Cartoons in 2003
Jesse Walker, of Reason, pens a good article on how cartoons such as Southpark and King of the Hill have a libertarian/conservative bend to them. He also touches on the Simpsons and its all over the map politics. Cartoons have definitely growns up and growns up.
Not conservative. But not liberal, either. An intensely political show - really - South Park almost always comes down on the libertarian side of an argument. Its targets range from environmental crusaders to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to government-run sex education. And no, it doesn't preach a libertine sort of libertarianism. In addition to the sex-ed episode, it's satirized the extreme wing of the pro-choice movement and once devoted a half-hour to arguing that there's a good reason why TV should refrain from airing cuss words.
If South Park is libertarian, then King of the Hill might best be described as populist. It makes no bones about its heroes' failings: Hank Hill is naive and repressed, his family is eccentric and his best friends are a loser, a womanizer and a raving paranoid. But their world exists in a kind of balance, where everyone's good qualities make up for everyone else's flaws; you get the impression that their Texas suburb can take care of itself. Real trouble comes when outsiders try to interfere: regulators, managers with MBAs, Ritalin-dispensing doctors, left-wing or right-wing ideologues.
(via Ulmann)
Jesse Walker, of Reason, pens a good article on how cartoons such as Southpark and King of the Hill have a libertarian/conservative bend to them. He also touches on the Simpsons and its all over the map politics. Cartoons have definitely growns up and growns up.
Not conservative. But not liberal, either. An intensely political show - really - South Park almost always comes down on the libertarian side of an argument. Its targets range from environmental crusaders to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to government-run sex education. And no, it doesn't preach a libertine sort of libertarianism. In addition to the sex-ed episode, it's satirized the extreme wing of the pro-choice movement and once devoted a half-hour to arguing that there's a good reason why TV should refrain from airing cuss words.
If South Park is libertarian, then King of the Hill might best be described as populist. It makes no bones about its heroes' failings: Hank Hill is naive and repressed, his family is eccentric and his best friends are a loser, a womanizer and a raving paranoid. But their world exists in a kind of balance, where everyone's good qualities make up for everyone else's flaws; you get the impression that their Texas suburb can take care of itself. Real trouble comes when outsiders try to interfere: regulators, managers with MBAs, Ritalin-dispensing doctors, left-wing or right-wing ideologues.
(via Ulmann)
posted by Champion at 11:14 PM
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