|  When
PBS's Charlie Rose asked Trey Parker pointblank on a September 26, 2005
show if he was a libertarian, the outspoken co-creator of South
Park was uncharacteristically coy.
"It's
possible," Parker admitted.
It's
not that he was embarrassed about being a libertarian. It's just, Parker
told the host, that the question was, well, "It's like: Are
you gay?" Then he laughed uproariously.
It was a typical Trey Parker moment. He managed to compare a straightforward
political question to a query about sexual orientation, and transform
an enigmatic answer into a punchline. But Parker's evasiveness was less
about embarrassment than it was about not wanting to be politically
pigeonholed. From his, yes, libertarian perspective, Parker
(along with creative partner Matt Stone) has been able to infuriate
both right-wingers and left-wingers with barbed political satire. And
that's the way he likes it.
Parker was born in 1969. He studied film and classical music at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, where he met Stone. The two teamed
up to create crude cartoon shorts, including one that featured early
prototypes of the major South Park characters. Another short,
"Frosty vs. Santa Claus," was a precursor to "The Spirit
of Christmas." It caught the eye of a TV producer and led to an
invitation to create South Park, which debuted on the Comedy
Central cable network in 1997. The show features cartoon fourth-graders
who live in a fictional town in the Rocky Mountains, curse constantly,
and battle menaces like anal-probing aliens and a Godzilla-size Barbara
Streisand.
South Park is rife with libertarian themes. It has mocked the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, anti-smoking activists, the War On
Drugs, government-mandated diversity (when the children shun a nasty
gay teacher, they are sent to the "Death Camp of Tolerance"),
public school sex education, and nature-worshipping environmentalists.
It also tees off mercilessly on left-wing celebrities like Jesse Jackson,
Rosie O'Donnell, Michael Moore, and Rob Reiner.
Given its eagerness to poke fun at liberal icons, it's no surprise that
some conservatives rushed to claim South Park as their own. In his 2005
book South Park Conservatives, author Brian Anderson argued
that the show is at the forefront of a conservative revolt against liberal
media. (Although Anderson is honest enough to note that the show makes
"wicked fun of conservatives" too.)
But
Parker rejects the "South Park Conservative" label -- as well
as the notion that he can only choose between liberal and conservative.
In an interview with In Focus magazine (October 4, 2004), he
said, "What we're sick of -- and it's getting even worse -- is:
You either like Michael Moore or you wanna f**kin' go overseas and shoot
Iraqis. We find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the
right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person
to us."
All South Park Conservative claims aside, most commentators
understand that the show is decidedly libertarian. On LewRockwell.com
(April 27, 2004), Michael Cust said the program is "sharp, witty,
funny, and very libertarian." On FrontPageMagazine.com (April 16,
2003), Eli Lehrer noted the show's "persistently libertarian politics."
On OpinionJournal.com (September 1, 2004), Bridget Johnson praised the
show's "libertarian-minded material." On Reason.com (December
14, 2003), Jesse Walker said, "South Park almost always
comes down on the libertarian side of an argument." South Park
even gives an occasional insider's nod to libertarianism; one show featured
a policeman saying he's "never reading again" after tackling
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Following the success of South Park, Parker and Stone took
their libertarian sensibility to the movies. The duo wrote, directed,
or starred in Orgazmo (1997), BASEketball (1998),
and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999). The latter
film, a cartoon/musical attack on censorship and jingoistic American
military policy, was praised by the Guardian newspaper in England
for its "libertarian message." (One of the movie's songs,
"Blame Canada," was even nominated for an Academy Award.)
In 2004, they released the bizarre marionette movie, Team America:
World Police, which was simultaneously a send-up of Jerry Bruckheimer-style
action movies, America's macho interventionist foreign policy, and clueless,
do-gooder liberal actors. Team America featured puppet sex,
puppet cursing (the movie boasted a tagline, "Putting the F back
in freedom"), a puppet Kim Jong-il, and gory puppet slaughter.
So -- at the risk of asking "Are you gay?" -- is Trey Parker
really a libertarian? He didn't play coy in an April 4, 2001
article in the Los Angeles Times. When asked to describe his
politics, Parker said he was "a registered Libertarian." (Stone
was less sure about his politics. He told the Los Angeles Times,
"I don't think I'm registered to vote.")
--
Bill Winter
Quotable
"We find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the
right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person
to us." -- Trey Parker, In Focus magazine
(October 4, 2004)
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