Mike Huckabee's 'Family Guy' Values

Walking across the campus of my Midwestern university last year, I spotted a phalanx of sorority girls wearing matching T's embossed with Greek letters and Chuck Norris's face, along with a list of Chuck Norris Facts ("There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live."; "There is no chin under Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist." And so on). Catching up to a honey-haired straggler, I asked her if she knew who Chuck Norris was. She didn't. Well, I asked, why was she wearing a picture of Mr. Norris's head? Her reply was that it was funny. Curious, but trying not to come off as a total creep, I again asked why. She stopped, noticed me for the first time, and in a helpful tone usually reserved for giving directions to the elderly, stated that "It's called college humor" and that "kids her age" like it. If her delivery hadn't been so painfully earnest, I'd swear she was being ironic. 

It's fitting if this sounds like a parable, because it is Baptist minister turned Arkansas governor turned insurgent presidential candidate Mike Huckabee who has been reaping the story's lesson. Hot off an Iowa Caucus victory, Huckabee's poll numbers are ascending, and while pundits and reporters credit his surge to strong debate performances and evangelicals' skepticism about Mitt Romney, they also can't resist noting another possible cause: Chuck Norris. Not only is Norris, the martial-arts guru and also-ran 1980s action hero, currently on the campaign trail for Huckabee in New Hampshire, but the Chuck Norris Facts were the focal point of Huckabee's first television ad, an ad which the candidate himself credits for infusing his campaign with the much-needed cash and media cachet that have fueled his rise.

Lowbrow, or at least low-wattage, celebrity presidential endorsements are nothing new. Today, Ron Paul has the deflated Baywatch bombshell Donna D'errico stumping for his brand of neo-isolationism; once upon a time, Lee "Six Million Dollar Man" Majors supported Jimmy Carter and the Chicago Cubs shilled for Warren Harding. But in a TMZ.com era where exposing the manufacture of celebrity is as popular as celebrity itself, Huckabee's ironic acknowledgement of Chuck Norris's dubious bona fides ("My plan to secure the border?" Huckabee has said. "Two words: Chuck Norris.") stands as an innovation: a presidential candidate embracing 21st-century Family Guy values.

As anyone who's watched Family Guy knows, Fox's syndicated animated series is ostensibly the story of suburban blow-hard Peter Griffin but is really just an excuse for creator Seth MacFarland to spew forth non sequiturs about the movies and TV shows of his childhood. Among the college students I teach, Family Guy seems almost sacred, a universally agreed-upon touchstone of what constitutes comedy gold. But the paradox of Family Guy's popularity is that MacFarland is 34-years-old and his show's rabid fans are a full generation younger, a cultural chasm that raises an obvious question: Why would kids who've never seen Scarecrow and Mrs. King or Diff'rent Strokes -- or Chuck Norris, for that matter -- think references to such pop culture detritus are interesting, let alone funny?

There are two explanations. The cynical answer is that we live in a postmodern hell, wherein cultural references not only do not need to mean anything but purposely shouldn't if they want to be perceived as cool. This view helps explain runway supermodels in Iron Maiden sweatshirts and the names of most of the fledging indie-rock bands on MySpace. This answer is very depressing.

The more optimistic answer, however, is that such references supply synthetic camaraderie. It goes like this: Even if the average Family Guy viewer doesn't know enough Magnum, P.I. minutiae to follow a spoof of it, they know that some segment of Family Guy's millions of viewers must hold this trivia in their heads or the joke wouldn't air. So those who catch the references get to say "Hey, I totally remember wasting my childhood watching Magnum, P.I.." And for those who don't catch the references, the awareness that this Magnum, P.I. moment of cultural communion is occurring for someone somewhere makes Magnum, P.I. a bit of 20th-century folklore now worth knowing and sharing, even if that knowledge runs no deeper than the equally community-forming mention of the show on Family Guy.