'I hate conservatives, but I really... hate liberals'

PE.com ^ | April 16, 2005 | BRIAN C. ANDERSON

[USMC Veteran]

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.

[rwfromkansas]

Well, to be fair, I do sense Bush not being near as popular as he once was. The Republicans must accomplish some big stuff in the next year or so to counter anything bad that is still going on in 2006 (high gas prices etc.)

[RepublicMan4U]

Has anyone heard the song "Love Me, I'm a Liberal"? It was originally recorded by Phil Ochs and then lyrically updated and re-recorded by Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon. You can Google to find the lyrics. I always found it funny because it skewers Hollywood type liberals from a leftist perspective. It pretty much depicts "liberals" as well-to-do bourguise types who like to brag about recycling and occasionally attend pro-choice rallies.

Even when I was more left-leaning myself, I was always annoyed with Hollywood/MTV type liberals because there leftism seemed so limp-wristed. They love to criticize American empirialism from the comfort of there suburban homes, but how many of them are denouncing their wealth and moving to South America to start co-ops?

[rwfromkansas]

I am a Christian conservative/evangelical who loves SP.

But then, I am also Calvinist and tend to have a very libertarian attitude toward issues of Christian liberty: cussing, drinking, smoking etc.

The sexual stuff sometimes makes me cringe, but I am used to toilet humor.

[rwfromkansas]

I didn't really get that in the episode.

It was so hilarious because I identify with it so much...the parents pushing the kids to play a dull, boring sport they don't want to play etc.

I was rolling throughout the entire ep.

[rwfromkansas]

I didn't really get that in the episode.

It was so hilarious because I identify with it so much...the parents pushing the kids to play a dull, boring sport they don't want to play etc.

I was rolling throughout the entire ep.

[elbucko]

But those critics don't get it.

I agree. They can't seem to look past the vulgarity that's used to attract a young audience to the message that's very anti-liberal.

[Steel Wolf]

In other words, one person may like South Park because it exposes the hypocricy of liberal facism, but another person may like it because it mocks people (teachers, gub'mint, religious figures) who would tell them how to behave or what they should believe is right and wrong.

I think you hit it on the head right here.

However, in many cases, it's not one or the other, it's both. The liberals are the Man, these days.

Authority should always be scrutinized. The teachers, gub'mint, and religious figures above all should be. Anyone who wants to control our lives had better be able to argue why their way is the best. If we intend to remain free, they need to assume that we'll challenge them at every turn.

Schools need teachers, nations need governments, and mankind needs spiritual leaders. But we don't need them to be unaccountable judges who do whatever they want simply because they can. (We have enough of those already). If South Park conservatism is nothing more than a movement to force people to stop being lying weasels, and expose the weasels for what they are, then it will be a wild success.

It can't really be more, and why would we want it to be anyway?

[raccoonradio]

I'm familiar with both versions of "Love Me I'm a Liberal". In the early 90s a "folk-comedy" group called the Foremen did a neat song called "I Used to Be A Liberal (But I Ain't No Liberal No More)" which sounds in some ways like a neo-con anthem, but it also kind of paints neo-cons as being hypocritical--and makes a KKK reference (oh, yeah, there weren't any _Democrats_ in the Klan. Definitely no Dem. Senators from West Virginia...er... :) )

. Read on. (From the band that also gave us "Ollie Ollie Off Scot-Free", "I'm Russian
Limbaugh (I Will Bury You)", etc.

I saw a blinding flash of light
So I pulled over to the first church on the right

And I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal no more

I saw a bum on the curb today
Well, I hit the gas and covered him with gutter spray

And I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal no more

My heart is jumpin' and my head is swimmin'
I feel like I could take the vote away from women

And I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal no more

On that joyful day, yes on that glorious day
The day I threw my Birkenstocks away
The angel told me, "Oh, ye man of sin,
Open up your bleeding heart and let Pat Buchanan in!"

I saw a starving third world nation
So I exploited its underprivileged population

And I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal no more

Now, I support all my neighbors of color
And their attempts to make that color a little duller 2

And I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal no more

Oh, on that joyful day, yes on that glorious day
The day I burned up all my macramé
The angel told me what is good for GM
Is good for me, and me, and me
And the hell with the rest of them

I used to be so paranoid
But now I'm — what?!

I feel so good, ain't no doubt
Wanna laugh and shout about it
'Cause I once was a liberal 1
But I ain't no liberal
And I once was a peacenik
But I bought stock in Lockheed

And I once was a union man
But I got me this nice office

And I once was a feminist
But I just don't understand women

And I once supported rent control
But I inherited some property 3

And I once was anti-censorship
But I don't have time for fiction

And I once hated racism
But I figure, why fight it?

And I once had compassion
But I ain't no liberal no more

---

Reprise version lyric variations:

1 Because I once was a liberal

2 On the Reprise version, this couplet is replaced with:

I wanna be there when we take the streets
So I cut out two little eyeholes in my sheets

3 Then I inherited some property

[Alouette]

My name is Alouette, and I am a South Park junkie. My family thinks that I am deranged. Maybe they're right.

[SteveMcKing]

"They are the Neo-Libertarians and they will be the dominate political force in this country within twenty years."

By then, they will also start paying their own bills and won't be declared as dependents on their parent's tax form. That will draw a few of them over...

[EveningStar]

I encounter the same thing. :)

[RepublicMan4U]

Very interesting. Not too complementary of conservatives, but the song seems to lump a lot of different kinds of conservatives together. Of course, it's comedy, so I've got to cut them some slack and give them props for creativity.

I found the line "I saw a blinding flash of light/ So I pulled over to the first church on the right" particularly ironic since this tune seems to describe the more heartless, atheistic, Ayn Rand worshipping side of conservatism.

And the Buchanan reference? The song must have been written before the Republicans drummed him out.

Sorry I'm over-analyzing comedy. I found it funny. Thanks for posting.

[Wormwood]

You're in good company

[Tax-chick]

What peculiar paragraphy.

[agitator]

ping

[AnalogReigns]

I must admit, I hate Southpark, but I hate Doonsbury more...

[rdb3]

[AnalogReigns]

If conservative values stand for freedom AND a return to civility then the incredible (and yes, therefore funny) crude vulgarity of Southpark cannot be seen as conservative. Yes it points to the stupidity of the Liberal nanny-demagogues...but it also does so while ignoring (and fostering) a central part of 60s generation liberalism, namely the tolerance and even glorification of degeneracy--which is ultimately a denial of the essential dignity of (flawed) human beings, which underlies ordered liberty.

You can't laugh at the hypocrisy and inconsistancy of liberals while your sewer mouth and mind point you in the same ultimate direction.