South Park Conservatives

I have a secret: I am a huge fan of South Park!
I am also a South Park Conservative!

A new book that has made my must read list is "South Park Conservatives" by Brian Anderson.

Quoting from a Tech Central Station article "Anderson, the senior editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, uses fans of the popular -- and controversial -- Comedy Central animated series as a metaphor to describe the changing face of conservatism"

"The term refers to a kind of irreverent post-liberal or anti-liberal attitude or sensibility, one very in tune with popular culture. But it's not a coherent, fully developed political philosophy" says Anderson

He goes on to say of South Park Conservative university students that "Political correctness drives them nuts", "In interviewing students, for instance, it was clear how much the PC conformities of the campus Left turned them off."

"The elite media", Anderson says, "have the power to send out squadrons of reporters to investigate, say, Tom Delay but not Kofi Annan and UN corruption, and that can still shape the public's perception of what's newsworthy, still can provide a narrative to the flux of events and issues." The ability to choose what to investigate and what to report remains powerful form of information control for big media. "

The book is less about South Park and more about how the intellectual exhaustion of the left, along with other factors such as excessive political correctness, the PC,talk radio, Fox News, and bloggers have shaped the new conservatives, impacted on politics, and helped the Right to achieve parity in the cultural war. The next frontier,he believes,will be Academia .

According to Anderson, campus students "are trending to the right on issues from how to view capitalism to attitudes about abortion and many view campus PC orthodoxy with abhorrence -- which is why so many of them love South Park."

It's a great read!