South Park Does The War
Apr. 9th, 2003 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusSome of the most two-sided balanced coverage of the war that I've seen so far is in tonight's episode of South Park. I've often held up South Park as proof that you don't have to lose your sense of humor, or be a complete idiot, to be conservative. (Nor do you have to be a religious fanatic, though that gets lost among people who confuse liberal and conservative with democrat and republican).
However, I still don't feel that they've represented the anti-war side very well. They seem to buy into the common myth that everyone against the invasion of Iraq is a pacifist or against war in general. They draw the dichotomy of people who want America to be strong, and those who want to protest the war, which isn't quite it. They usually don't represent the "liberal" side of things terribly well (such as their episode on hate crimes, where they completely got wrong what a "hate crime" actually is).
Not that I mean to slam South Park, though. I'm well aware that as a cartoon their primary job is to be funny, which they do admirably. It is kinda funny to find the primarily conservative South Park on the chronically liberal Comedy Central, while you got the very liberal The Simpsons on Fox, a network whose news comes right out of the White House PR agencies.
However, I still don't feel that they've represented the anti-war side very well. They seem to buy into the common myth that everyone against the invasion of Iraq is a pacifist or against war in general. They draw the dichotomy of people who want America to be strong, and those who want to protest the war, which isn't quite it. They usually don't represent the "liberal" side of things terribly well (such as their episode on hate crimes, where they completely got wrong what a "hate crime" actually is).
Not that I mean to slam South Park, though. I'm well aware that as a cartoon their primary job is to be funny, which they do admirably. It is kinda funny to find the primarily conservative South Park on the chronically liberal Comedy Central, while you got the very liberal The Simpsons on Fox, a network whose news comes right out of the White House PR agencies.
