For anyone who’s read this far, here’s a link to the Onion’s interview with them a couple of weeks ago. It’s been many years since I’ve watched the show regularly, because they kept wallowing in their own ignorance when it came to politics (”Rosie O’Donnell is fat! And loud! And annoying! Hahahahaha!”). However, I thought this quote from the interview gave some insight on why they’re not interested in losing their ignorance:

If you ask me how to really solve the health-care crisis, I have fuckin’ no idea, and I don’t want to be a part of it. But I can make a little fat kid yell some emotional truth about it.

To them, it’s all about their gut reaction and they’re never interested in asking why they have that reaction, which is why they do stupid things like swallow the Sore/Loserman bullshit during the 2000 recount hook, line and sinker.

As far as cultural commentary goes, they’re pretty good. I get the impression that they actually have a fondness for some of the topics they lampoon (e.g., Lord Of The Rings and Guitar Hero), which is probably why those episodes resonate better.

As far as convincing South Park Republicans to stop voting Republican, I’d imagine that the easiest thing to do would be to use a word who’s negative connotation has been revived by South Park itself and tell them that voting Republican is gay.

Also, I wanted to mention that I think reality TV is absolutely ripe for analysis. Frankly, anything that a lot of people spend a lot of time watching does have a large impact on our culture, larger, most likely, than stuff (like The Wire) that seems “deeper”.

I don’t typically do much analysis of reality TV, b/c I don’t really watch/enjoy it, but dismissing it out of hand is short-sighted.

And substuting addiction to the 12 steps for addiction to alcohol can be just as destructive.

Yes, except that you’re not as likely to be violent, out of control, kill yourself or others through drunk driving, damage your health, etc.

Not all addictions are equally destructive.

Also, a second on Infinite Jest. It’s great, though I’ve been praying for the last month or so that it eventually will come to an end. It just keeps. on. going.

About the only good recent episodes were “Trapped in the Closet” and “Super Adventure Club”. Everything else has been nothing more than thirty minutes of tearing down anyone who isn’t them.

It was fine right up until the end where they started moralizing about how avoiding alcohol completely wasn’t controlling oneself, and that alcoholics can just control themselves and drink moderately.

I didn’t see that as the point at all. Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic. Certainly not Randy Marsh. And substuting addiction to the 12 steps for addiction to alcohol can be just as destructive.

Or is this just another bullshit AA “Everyone’s an alcoholic, they just haven’t admitted it yet” line?

This thread has reminded me of the Monty Python sketch with the pepperpots squabbling about whether something was satire or madcap humor…

Given how heavily edited and carefully selected what makes it into the episode is, reality tv is hardly free of narrative, theme, etc. And given how strong the public’s reaction has been to some of them, it would be hard to say that nothing could be learned from what chords are being struck or what chords the studios are hoping to strike by including certain scenes or conditions.