Appearance Alert!

Philosophers and 'South Park'


That's exactly what happens in a new book titled "South Park and Philosophy." I have no idea who would read all the way through this laughable exercise in excuse-making. The first essay is a riot all by itself. William W. Young III, listed as an Associate Professor of Humanities at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, has titled his essay "Flatulence and Philosophy." The title fits.


Professor Young mocks those who find "danger" in "South Park." The only danger, he asserts, is its "depiction of dialogue and free thinking." He believes the perpetually profane Comedy Central cartoon, like Socrates, "harms no one," but provides an education, to "instruct people and provide them with the intellectual tools they need to become wise, free, and good."


Young praises the "non-conformist, reflective virtue" of the questioning children of "South Park," and then conflates the chronically clueless parent characters with parents in real life: "The parents of South Park corrupt the children far more than a television show ever could. Like the Athenians, the adults don't know as much as they think they know." In the show, when adults address the children, "the adult usually sounds like a bumbling idiot."

The good professor seems to have no concept that it's the writers of "South Park" who make a living from putting bumbling idiocy on television.

How do professors like this stoop to the bizarre idea that children can be enlightened by a show that labors to fit 160 uses of the S-bomb into a half-hour? A show that delights in having Jesus Christ defecate on President Bush with his "yummy, yummy crap"? How can you elevate that into the idea that watching "South Park" should really be seen as a correspondence course, like Newt Gingrich's "Renewing American Civilization" series?


Young then attempts to argue that "Terrance and Philip," an infantile cartoon within the infantile cartoon, is really one of the better offerings in television: "Is Terrance and Philip really more vapid, crude, and pointless than 'Jerry Springer' or 'Wife Swap'? Is it more mindless than Fox News, 'The 700 Club,' or 'Law and Order'? The answer is no." He then claims what offends South Park critics is "not that the show is vulgar and pointless, but that it highlights the mindlessness that is television in general."

This is where Young really makes a joke out of himself. Everything on television is mindless in general, and he can make no fine distinctions? To be charitable, comparing "Law and Order" to "South Park" is roughly equivalent to comparing Einstein to your garden-variety grade-school class clown. Or your favorite professor to this walking insult to academe.
