom: Napoleon, sorry.
Listen, I think the point is, a lot of people that are really nutty --
Gilbert: You know the point she was making?
Tom: Well, this is my point.
Gilbert: Because I have no idea.
Tom: But she looks good.
Michael: I think he's on to something.
Listen.
Gilbert: Yes, that's major cleavage there.
Tom: Yeah, you look great.
You look great.
[ Cheers ]
The point is that there are people --
Gilbert: Don't mind me.
Tom: There are people who are so crazy that they need the drugs before you could get inside and get them all settled down.
Michael: I think what you're saying is that she was in a dream state, a delusional state and rather that really be in communication with the almighty, quote/unquote.
Arianna: They would have put her on Prozac.
That's what I was trying to say.
Michael: Well, is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Arianna: It would have been a terrible thing.\E
Michael: If they had sent her to me, I would have straightened her out.
But she still might have fought the damn battles.
You don't know this.
[ Laughter ]
I mean, it's all a part of politics, isn't it?
It's not about God or what have you.
It's about politics.
Tom: But she might be alive, too.
Michael: It, in turn, is about sex, because --
Bill: According to, you doctor -- excuse me -- but it's all about sex.
Michael: Of course, it's all about sex.
Bill: That's what your big theory is, that --
Michael: Look, what are they shooting at each other?
Guns, duh!
[ Laughter ]
I mean, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sometimes it is a penis.
Let's face it.
[ Laughter ]
And the same thing with cannons and guns and what have you.
Arianna: Excuse me, but that was in the previous segment, the penis discussion, okay?
[ Laughter ]
Gilbert: That was the other one's --
Michael: It's always appropriate, darling.
Tom: This is the cleavage segment.
[ Laughter ]
Gilbert: The last segment was Napoleon's penis, now it's her cleavage and her thinking Joan of Arc is here.
Michael: And it all comes back to sex.
Like I say.
I rest my case.
Gilbert: She should be dressed as Napoleon, because she thinks Joan of Arc is in the panel.
Bill: But you're great question was, "What do women want?"
Michael: Yes, multiple orgasms.
[ Laughter ]
That's the short answer.
The long answer, you have to buy the book.
I would say they like a lot of furniture, as long as it's Scotchguarded.
[ Laughter ]
They like jewelry.
They like stuff from The Sharper Image.
Bill: Shoes.
Michael: And shoes, needless to say.
Bill: Answer me that, please, and maybe you would have an opinion.
Arianna: Yes.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: Why shoes, Dr. Freud, because if you ask that question to me, "What do women want?"
That's number one on the list?
Michael: Why do they wear these pointy ones, these little pointy ones with the pointy ones?
Gilbert: Those are penises.
Michael: I know, and that's what I'm saying.
[ Laughter ]
Come on, what do you have to be, a brain surgeon here?
Bill: All right, Tom, I know you have to go.
Thanks for being on the show.
Tom: Thank you, Bill.
Bill: Napoleon, I can't thank you enough.
Gilbert: Where else could I go?
Bill: I expected you to be a little taller, but --
Gilbert: They pulled me through the transporter.
I'm from France.
Ask me if I'm French.
Michael: Are you French?
Gilbert: Oui!
[ Laughter ]
Bill: We'll be back with harmonica rascal John Popper and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Bill: All right, let's meet our next members of our millennium panel.
He's Blues Traveler's lead singer and harmonica phenomenon.
His solo CD is called "Zygote," John Popper, ladies and gentlemen.
[ Cheers and applause ]
John, welcome back.
[ Applause ]
John: Hey, there.
Michael: How are you, John?
Bill: And he's a poet, journalist, public speaker, fascist dictator and snappy dresser, Benito Mussolini, ladies and gentlemen.
[ Beeps and whirs ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Rod: Don't talk to me.
You screwed up spaghetti.
[ Laughter ]
John: Hello.
[ Speaking in foreign language ]
Rod: We come-a back-a the next time without the German!
You-a believe-a me, kid!
John: Do you want to sit here?
Do you want to sit here?
Michael: I think you look fine.
John: I was kind of hoping for Lenin, because then it could be Lenny and Siggy.
[ Laughter ]
Rod: You speak Italian?
Bill: Il duce, I'm glad you're here, because it's very rare you get to have you on the panel with sigmund Freud.
Let's get right to it, Marilu Henner's new book, "I Refuse To Raise a Brat."
[ Laughter ]
What we have is a problem where we are coddling our kids and turning them into little dictators.
No offense.
[ Laughter ]
Kids are not given any boundaries.
They're not given any discipline.
They're given trophies for losing.
They're given compliments for doing nothing.
They have an inflated sense of self-esteem, and then they shoot up the school.
Arianna: Senor Mussolini, don't believe a word --
Michael: Exactly, though.
Arianna: Excuse me.
Don't believe a word of what he said.
He's just giving you a completely jaundiced view of reality in America.
The last problem we have here is that we are overloving our children.
Don't believe that for one second.
Have you heard of the trenchcoat Mafia?
Rod: The what?
Arianna: The trenchcoat Mafia?
Rod: Never heard of it.
Michael: You would have loved them.
Arianna: You would have loved them.
Bill: They were children in a school who shot up their school because they were a little bit too coddled.
John: They were a couple of kids with coats.
Arianna: No, because they were too little loved, and their parents didn't care for them and didn't have a clue what they were doing.
Michael: How do you know this?
John: No matter what you plan to do with your kids, there's a certain level where they're just not really interested in what you're going to do with them.
Rod: Well, put them in the Army!
John: There you go.
Put them in the Army.
Michael: What do you think should be the age that a person goes into the Army.
How young, how old?
Rod: What age?
7 months.
[ Laughter ]
Why don't you ever light the cigar?
Michael: Well, sometimes a cigar's just a cigar.
Rod: Oh, yeah?
You know, I don't want to go into what a phallic symbol that is.
You understand?
Michael: I wouldn't touch it if it wasn't!
Rod: That's true.
Michael: I'm way ahead of you.
[ Applause ]
Bill: I was with you with your theory about, "A cigar is just a cigar" until Bill and Monica.
And I've got to the say, doesn't that blow your theory out of the water?
Michael: So to speak.
You know, they tried to fill me in on all this Monica nonsense.
I am completely lost.
I mean, what happened here?
Bill: It was an older man and a younger woman.
Michael: Yes, that's good so far.
Bill: Why couldn't a part of this country -- like Ms.
Huffington here -- why couldn't they understand that simple fact, that an older man in the 22nd year of a loveless marriage would want to have a little positive reinforcement?
[ Laughter ]
Rod: Positive what?
Michael: You are not in favor this, positive?
Arianna: No, no, the problem was that why couldn't he bring it to completion?
John: Exactly.
Arianna: I mean, what are these half measures?
John: This inhale -- "I smoked, but I didn't inhale.
I had the [ bleep ] [ bleep ], but I didn't [ bleep ]."
[ Laughter ]
Bill: Hitler was sexually frustrated, sexually oppressed, had one --
Arianna: You sound like Pat Buchanan.
Bill: Had one testicle.
What is it that we have in common with our leaders that they can't seem to have a normal sex life?
Rod: Hitler was a mama's boy.
Eisenhower was a mama's boy.
Napoleon was a mama's boy.
Michael: Do you think that the more masculine role models are more positive, and they don't -- I mean, you got Hitler and you got Eisenhower in the same breath.
They were on different sides.
Rod: No, they're talking, "Because they were Generals."
Michael: Oh, I see.
I see what you're saying.
Bill: If we could solve the --
Rod: Men who became leaders, behind them was a very strong mother figure.
Michael: Tell me about your own family life.
Rod: Mama, mama Italia, viva Italia!
[ Laughter ]
Michael: So you had a good relationship with your mother and your father?
Rod: I never met him.
Michael: You never met him?
Ah!
Rod: That's something I never discussed, except with Adolf.
John: Tonight, on a very special "Politically Incorrect," Benito, the soft, warm side.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: All right, it only feels like 1,000 years.
We will be back after this.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Duncan: All right, that was a random bunch of angry black guys with jewelry and track suits complaining about their bitches.
[ Laughter ]
And we're up to 1789 in the millennium, and organizers of that summer's big outdoor festival, the French revolution, are still asking themselves, "Hey, what went wrong?"
Thousands of fans came together for what was billed as ten years of liberty, quality and fraternity, only to be shocked and disappointed when a few bad apples created a reign of terror.
Yeah, dozens were treated for exhaustion and cuts and scrapes, and still more were decapitated.
If you want to know how to avoid not having a sharp blade slice off your head at the neck, contact our Website.
And remember, the first death is awareness and the second is more research.
Yeah, I'm Duncan Weekly for "The Millennium."
Bill: All right, this is our last real discussion, so we should --
John: Which Andrews sister am I?
Bill: That's right, you've changed hats.
Haven't you?
Michael: He looks like --
Rod: It's a great honor to wear my hat.
John: Yes, sir.
Look how dingy it is.
What does he put on his head?
Michael: As you were saying, Sir --
Bill: In the year 1000, the population of all of this Earth was less than 50 million people.
Now, we're at a place where it's 6 billion people.
And yet, somehow people keep thinking that what we need to do is make more people.
We spend our scientific technology, our treasure, our great scientific minds thinking of ways we can get more people on this planet instead of less people.
Michael: Who's doing that?
Bill: Like the McCaugheys, like that litter of children in Iowa that the woman had.
Michael: Oh, yes, yes.
Bill: Science enabled this woman to have seven children.
They couldn't do anything about her teeth.
[ Laughter ]
Michael: They all would have wonderful --
[ Applause ]
Arianna: But just as many people --
Rod: It's not a problem for a psychologist.
Arianna: Do you ever let anybody else speak?
[ Laughter ]
But just as many people --
Rod: I'm a politician, no?
Arianna: -- Including you, Bill, are trying desperately not to have any children.
John: We like to think that technology will answer all of our problems.
Technology's about flush toilets.
The toilets are better now than they were 1,000 years ago.
I'm glad I don't got to clean up all the crud with a shovel.
Rod: How in the hell did we get to toilets?
I don't understand.
John: I mean that's where technology -- you can control your environment.
Bill: What about cloning?
Why is that necessary?
What actual, practical benefit do you get?
Arianna: Understand, there is a very, very practical -- there's a very practical --
Rod: Cloning is a projection of the ego of mankind that he should continue forever.
Michael: That's correct.
Rod: That's what cloning is.
Arianna: It's also very useful when it comes to politicians.
For example, "You didn't like the first Bush, no problem.
We're going to give you a much improved new version."
[ Applause ]
But --
Michael: This time with nude photographs.
Arianna: Yeah, but same name, same political aspirations, same goofy grin^-- I mean, that's cloning!
John: But he's a little butcher.
He's a little butcher.
Arianna: Yeah.
Kind and gentler, more compassionate.
John: A butchier Bush.
Arianna: Cloning.
Bill: Okay, civilization as we know it only has 24 hours left, folks.
So keep spending them watching TV, and we'll be right back.
Bill: All right, let me ask one more millennium question, because when the millennium started, the relation between the genders was very different.
Back in the year 1000, it was all about knights protecting damsels in distress.
There was no question that women were the fairer sex and they needed special treatment, special care, special protection.
Okay?
John: Yeah.
Bill: Well, that's not the way it is nowadays.
Michael: And yet, the men had the metal pants.
John: Yeah.
Michael: Interesting.
Bill: The metal pants, because -- okay.
[ Laughter ]
My question is, now, cut to 1912.
The "Titanic" goes down.
Women and children went first.
John: Screw the kids.
Bill: Something like 80% of the men on the "Titanic" died.
Only about 10% of the women died.
Now that women are equal, if you're on the "Titanic" and it goes down, do they deserve to go first?
Should they go first if they are equal?
Arianna: First of all, this is one of the pseudopsychological questions that we all owe to Dr. Freud.
Beyond that, the question we should really be asking is, would the "Titanic" have gone down if a woman were the captain?
[ Cheers and applause ]
John: Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Bill: Yeah, you're right, Arianna.
Women make no mistakes.
They're perfect.
John: I would have to agree.
Arianna: It's not -- hold on.
Rod: In a real man, there's an instinct to protect the female.
Arianna: If we only had Darwin on this panel.
I wish we had.
Where is he now that we need him?
The survival of the species -- you would have the children first and the moms with them, because -- sorry, guys -- the children always need their moms.
Bill: What about women who don't have children?
What about single women?
Arianna: It all goes back to the children.
John: Fuscilli mussolini.
Arianna: I'm sorry, babe.
John: Screw the children!
Arianna: And the single women -- and the single women --
[ Scattered laughter ]
Bill: Did you say, "Screw the children?"
John: Screw the children!
Bill: Thank you, brother!
[ Laughter ]
John: Yes, I've seen so many stupid --
Bill: Right.
John: -- Idealogies born and tried to be implanted because of the children.
Bill: What happened to people?
Rod: Children are us in the future.
Michael: That's right.
John: Is that necessarily a given thing?
Rod: That's why we protect the children, because we continue through them.
John: I might want to continue to the future, instead of some of those little punks.
Rod: No, you can't.
[ Laughter ]
Michael: You are a cloning candidate.
John: Sure.
Bill: All right, well, that's all the time we have.
And if civilization crashes and burns in the next 24 hours, I just want to take this opportunity to say so long, thanks for air conditioning and all the sex. I also want to thank my guests, Tom Arnold, Gilbert Gottfried, Arianna Huffington, Stephanie Miller, Shelley Long, Julianne Malveaux, Michael McKean, John Popper, Rod Steiger and Paul Rodriguez.
So long, millennium revelers!
[ Cheers and applause ]