← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kevin_O'Keeffe
Thread ID: 19768 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-08-22
2005-08-22 10:12 | User Profile
Has anyone else here seen "American Dad," which occassionally and erratically airs on some late night Cartoon Network compilation program known as "Adult Swim," as well as at 9:30 PM on various Fox network affiliate stations (not to be confused with the FAUX "News" Channel, which only senile nursing home prisoners and bezombified ignoramuses with a homoerotic attatchment to Sean Hannity's "Dick Tracy"-lookin' chin still watch anymore, or so I have it on "good authority," i.e. I just made it up, though I'm very hopeful it bears a substantial relationship to the truth). Its an explicitly leftist cartoon, alas, but its hysterically funny and EXTREMELY anti-Bush, and I might even go so far as to describe it as the first U.S. t.v. program with a more-or-less anti-'neo-"conservative"' agenda throughout. Its the second best animated political satire after "South Park." I don't regard "The Simpsons" as political satire the way I do those other two shows, for despite some brilliant individual episodes, the entire show ("The Simpsons," that is) was/is essentially a pro-establishment exercise. The dictionary might disagree with me on this, but I regard satire and satirists (at least those of a political nature, in any event) as being innately dissident in function and task. The state doesn't have its own house satirists. If they did, whatever sense of humour they once laid claim to would have long sice degenerated into the sort of imbecilic banter you just know comes out of Jonah Goldberg's mouth when he's at a Manhattan cocktail party, being served $9 drinks they've figured out a way to force the American taxpayer to cover the expense of, as well as the wages of the illegal immigrant drink servers (which, fortunately for those of us conned, scammed, & fleeced into having to pay for it, we're only talking slave wages...but I digress, it seems).
The bottom line is, if you haven't seen "American Dad" yet, plan to do so at least once; its a show worth having an informed opinion on. 9:30 pm, Sundays on FOX.
2005-08-22 11:19 | User Profile
This reads like you had a lot of coffee, Kevin.
I have viewed this program, but I just cannot get into it. It is a sort of amalgam of all the satirically-themed cartoons for adults that have come out in the last 10 years or so. It has been done before, and better.
South Park is terrible. Even if we ignore the fact that most of the humour is crude and juvenile, there is no escaping the fact that it is often abusive for no good reason. I absolutely hated Mel Gibson's Passion, but South Park decided to make an unwarranted and insubstantial attack on him, just to try and present him as an idiot. They also can appear to be "edgy" by simply stating the obvious. "Just because a black person gets fired, it DOES NOT mean it had to be because of racism", that type of thing. Maybe that reflects more poorly on society rather than the show itself. The Simpsons is probably not political satire, but nor would I call it pro-establishment, or at least not as much as South Park, which is pro-establishment as long as the establishment isn't humanitarian.
2005-08-22 11:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=robinder]This reads like you had a lot of coffee, Kevin.[/QUOTE]
Sanka.