Posted on 04/17/2005 9:30:15 AM PDT by USMC Veteran
Edited on 04/17/2005 12:25:20 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
For decades, with few exceptions, a liberal sensibility dominated American humor. From Lenny Bruce to Norman Lear's "All in Family" to "Will & Grace," the laughs came at the expense of fuddy-duddy conservatives and bourgeois conventions. But over the last few years, a new kind of cutting-edge humor has emerged whose primary target is the Left. It's a sign of how much ground liberalism has lost in our cultural life.
The No. 1 example is South Park, Comedy Central's hit adult cartoon series chronicling the misadventures of four potty-mouthed fourth-graders named Cartman, Kenny, Kyle, and Stan. Now in its ninth season, South Park, with nearly 3 million viewers per episode (one recent half hour garnered 4.4 million), is Comedy Central's highest-rated program, credited by many with putting the network on the map.
Some conservatives have blasted South Park for its mind-boggling vulgarity, even calling it a "threat to our youth." But those critics don't get it. As the show's co-creator Matt Stone sums it up, "I hate conservatives, but I really (expletive) hate liberals." Stone acknowledges that he and his fellow 30-something Coloradoan colleague Trey Parker are "more right-wing than most people in Hollywood" -- though, he cautions, that's the case partly because Hollywood types are so out there on the Left.
South Park has a sharp anti-PC edge. One episode mocks multicultural sentimentality about the supposed wisdom of native cultures. Kyle contracts a potentially fatal kidney disorder, and his naïve parents try to cure it with "natural" Native American methods, with disastrous results. Stan tries to get his friend sent to a hospital, but runs into fierce resistance.
Kyle's mom reassures him: "Everything is going to be fine, Stan; we're bringing in Kyle tomorrow to see the Native Americans personally."
Stan responds: "Isn't it possible that these Indians don't know what they're talking about?"
Stan's mom interjects: "You watch your mouth, Stanley. The Native Americans were raped of their land and resources by white people like us."
To which Stan has a perfectly logical rejoinder: "And that has something to do with their medicines because ... ?"
South Park regularly mocks left-wing celebrities who feel entitled to tell everyone how the world should run. In the episode "Butt Out," actor, producer, and celebrity activist Rob Reiner blows into town on an anti-smoking crusade, and tries to draft the boys in a sleazy plan to frame the local tobacco company for selling cigarettes to minors. In a classic sequence, set in a downscale local bar, Parker and Stone perfectly capture the Olympian arrogance of liberal elites. Reiner begins to sniff the air violently, detecting a faint whiff of cigarette smoke wafting through the bar. He detects the source: a man wearing a "Buds" cap, quietly enjoying a beer and a smoke. "Would you mind putting that death stick out," Reiner hollers.
The man, surprised, responds: "But, uh, this is a bar." Reiner: "Isn't smoking illegal in bars here?" "Not in Colorado," the bartender tells him. "Oh my God! What kind of backward hick state is this," Reiner explodes. The smoker tries to reason with him: "Listen man, I work 14 hours a day at the sawmill. I just got off work and I need to relax." But Reiner will have none of it: "Well, when I relax I just go to my vacation house in Hawaii!"
The Buds man gets angry: "I ain't got a vacation house in Hawaii!" "Your vacation house in Mexico, then, wherever it is," snorts Reiner. The boys eventually put a stop to the "tubby fascist," saving smoking in South Park.
In a 2004 interview, Parker and Stone expanded on just how much they loathed meddling celebrities. "People in the entertainment industry are by and large (tramp)-chasing drug-addicted (expleted)," Parker noted. "But they still believe they're better than the guy in Wyoming who really loves his wife and takes care of his kids and is a good, outstanding, wholesome person. Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they're the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be." (This contempt for Hollywood activist lefties was also on display in Parker and Stone's hilarious puppet movie "Team America: World Police.")
Hollywood, in its knee-jerk leftism, has also long looked down on the business world; indeed, one study from the 1990s showed businessmen committing almost half of all murders and vice crimes on the tube. On occasion, South Park gleefully bucks the anti-business trend. In one entry, a "Harbucks" coffee chain arrives in South Park. Town residents resist it at first, but everyone eventually admits its coffee is better than anything else on offer in town. "Harbucks Coffee started off as a small, little business" Stan tells a town meeting, "But because it made such great coffee, and because they ran their business so well, they managed to grow until they became the corporate powerhouse it is today. And that is why we should all let Harbucks stay." It's worth noting that Matt Stone's father is a semiretired economics professor.
South Park has also satirized the 1960s counterculture; abortion-on-demand (Cartman's mother seeks to have him aborted -- even though he's 8); sex-ed in school; hate-crime legislation; and many other liberal shibboleths.
Conservatives sometimes find themselves skewered too -- phony patriots and Mel Gibson have been among those slashed. But the deepest thrust of South Park's politics is pretty clear.
Parker and Stone have made their show not only the most obscenity-laced but -- paradoxically -- also the most hostile to liberalism in television history.
Which is why I am now a California Independent. My family still lives there and they are all Democrats. Thank God liberalism isn't genetic.
Malverne here, now in Seattle making life a living hell for the tree hugging, granola eating, hacky sack playing, Jim McDermott voting, San Francisco bay area transplants that seem to dominate this city.
For the record, this was in the NY Post --- 11 April 2005 -- http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/42749.htm
CORRECTION -- 17 APRIL 2005 ---
http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/42749.htm
I can see where South Park takes more swipes at the left than the right, but I find it hard to really accept it as being a "conservative" show - unless you're desperate enough to having anything "cool" associated with the right/GOP.
I mean, they recently had an episode implying the Republican Party works on behalf of Satan, when the "wholesome" rural guys started complaining about illegal "aliens" they were largely depicted as whiney hicks (IMO), and even though the gay characters are routinely mocked, my impression is that homosexuality itself is more or less accepted/endorsed. Plus the vulgarity and endless mocking of parental authority.
Is the show funny? Yes. Does the show more often parody liberals over conservatives? Seems likely. But is it a conservative show? I dunno...
Swipe at them? They blew them up! Had Michael Moore as a suicide bomber. Blew up Samual L. Jackson, Helen Hunt, Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins in the most incredible puttets explosion. And the sex scene is the funniest damn part of the movie! Comes out on May 17th on DVD. Not for kids!
You might know my brother, He ran for state assembly as a Democrat. The district covers Carle Place, Westbury, Oyster Bay, and others. It's a gerrymandered district designed to keep Republicans in power. He got about 40% of the vote in a 80% Republican district. I guess it shows that folks are tired of the status quo.
As for the illegal alien episode, they were much harder on the "goobacks" than they were on the hicks. Besides, have you ever seen the folks who show up on the immigration threads? Dey tuk ehr Jahbs!
"'Would you mind putting that death stick out,' Reiner hollers."
Hold on a sec...let me finish lighting my cigar and pouring a glass of scotch.
Is it a conservative show? Beyond a shadow of any doubt. Is it a Republican show? Definitely not. Used to believe the Democratic party would split first but it's becoming quite clear Republicans and Conservatives are coming to a major difference of opinions on more than a few issues lately
Yes. It is nice to know the future of conservatism is starting to shed the neurotic/superstitious sexual hangups of the dark past.
Parker and Stone are more of the 'leave me alone', libertarian, western brand of conservatism. They're not religious. I remember an episode where Jesus wrestls Satan. They're anti-elite, anti-arrogance, anti-know-it-all's and anti-meddling. Today, the elite, arrogant, know-it-all, medlers are the liberals. If conservatives become the power, they'll become targets next.
Worth repeating. :)
I can easily see it being more libertarian than conservative.
Not sure about the illegal alien episode...I can see where both sides took hits, but as I recall (and it's been a while, so maybe I'm misremembering) the show seemed more sympathetic with the future plights that forced the aliens to travel to our time than with the guys losing their jobs to them.
I do like the show quite a bit - save for the recent anti-baseball episode - and I'm not a hardcore conservative, so i'm not demanding any sort of ideological rigidity; SP just doesn't seem like a conservative show. If anything, it's just opportunist, and since the left has/had by and large been spared the kind of heckling the right has, SP saw an untapped market and ran with it.
Given the current (apparent) ascendency of conservative viewpoints, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that focus starts shifting right-ward.
(and I'm a relatively new freeper, so I haven't had a chance to check out immigration threads :))
The greatest liability of the series is its gratuitous vulgarity. I'm no prude, and strong language doesn't offend me. But so often on "South Park," the writers use profanity simply because they can. It adds nothing to the message, and almost seems (paradoxically) to be a concession to expectations: the kids are supposed to be crude, so where's the crudity????
This is very difficult to read. Some of it is repeated, some of it is not formatted in paragraphs. I give up. Guess I'm too lazy this morning.
I watched South Park once and was very offended, and will not watch it again. It was a "Christmas" program and was very controversial to say the least.
Something about the Christmas Poo who left skid marks of doo-doo everywhere. The kids were saying the Jews killed Jesus, and the Jesus character was depicted as a Terrorist, who was holding a rifle in each hand.
Too wild for me.
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I did too only when I finished the whole thing, I realized that half the article was missing... I hate it when people only post half a story.
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