Next! This one's been milked dry.
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 just gives fodder to the Left and to Air America who distort everything she says anyway, even when it is not potty mouth stuff.
You know I feel the same.....when I first Laura doing those jokes...I thought why bother trying to fit in...when you have to lower your standards...and to give credit to the daughers suggestion.....
I really have exsperinced mixed messages from the Bush family....they are not always consistant in some area there are time it is hard to know which way or what did they mean by that?
How far and how long should one make allowances?
Looking at her life under any microscope...looking at how much they truly love each other, your moral outrage rings hollow.
Since there has been an avalanche of editorials espousing the Republicans are creating a theocracy and replacing the Constitution with the bible
...for purely political reasons, the routine by Laura was a slap in the face to people like Dowd and Rich.
Actually I've never tried the Light Cranberry juice. I've only had the Ocean Spray Cranapple juice. Friend of mine had a kidney stone and it was giving him pain and his doctor prescribed Cranapple juice and he went to the local store and drank one glass after another and it completely flushed his system clean and dissolved the stone in his kidney.
I told him that's what Cranberry juice does!
The Religious Right voted in almost the exact same numbers in 2004 as they did in 2000.
It was Hispanics who gave Bush the margin he needed.
Personally, I have a husband who makes enough money to give me the time to spend as I please. And I *please* to stand up for the President and First Lady of the United States. If that bothers you, too damn bad.
And since you obviously don't understand the rules of this forum, we do NOT post about other posters without pinging them to give them a chance to defend themselves, no matter how ridiculous the accusations.
I think it's the woman thing again........LOL.
Yada yada yada......
chummy with the Clintons.....birds of a feather flock to gether!
What bothers me is this double entendre, the facade of being benign yet at the same time sublimally giving questionable programs such as Desperate Housewifes, and Chippingdales type places, masturbasion a backdoor entrance in our lives!
It your choice if some of you enjoy those things but there is a time and place for things like this....I don't look towards those who lead the nation to take us on a walk on the wildside!
It is the roll of a leader to lift us up as nation....not lower the standards!
Because they are not exactly like you want them to be at all times? GWB was elected to do a job. No more, no less. We can argue about whether he is doing that job properly but his wife and the rest of his family was elected to exactly nothing and that is what they owe you. Nothing.
Maybe, just maybe, you should understand that they are people who will not always agree with you and they did not ask for you to put them up on a pedestal.
Let me let you in on a little secret, no one can live up to your expectations at all times, not even you.
Of ALL the people, not just the cranky malcontents and continually unappeasables (who didn't vote for him anyway).
Let me let you in on a little secret, no one can live up to your expectations at all times, not even you.
speak for yourself!
Those who are in leadership program are to honor the office
Buch loves to talk about how Reagan respected the office and at the same time does things that is question able in minds of the impressionable this nation is still trying to recover from Clinton and Joshlyn Elders!
This program was scripted not like it just pop out they even drag their children into this....
2+2 does not equal up here!
You think you are harmless you seem more like a porcupine!:)
I can't believe people are still talking about this, much less are still upset and obsessed with it.
Next! This one's been milked dry.
When we all gether on Judgement day why don't you ask the Lord why so many are upset with a Nation Leader engaging with off color or potty mouth jokes?
You can think your pretty cool.....some of us see the hand writting on the wall.....to be concern.....our boarder are open and these words speak
The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice hitherto little known in our American Army is growing into fashion. He hopes that the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it and that both they and the men will reflect that we can little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our army if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this it is a vice so mean and low without any temptation that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.
--George Washington
Now you may not believe in these words, but this nation lasted a long time because PROTOCOL was respected!
Well, it sure defuses the notion that a President that publicly embraces his love of God isn't capable of enjoying a risque joke or two...in a venue of assorted adults.
If that were true, the fundamentalist Islamic states would be the most powerful and long-lived on the planet.
In my ancestral home of Ireland, one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a man is to say "He is a decent man".
You, sir, have my admiration.
You are a very decent man.
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