South Park *Conservatives*??

/ Sandy Smith

It’s a sad comment on the vacuity of the current political debate that NPR‘s On the Media is trying to decide whether South Park is conservative or liberal.

“I hate conservatives,” they report Trey Parker as saying, “but I really bleeping hate liberals.” [their bleep, not mine]

Um, yeah. Skepticism over people wanting power over people in order to impose their viewpoints on others…a creator who says he hates the two main random association of opinions…lampooning both sides. Yup, that isn’t liberal, so it must be conservative. Because there are no other viewpoints. Certainly none that have names.

Since they took on Earth Day, I think it’s pretty much guaranteed it’s not the Greens.

Hmmm…what could be left? Hmmm…what a hard question!

2 thoughts on “South Park *Conservatives*??”

  1. I don’t think this is that outrageous of a discussion topic, since there’s been a concerted effort from the Right over the last couple of years to add some hipness to their overwhelmingly white male Christian image by trumpeting the arrival of “South Park Republicans”/”South Park Conservatives”.

    See

    http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2001_12_09_dish_archive.html#7873332

    http://www.techcentralstation.com/100702A.html

    http://usconservatives.about.com/od/politics/a/southparkgop.htm

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260190/ref=pd_sxp_f/102-6413098-1968953?v=glance&s=books

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican

    So it’s not that NPR or whoever is forcing Parker & Stone into the “Republican” box — rather, it’s (at least some) Republicans who are doing that, more for their own benefit than because of any strong ideological connection.

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  2. My complaint is not that they originated the meme–clearly they’re participating in the topical-news-that-just-happens-to-correspond-to-a-new-book-I’m-putting-out activity that passes for reporting now. My complaint is that they never brought up an alternative explanation for the fact that there’s much to the show that ridicules bipartisan positions (“Drugs are bad, m’kay?”), conservative positions (“What do you mean you don’t have sex with children, Father Maxi?”), and, of course, no-good goddamn dirty hippies (“Everyone knows that Cherokee hair makes the best tampons”). They have to be one or the other, despite the fact that On the Media has had guests from a certain magazine on:

    http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_112803_momdad.html

    http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_040204_nasty.html

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