South Park encouraging Conservatism

[Guest billy bonger]

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Young and swinging to the Right

By Andrew Sullivan

December 23, 2003

 

WHEN, one wonders, did conservatism in America become hip? In the US the new millennium seems to have entrenched a growing trend among the younger generations that, if not culturally conservative, is anti-liberal.

 

Go to a college campus and you will find the young Republicans gaining in strength. You'll find plenty of sullen and not-so-sullen disdain for 1960s-style professors. You will notice that the internet, as well as providing the groundswell for the Howard Dean campaign, is just as popular among more Right-leaning undergraduates.

 

But you'll notice something else as well. These new non-lefties aren't exactly wearing bow ties and sipping sherry. They have adopted the full clothing and accessories of their liberal peers; they watch pay TV channel Comedy Central; some smoke pot; they have few problems with premarital sex; some are even gay.

 

I came up with a name for this fledgling generation of countercultural righties: South Park Republicans. The name comes from the Comedy Central cartoon show (shown in Australia on SBS television) in which four foul-mouthed eight-year-olds wreak havoc on their friends, families, school and town. Not everyone who watches South Park, of course, is a conservative. Far from it. But the sensibility that the program exudes - bawdy, shameless, relentlessly anti-politically correct - has real resonance today.

 

The Simpsons presaged this development. Knowing, witty, sardonic, it is a cartoon obviously written by and for young adults. But South Park took this formula and made it cruder, sharper and more rebellious. No PC shibboleths are left unmolested. From handicapped child Timmy to black youngster Token, every stereotype enjoys itself. The idiocy of hate-crime laws, the fawning condescension of well-meaning liberal adults, the dumbness of Hollywood celebrity, the surrealism of sexual harassment legislation: the targets are brutally assaulted for an enthusiastic audience of those 18 to 39.

 

If people wonder why anti-war celebrities such as Janeane Garofalo or Michael Moore failed to win over the younger generation, you have only to watch South Park to see why. The next generation sees through the cant and piety, and cannot help giggling.

 

In one episode, when liberal talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell shows up to lecture the children about democracy, their teacher declares: "People like you preach tolerance and open-mindedness all the time, but when it comes to middle America you think we're all evil and stupid country yokels who need your political enlightenment. Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you know crap about the government." The teacher is a thinly veiled closeted homosexual.

 

In a recent essay in the neo-conservative magazine City Journal author Brian Anderson celebrated the show as evidence that conservatives were winning the culture wars. He may be on to something.

 

Here is a passage he cited that the Body Shop founder Anita Roddick might appreciate. It occurs when one of the children, Kyle, comes down with a rare kidney disorder. His liberal parents decide to try a Native American homeopathic cure. It doesn't work.

 

Kyle's mum: "Everything is going to be fine, Stan; we're bringing in Kyle tomorrow to see the Native Americans personally."

 

Stan: "Isn't it possible that these Indians don't know what they're talking about?

 

Stan's mum: "You watch your mouth, Stanley. The Native Americans were raped of their land and resources by white people like us."

 

Stan: "And that has something to do with their medicines because ... ?"

 

Stan's mum: "Enough, Stanley!"

 

There you have the voice of a younger generation driven to distraction by clueless liberal parents. Think of Ab Fab's Saffy but with a wild streak.

 

Am I making too much of this? Maybe. The younger generation is more liberal in some respects: they tend to be more pro-gay and more comfortable in a multiracial society. But, in a natural reaction against their parents, their distaste for do-gooder cant is well developed. September 11 made a critical difference as well. It turned a sensibility into something a little more urgent.

 

Comedian Dennis Miller, a graduate of the US television comedy show Saturday Night Live and a loud-mouthed, libertarian rebel, exemplifies the change in sensibility. Nobody can think of him as a typical conservative. His four-letter words alone keep him a few thousand miles away from the religious Right.

 

But in an interview with Time magazine he summed up his politics: "I'm Left on a lot of things. If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn't care less. If a nutcase from overseas wants to blow up their wedding, that's when I'm Right. (September 11) was a big thing for me. I was saying to liberal America, 'Well, what are you offering?' And they said, 'Well, we're not going to protect you, and we want some more money.' That didn't interest me."

 

Miller is not alone. Alongside the religious Right, there is also an irreligious Right in the US. They are an often urban, culturally liberal, fiscally conservative slice of the population who are as appalled by Left-liberal humbug as they are turned off by evangelical theocrats. Politics is not as important to these people as their everyday lives, their desire to be left alone. But when those lives are threatened -- by over-taxation, government regulation or the mass murders perpetrated by Islamist terrorists -- they get engaged.

 

Theirs is a negative politics in the classic conservative sense. Their politics is in the service of their lives, not the other way round. To quote Miller again: "I will say this, I feel more politically engaged than I've ever felt in my life because I do think we live in dangerous times. Anybody who looks at the world and says this is the time to be a wuss - I can't buy that anymore."

 

Neither can a burgeoning group among the young. They tend not to be noticed. But they are perhaps the key to understanding the huge generation that will one day remake the US as surely as their boomer parents once did.

 

The Sunday Times

 

The Australian

Edited December 23, 2003 by billy bonger

[Luke Skywalker]

Typical News Corp. conservative propaganda.

[twentythree]

the conservatives are trying for the 'self fulfilling prophecy'

 

they have to keep propagating there bs and telling us that it is catching on even when it is not...

[pipeman]

Right on twentythree!

 

The conservatives know they are in the minority, thats why they need to ram their agenda down our throats so hard. Do not believe the bullshit in the media. The majority of people are actually quite liberal. Its a dirty little secret that the powers that be are desperate not to get out. Spread the word.

[Wezz]

Typical News Corp.  conservative propaganda.

 

Exaclty...

[Bag O'Turnips]

I mgiht believe that the idea put forth in that article may be true to some extent, in that modern conservatives, better known as neo-liberals, are much like they're described—liberal on surface matters, but rather conservative, reactionary and fearful in many other facets. However, the way that it's giving creedence to their ideology in a triumphalist fashion (as the Murdoch axis tends to), is what I have a probem with...I stopped reading The Australian a while ago, as it had changed from being having a (small 'L") liberal, if not socially concerned, angle to being quite openly a less foulmouthed mouthpiece of the New Right (aka Third Way, New Labour or Blairite politics), of whom are the real hypocrites we must watch out for. They look hip! They sound hip! Heck, they even smell hip! but y'know they ain't hip, 'cos they're stockholders in hip and own the rights to hip.

[Guest Bongo the clown]

Um. I've found a lot of presumptions are made in these communities.....Smoking dope doesn't automatically make you a radical socialist or something.

 

Some of us actually enjoy making money, are personally ambitious, vote for Howard believing he's done a great job for this country and enjoy smoking the weed as well as believing it should be decriminilised....as it should be.

 

The article, wherever it's been published, has something to say based on an observation...so attempting to discredit it just because you dislike the publisher and the content is pointless and plain silly.

 

BTW if you do a search you'll find it's been reproduced in numerous other publications that Rupert doesn't own.

 

Bag of Turnips talks of the triumphilistic speak of some commentators on the right but I'm supposing hasn't got a problem with the same kind arrogance and rhetoric coming from the other side, that's daily witnessed in the Fairfax Press of The Age and SMH. In fact I find these publications far worse in their strident sanctimonious hypocrisy and see The Australian (among others) as the more balanced of the two.

 

My Twocents

[deejayvee]

With a show like South Park that puts shit on everybody, it's not hard to come up with examples supporting any viewpoint. I could sit down and watch a few episodes of South Park and write a very similar article that claims the creators of South Park are from outer space!

 

It's a weird show that takes nothing seriously, including itself.

 

And if you know much about Trey and Matt you will realise that while they seem to be left-leaning people, they like to pick on both sides of politics because it's all one big circus.

[Bag O'Turnips]

Just thought I'd offer my right of reply to the last couple of posts: I know that South Park's creators are most certainly left-leaning. However, what I have noticed is that some slightly misguided souls out there do take what the characters espouse a little too literally and there are some equally misguided mouthpieces out there, neither of whom fully realise that South Park is satire taking the piss out of that redneck mentality, not just a series of scatological in-jokes to snicker at...even though they are piss-funny! This is not directed to any of you out here, so please do not take any offence at my observations or views.

 

And I come from Perth, so we don't really get any of the Fairfax crapulence (i.e. The Age/Sydney Morning Herald ) here...we have the independent-but-ASX-listed West Australian, which isn't much chop either. I would less so read their copy, as they masquerade about with being hipsters, when really they're just working for a fat man too, and triumphant neo-liberals to boot. So they can get lost, anyway! The thing that gets my goat re The Australian is that is atypical of the usual Murdoch/News Ltd. fare (As opposed to the Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun, Courier, Advertiser and our very own Sunday Times: all tabloids high on sensationalism and very little on real information) and that I have sensed a shift in the Oz that seems to be headed in that direction, and it happens such that I do not appreciate it, that's all. Besides, If I want news and reportage re current affairs, I'd go to co-operatively owned independent sources such as The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) or New Internationalist magazine, whereby these sources must rely on journalistic integrity, simply because they're not owned by large corporations with other vested interests that need to be shielded from adverse publicity. Anyone ever seen Citizen Kane? You'll maybe understand if you have.

 

But I digress. I also know damn well that the Left do not have a monoply on pot smokers, not by a country mile! But not all left-wingers are libertarians, either...would you ever see the Pope (left-wing authoritatrian) pledge his support to our cause? However, I believe that most left-leaning folk will at least respect your right to toke up rather than many on the Right.

 

I must take up on point, though...I know that Lil' Johnny Howard wouldn't begrudge most of us making a buck, even illegally- hell, look at 'em corporate fatcats, they do it no problemo—but by selling "illegal drugs" such as pot, I somehow don't think he'd too kindly agree with that...hmmm...

 

I agree with your right to disagree and so be it.

[Bag O'Turnips]

P.S. I don't think that pot would be decriminalised under Johnny Howard any time soon, or furtheron, given he has no plans of retiring for a quite a while yet whilst waiting for his ship to come in and torpedo any hope of positive change