Posted on 05/04/2005 5:59:04 AM PDT by OESY
I'll get to First Lady Laura Bush's bawdy stand-up routine in a minute. But I want to highlight a related new book out about how young conservatives are shaking up the dominant liberal media culture. It's called "South Park Conservatives." My name is listed on the cover along with many other (mostly) right-leaning pundits, websites, and bloggers, but I must confess to having mixed feelings about the honor.
The best-selling book's author, Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute, writes a fun, breezy survey documenting the rise of talk radio, FOX News, the Internet, conservative publishing, and college Republican activism. Anderson's chapter on the success of conservative talk radio and the abysmal failure of liberal Air America to replicate it is incisive. Another chapter on the blogosphere (alone worth the price of the book) gives readers a useful history of the explosion of news, opinion, and political websites that have smashed the left-wing media monopoly.
But how did such a wide-ranging list of individuals and organizations -- Anderson's book cover includes the names of conservative-leaning Internet pioneer Matt Drudge and center-left journalist Mickey Kaus, the libertarian Tech Central Station, the culturally conservative WorldNetDaily, political upstart Arnold Schwarzenegger and political chameleon Andrew Sullivan, plus Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and myself, along with a feature blurb from Jonah Goldberg -- all get lumped under the umbrella term "South Park Conservatives"?
Anderson argues that Comedy Central's cartoon series "South Park" embodies the "fiercely anti-liberal comedic spirit" of the "new media" from Kaus to Coulter. The cartoon, he writes, reflects a "post-liberal counterculture" that is "particularly appealing to the young, however much it might offend older conservatives."
Well, I'm 34 and no fan of "South Park." I have many good friends who are indeed huge boosters of the show, but I find that the characters' foul language overwhelms any entertainment I might otherwise derive from the show's occasional, right-leaning iconoclastic themes.
"South Park" may be "politically incorrect." But "politically incorrect" is not always a synonym for "conservative."
My discomfort with "South Park's" increasingly mainstream vulgarity is not a matter of nitpicking. We're not just talking about a stray curse word here or there. As liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, "South Park" "holds the record for the largest number of bleeped-out repetitions (162) of a single four-letter expletive in a single television half-hour." That's probably about the same number of profanities uttered at John Kerry's infamous New York City celebrity fundraiser last summer, which Republicans rightly condemned for its excessive obscenities.
Rich is wrong about most things, but he's painfully on target in noting the incongruous pandering now taking place by some in the cool-kids clique on the Right. Conservatives criticize Hollywood relentlessly, but as Rich notes, "the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too."
Which brings me to Mrs. Bush. She demonstrated at the celebrity-studded White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend that you can entertain without being profane. Most of her humor was just right: Edgy but not over the edge. But her off-color stripper and horse jokes crossed the line. Can you blame Howard Stern for feeling peeved and perplexed? And let's face it: If Teresa ("I'm cheeky!") Heinz Kerry had delivered Mrs. Bush's First Lady Gone Mildly Wild routine, social conservative pundits would be up in arms over her bad taste and lack of dignity.
The First Lady resorting to horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. It was wholly unnecessary.
Self-censorship is a conservative value. In a brilliant commencement speech at Hillsdale College last year, Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner called on his audience to resist the coarsened rhetoric of our time: "If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity."
Lighten up, you say? No thanks. I'd rather be a G-rated conservative who can only make my kids giggle than a "South Park"/"Desperate Housewives" conservative whose goal is getting Richard Gere and Jane Fonda to snicker. Giving the Hollyweird Left the last laugh is not my idea of success.
What bothers me is the folks who are upset missed the whole joke. You can't explain it to them because when you do, they STILL DON'T GET IT!!! Their minds immediately went to "dirty" and I find that disturbing.
I don't have any problem with someone who didn't think the jokes were funny. I DO have a problem with twisting something innocent into something perverted.
A few years ago, she would have been well over the line. Where will the line be in five more years? That's the point - as the liberals continue their effots to make the previously unacceptable first acceptable and then a right, do we move just behind them into what was once forbidden frontier? Or do we stand where we are so that the journey back some day won't be so far?
We share the same taste in entertainment.
"Or if I REALLY REAALY wanted to punish her!"
LOL! I make my teenage daughter watch old black and white films with me for punishment. Now she loves them!!
ROTFLMPJO!
I bet that Miss Malkin got herself in such a huff at the first sign of foul language that she didn't even bother to watch long enough to get the joke. She's way off base on this one... the language in South Park is a mocking parody of the foul language used elsewhere on TV. That's why it holds that record she quotes - that was an episode intentionally aimed at skewering overuse of expletives.
So, you're jumping on her (a conservative) because you think she jumps on other conservatives? Interesting.
I totally disagree with you.
Dan
You're slipping - it took 16 whole posts...
Sorry, but you can protest otherwise all you want, but because of the way Laura set up the joke, it is a reasonable conclusion that she meant the joke to be interpreted that way. She set up the fact that Bush was such a city slicker by saying he tried to milk a horse. When she added it was a male horse, the joke got sent in a completely different direction. You may believe that she meant otherwise, but the dual inferrence was clearly there.
i agree 100% with you on that. that's why i never even posted on the Shiavo threads.... not once.
but it was my observation that the over the top critics on this Roast joke episode (one thread went on over a thousand posts) are guilty on both sides.. both sides.
i see many who attack the poster.. not even arguing why they dissagree. bad manners, bad form. those posters are marked by me, and i just ignore them. i don't agrue with fools.. ya know? thanks for your gentlemanly reply.
I empathize.
I saved all of my child-hood books, fantacizing about reading them to the little girl i would some-day have.
My daughter is a tom-boy, and a bit of a jock.
She is also a Play Station Queen.
She wouldd rather catch frogs near the creek or build a fort than sit around with boring old Mom.
(And last Spring's experiment to get Mom on roller-blades was a complete disaster!)
Agreed! I didn't once think of horse masturbation. Seems to me, that the person who DID think of that is the one who has deep issues. Palladin is assuming everyone thinks like him. Clearly, that is not true.
"but the dual inferrence was clearly there."
Like I said, you don't get it.
There is that.
Of course, we hadn't had mass media ( other than radio) until then.
Like I said, you simply don't want to acknowledge that the other side has a point. You can pretend otherwise all you want.
Internet connection problem. Sorry.
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