I plan to go to my local multiplex and see "Shall we Dance," and "Team America" today.
Maybe we shouldn't have registered all those young people to vote ...
By Ann Althouse
"Team America" premieres and the NYT is disturbed to discover that the "South Park" guys are ... gasp! ... conservative! Reviewer A.O. Scott writes:
The obscene patriotic ditty that is the Team America theme song might be hyperbolic (and impossible to stop singing), but it is not sarcastic. Nor is a speech, delivered twice in the course of the action, most powerfully at the climactic moment, that is meant as an answer both to the Hollywood peaceniks and to the wishy-washy world community, whose representatives have gathered in North Korea for a peace conference.
Because of its graphic (though metaphorical) discussion of human anatomy, I can't quote any of the speech here, but it is one of the more cogent — and, dare I say it, more nuanced — defenses of American military power that I have heard recently.
Scott begins his review by saying we're in "a golden age of satire" (replete with the Times's obligatory praise for Jon Stewart), but he ends the review expressing frustration that he can't find a way to argue against it. But he does try. He says that as a big "South Park" fan he expected "a wholesale demolition of everything pious, hypocritical and dumb in American culture and society," but "Maybe I expected too much." Yes, that's the way I feel every time I watch "The Daily Show." I keep expecting them to satirize both sides. I even expect NYT articles that refer to "The Daily Show"--and there are so many--to admit it falls short because it doesn't attack "everything pious, hypocritical and dumb" in American politics. But maybe I expect too much.
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