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.
It's not the vulgarity of Southpark that's appealing (thought it's damned funny) it's that willingness to stick the knife all the way in and twist, not let them get away in the forlorn hope that maybe this time they will agree to have a new tone and a new dialogue (which they plead for when we have our boot on their neck).
If enjoyment of life means yukking it up when someone in a postion of respect rolls around in the gutter, I'll leave that bit of merriment to you. Your ad hominem attack accompanied by avoidance of any real response is very Clintonesque. Are you sure you're on the right boards?
Ouch!
That's gonna leave a mark!
LOL!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
A macro is like a system handled function, in your case, an auto-reply, or talking point. Someone posts a post in the thread, you punch a funtion key and out spits your pre-defined "macro".
I've always thought it was a joke about if you go grabbing for a horse's or a bull's private parts you're going to get taught a lesson real quick about which kind of animal lets you go grabbing around down there and which one doesn't.
So anyone who says it's a masturbation joke ipso facto has a dirty, stinking, preverted, demented, depraved, sick, disgusting mind. They should be shunned and kept from the boy cheerdrens and the girl cheerdrens.
I saw that before, but your link does not seem to work.
Al Gore can get stuffed.
Well, I'm not one to mince words. LMAO!!
Did I cross the line? ;~D
Glad I didn't post the next picture where you could actually see ~it~.
Like I told another poster.
My sister tried that when she was little with a Billy Goat.
She got knocked down.
And I agree about the dirty, stinking, perverted, etc minds.
And I think that's a Good Thing!
(as Martha might say!)
Well, to be honest, I was going about my life, perfectly innocent and naive to even the THOUGHT of masturbating a horse, UNTIL I LOGGED ONTO FR YESTERDAY!
LOL!
Agreed. I thought she did an excellent job of delivering the monologue. Her timimg was excellent. I really laughed through the whole thing.
Your horses are beautiful.
Don't even get me started on what LLAMAS do...
Now THERE'S a perverted animal!
:-)
Your horses are beautiful.
Don't even get me started on what LLAMAS do...
Now THERE'S a perverted animal!
:-)
Because not only did he mistake the animal, he mistook the gender. It's the "two punch" in a two-punchline joke!
Paraphrase:
"George knew so little about farming, he couldn't tell a horse from a cow < beat > Actually he knew less than that"
First shoe, second shoe.
(And the guy who didn't get the joke in the first plaee didn't understand the explanation over there either - As Louis Armstrong nearly said "If you didn't get the joke, you'll never understand it")
That's because she's told everybody else on the forum not to post to her.
It's about as good as the "What can I post, I don't have an original thought in my head" liquor.
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