January
6 John Waters: Advice for Obama

Up until the inauguration, BBC World News America is showing a range of essays with famous figures offering advice to the new president. Maya Angelou, Wynton Marsalis and Joseph O'Neill are among those contributing.

Tonight, the entry came from filmmaker John Waters, who advises the president-elect to make heterosexual divorce illegal, to reward welfare recipients and to make an all volunteer, all lesbian military.

Waters' full transcript is below.

"Recognize your supporters and some of them are way more diverse than you could ever imagine.  I know gay rights are a tough thing and I understand politics.  You can only fight the battles that you know you're gonna win.  So gay marriage, for some reason, makes middle America go crazy.  I'm trying to figure out why.  So I've been studying the sanctity of heterosexual marriage which is hard to figure out when Britney Spears can meet somebody in one night, get married an hour later and get it annulled the next morning.  But I'll make a deal with you.  I won't fight for gay marriage if you do one thing.  The day you become President you make heterosexual divorce illegal.  Fair enough?

"And this "don't ask, don't tell" thing - that's not working.  Let's do the exact opposite.  Let's have no straight people in the army.  Let us have an all volunteer army of lesbians.  Believe me.  They could find Bin Laden. I promise you."

"The poor - people that get welfare checks, people that are on disability, people that get food stamps.  We have to reward them - they can't live on the checks you give them so they have to sneak around and make illegal money off the books to pay their rent even or buy food.
Let's not penalize them. If they make $25 extra over their check don't deduct it or cut them off - give them twice as much plus welfare and then they learn to be ambitious.  Otherwise they're trapped and they have to study and spend as much time on failure as they would on success.  Reward them.  Let them get hooked on capitalism."