“South Park” conservative is the new editor of City Journal

The new editor at City Journal, replacing Myron Magnet, is the magazine’s deputy editor Brian C. Anderson, author of the dishonestly entitled South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. When I criticized Anderson in an e-mail two years ago for promoting the perverted program South Park as a triumph of conservatism, he replied that the show was really anti-liberal rather than conservative, and that he had made a clear distinction between anti-liberal attitudes and conservative ones in his book. Which raises the obvious question (which I’m sorry I didn’t ask him): Why didn’t he call his book South Park Anti-Liberals? I think the answer would be, one, that would be a clunky title and not provocative and wouldn’t have sold books, and second, Anderson is himself trying to push a moral-libertarian form of conservatism, and inventing something called South Park conservatism is a handy way of doing that.

Michelle Malkin is the only establishment conservative I know of who had the principles to reject the notion of South Park conservatism.

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Also, in our 2005 exchange, I got Anderson to admit that he is a liberal.

I had written to him about his article on “South Park Conservatives” that was later turned into the book. I had read descriptions of some of the things portrayed on this show, and was disgusted that he was promoting such a program as “conservative.” He told me the episode I had mentioned was in fact a humorous indictment of the sexualization of children and added he had a book coming out talking about South Park and anti-liberal comedy. In reply, I derided the notion of a book that would be “touting perversion as ‘conservative,’” and added sarcastically, “I’m sure you will have the enthusiastic support of many of your fellow ‘conservatives.’”

Anderson said there was no need to be nasty, and added that he made a clear distinction between anti-liberal attitudes and conservative ones in the book. He said that South Park was far more middle American and conservative than I realized. Then he asked me how I got set up the arbiter of who or what is conservative.

To which I replied:

Spoken just like a liberal. It’s only liberals who deny that words have any stable meaning, so that anyone can use words in any way he likes: “Hey, if I want to say that conservatism means a tv show that shows a woman inserting a pineapple into her vagina, then that’s conservatism. It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

And it’s only liberals who object when other people enunciate standards and make judgments based on those standards: “Who are you to judge? Who are you to be an arbiter?”

Anderson replied that he guessed he was a liberal, then, and mentioned his reading of Isaiah Berlin and Raymond Aron when he was in graduate school.

One lesson is: it’s sometimes possible to get conservatives-in-name-only to admit where they’re really coming from, if you use clear definitions of liberal and conservative and stick to them. One of the reasons the CINO phenomenon is so widespread today is the general failure to define our terms and then to apply those definitions when push comes to shove.

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In addition to Michelle Malkin, another mainstream conservative who would have nothing to do with Brian Anderson’s Perverted Cartoon Conservatism is Diana West. In an elegant May 2005 column, entitled “Replacing duty and honor with ‘South Park,’” she provided stirring examples of the unfashionable spirit and virtues of British World War II veterans, and then contrasted their moral sense with what we have today:

But word is that the future of the very conservatism that has always prized such virtues lies in the hands of “South Park Conservatives,” after the book by the same name by Brian C. Anderson. Very basically, the theory posits that the rank vulgarity institutionalized by the cartoon “South Park,” which degrades and desacralizes absolutely everything, will inspire young conservatives to smash the stultifying tyranny of political correctness. If you’re picking sides, P.C. vs. South Park offers about as much choice as the Iran-Iraq War—which, remember, after eight years of carnage, left both sides still afloat.

South Park president? Paul K. writes:

At the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner, President Bush presented a “humorous” slide show showing him looking under furniture in the Oval Office and saying, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. Nope, no weapons over there … maybe under here?”

It was with that demonstration of his appalling lack of moral gravity that I realized that our president is a South Park conservative.

BTW, it has also been reported in Woodward’s book and elsewhere that Bush is obsessed with flatulence. Inspiring, isn’t it?

LA replies:

His making a joke of the WMDs, the single most serious issue of his presidency, the basis of his taking the country to war and conquering a foreign country, is exactly like his father making the most solemn pledge ever made by a U.S. president, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” and then breaking the pledge a year and a half later and making a joke about it: “Read my hips.” Like father like son.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 02, 2007 02:19 PM | Send