Oh My God! They Tried to Steal South Park!

By Simon S. Maloy, Media Matters original to AlterNet. Posted June 27, 2005.

First Lady Laura Bush raised more than a few eyebrows with her cracks about her husband at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April. Suggesting she had become one of those lascivious "Desperate Housewives," Mrs. Bush recalled an evening spent ogling male strippers with Lynne Cheney and Karen Hughes, and joked about the president "milking" a male horse.

Normally, the conservative media goes to Code Orange when confronted with such indecency. Some did express outrage, but they were in the minority. L. Brent Bozell III, the "liberal media" watchdog who usually never passes up an opportunity to wag a disapproving finger at the smut on TV, praised Mrs. Bush's Redd Foxx routine as tongue-in-cheek and "designed to loosen up the stuffy evangelical Christian image" the administration has so carefully cultivated.

Beyond abiding Mrs. Bush's off-color jokes, there seems to be a movement among some conservatives to shed their "stuffy evangelical Christian image" and embrace the edgy, risqué, borderline taboo elements of pop culture that have long been anathema to the Right. Apparently going for broke, they have laid claim to the most offensive television program in history: South Park.

South Park is the crown jewel of Comedy Central, offering viewers the absurd misadventures of four foul-mouthed Colorado fourth-graders, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick. In recent weeks, the conservative media has lauded a new book by the Manhattan Institute's Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt against Liberal Media Bias. Anderson claims that "conservatives ... are overthrowing the liberal media and political correctness," and at the vanguard of this revolution is South Park, which "has mocked -- with scathing genius -- hate-crime laws and sexual harassment policies, liberal celebrities, abortion-rights extremists, and other shibboleths of the Left."

Anderson is right. South Park has torn into every of these "liberal" issues. He made this abundantly clear by quoting the show at great length and delighting in every slur and four-letter word directed at the Left. After reading Anderson's book, one might think South Park is bankrolled by the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council. But far from being a "conservative" or "anti-liberal" phenomenon, South Park is an equal-opportunity offender, tearing apart the absurdities of American politics and culture without an ideological filter.

Conservatism finds no safe harbor in South Park. The Christian right has been a favored target of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In a third-season episode titled "Starvin' Marvin in Space," the titular emaciated Ethiopian boy attempts to relocate his village to an alien planet with the help of the South Park boys and a space ship. Christian missionaries catch wind of the plan and attempt to follow the boys to the planet with the expressed intent of converting the aliens to Christianity. Enter Pat Robertson and The 600 Club (video):

ROBERTSON: Listen to this Susan, one of our missionaries in North Africa has made an amazing discovery! A new planet in the galaxy Alpha-Seti-6 that has intelligent life on it.

SUSAN (Pat's co-host): Amazing!

Simon S. Maloy is a writer and researcher for Media Matters for America.

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