KOTH is a great show, insightful and fair. It pokes fun at the silly aspects of Middle America (the "black helicopter" conspiracy theorists, the big hair, the "Megalo marts"), while upholding the substantive goods aspects--faith, family, hard work. The show teases and validates at the same time. It plays with stereotypes and deviates away from them, as the Hills are hardly the frothing at the mouth hate mongering theocrats that the Left believes most Heartlanders are.
Hank Hill was on the verge of voting for Bush in one episode, only to have his faith shaken by of all things, Bush's handshake (we don't learn who he finally votes for). The Left is repeatedly skewed, in a way that trumps South Park's attacks on the Left, mostly because KOTH is so straightforward and realistic. The very first episode attacked the weasel bureacrat lusting to break up families, and avante garde artists are regularly portrayed as the irrelevant whiners that they are: "If you look at the painting this way, you see George Washington, but if you look at it THIS way, you see HITLER! Washington, HITLER! Washington, HITLER!" And who could forget: "Well in the 40s, with FDR and Truman, I was on the wellfare. And then in the 60s, you know JFK and LBJ, I was on the wellfare. And then in the 70s, Carter? I was on the wellfare."
One of the best episodes in recent years was the one where the hippies ruin the Hills camping trip by trashing the camp site, and the hippies decide to start "sharing" everyone's goods--which actually became STEALING. You couldn't find a better indictment of socialism in a dry economics textbook by some stuffed shirt Robert Novak type. The hippies leave the park in disgust after the Hills have the free park services cancelled, and one of the hippies gets in the back of the van and snarls at the Hills, "Rumsfeld!"
KOTH isn't a conservative show, it's simply a fair and honest one that dares to poke fun at leftwing assumptions in a way that the Mainstream media and the rest of Hollywood wouldn't touch.
My only criticism of KOTH is that there's often not enough plot to fill an entire half hour block of time. I think it would actually be better fit as a 5-10 minute part of a variety-type show, if that genre still existed.
Duhhhh...you speak in riddles, or 'moderate' speak. Is it so hard to say; 'King of the Hill' is middle America and is why it is so very popular!?!
I think it was that same episode where Hank Hill got the hippies to leave when he told them he was going to teach them to be self-sufficient.
It really focuses in on Texas. We are so unique in the stereotypes people have about us, and most of them are true, but the reality is so much deeper, and richer, and varied than anyone would ever imagine. So maybe he uses the classic Texas Stereotypes as a way of attacking stereotypes in general. In some ways it is the the education of Hank Hill. But in others it's Hank educating us. And that's where we are today. Learning that so much of what was new and shiny is crap, and that what was classic remains.