This is comedic brilliance.
If there's one thing I love about South Park it's how accurately [occasionally] they [accurately] present both sides of an issue, only to make everyone look like fools in the end.
Last night, however, they tore straight into Glenn Beck. Cartman got to read the morning announcements and in typical Cartman fashion, turned them into a platform from which to complain about the student council president, Wendy Testaberger. Complete with the hair, the chalkboard, and even the logo right off Beck's show, South Park went right after the demagogue and demonstrated that he really is nothing more than a lunatic with a microphone and a television time slot.
They attack his book, his style of phrasing accusations as questions, his appeal to emotion instead of logic, and even go so far as to turn Butters into the leader of a group of teabaggers. It really is an excellent piece of commentary on the effect that power has on people, especially the power of commentary on both the commentator and and listener.
Even if you're not a fan of the occasional potty humor South Park uses (they are fourth graders...), the episode is worth your twenty minutes.
Just a few quotes to illustrate their message:
"Listen, just because a guy's voice is on the intercom and his words are in a book, that doesn't mean he has any idea what he's talking about." - Stan
"Eric Cartman is simply making it so that all kids take responsibility to question their school leaders. We should all ask if our president is a penis-hungry hooker with a huge vagina." - Teabagger student
"The question now is what happened to morals? What happened to dignity? What happened to my schooooooooool?" - Cartman
You can catch a clip of the episode
here,
or you can watch the full episode at South Park's website
here.
And if you don't regularly watch this show, I highly recommend that you start. Last week I thought they brought up some interesting points about the meaning of a word, especially the word 'faggot', and how we define it in the dictionary vs. how we define it in use. Although I was disappointed that they weren't as straightforward as they usually are with the moral of the episode, it definitely raised some good questions. When it comes to political and social commentary, South Park does an excellent job.
UPDATE: Glenn Beck's reaction. "It is a compliment...it's nice to have somebody that had the facts right."