Hip Anti-liberal Comedy

A good piece in The Dallas Morning News entitled South Park Republicans, shows how hip humor is evolving from right bashing to left bashing

If you're easily offended or have children in your house, you probably avoid South Park at all costs. I can't say that I blame you. I've seen it a few times and cringe at the flagrant profanity, specifically when the names of God and Jesus Christ are so casually taken in vain. I don't endorse the language used in this intentionally poorly produced animation, but I love the way they routinely bash sacrosanct leftist ideology.

Where else could you see or hear these rightly malicious jibes at abortion and sex change operations? Check this out:

South Park has a sharp anti-political-correctness edge, for starters. Consider season nine's hilarious – and disturbing – opening episode. The boys' gay teacher, Mr. Garrison, decides to get a sex change. The procedure is shown, graphically, to be a horrific self-mutilation, which is already a brave bit of truth-telling in an era of "transgender rights." But you've never seen anything on television like what follows.

Mr. Garrison, now a "woman," mistakenly thinks he's pregnant – and that makes him very happy because he can rush off to get an abortion, and so prove that he's a real woman. Here's the key exchange, at a Planned Parenthood center:

Garrison: Hello, doctor. Looks like I need an abortion.

Doctor: An abortion?

Garrison: Yeah, I've got one growing inside of me. Now are you gonna scramble its brains or just vacuum it out?

The doctor then tells Mr. Garrison that he can't have an abortion because he can't get pregnant: His sex change is ultimately cosmetic. Mr. Garrison is crestfallen: "You mean I'll never know what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out?" The doctor responds: "Nnn ... that's right."

Mr. Stone and his fellow thirtysomething colleague, Trey Parker, portray both abortion and sex-change operations in ways Robert Bork would endorse wholeheartedly – but do so in one of the most offensively vulgar half-hours in television history. Now that's subversive.

South Park regularly mocks left-wing celebrities who feel entitled to tell everyone how the world should run. In one notorious parody, made during the 2000 Florida recount, blowhard Rosie O'Donnell comes to the town of South Park to intervene in a kindergarten election dispute involving her nephew.

Mr. Garrison, now showing some good sense, tees off on her: "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 [expletive] about the government."

In a recent interview, Mr. Parker expanded on just how much he and Mr. Stone loathed meddling celebrities. "People in the entertainment industry are by and large whore-chasing, drug-addicted [expletive]," he said. "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."

Pretty strong stuff, huh? Can you imagine some hapless conservative talk show host getting away with that?

The article goes on to say that the liberal monopoly has been obliterated, thanks to the New Media.