Interview with Brian Anderson, author of "South Park Conservatives"

ABP ^ | 5/6/05 | ABP

[crushkerry]

It seems as if every week a new "political" book comes out, written by an author from either side of political spectrum. Most of these books, while great reads, mainly have the effect of "preaching to the choir".

Not so with Brian C. Anderson's fantastic new book best selling book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. The book has sparked a raging debate about the future of conservatism, not only amongst Republicans, but also among the Mainstream Media. One gets the feeling that the book will stand the test of time and that many years from now we will be debating the points raised in Brian's book.

We are very fortunate that Brian agreed to take time out of his extremely busy schedule (he's been all over TV lately) to answer some of our questions. We think you'll enjoy it.

One of the most intriguing possibilities touched on in the book is the potential for tension between the "South Park Conservatives", whose outlook on some social issues (like gay marriage) is much different than that of more Evangelical conservatives. Given that these two groups will likely be big forces in the GOP in the coming years (as well as being highly sought after for votes) how do you think this ideological tension over some cultural issues will resolve itself, if at all over the next few years?

This tension is nothing new on the Right, though now that Republicans have the White House and Congress, it has sharpened. But my use of the term South Park conservative is pretty loose—it basically amounts to someone who may not be traditionally conservative on issues of censorship and popular culture, or even on some social issues, but who wants nothing to do with the politically correct, Nancy Pelosi, weak-on-fighting-terror Left. I think a lot of younger Americans fall into this category. In speaking to a many right-of-center college kids for this book, I was surprised at how unconcerned they were with the gay marriage controversy. Few of them supported gay marriage, but most of them were supportive of the idea of civil unions. By sharp contrast, most were adamantly opposed to abortion. I’d love to see a serious poll of college conservatives on these matters, to see if my anecdotal observations are backed up by further data.

I think one area where the tension you describe could lead to a break is on censorship. I’m a pretty conservative guy, but I was appalled by the recent proposal by one Republican Alabama lawmaker to prevent public schools from buying copies of books by homosexual authors or having homosexual characters. So no Walt Whitman? Another idea circulating, which some Republican politicians support—extending broadcast regulations to cable and satellite—is similarly misguided. Preventing Tony Soprano from swearing isn’t going to help conservatives put a stop to judicial activism or fight terror effectively. In fact, it’s likely to alienate the “South Park conservative-types who’ve grown up with hip hop on their CD players (and now I-pods) as well as middle-of-the-road Bush supporters who don’t like judicial tyrants and want to see Islamo-fascists crushed mercilessly but who don’t want legislators telling them what they can or can’t watch on subscriber television. And of course, at some point it might be the Left extending its regulatory reach over the media. What becomes unsayable then?

Do you think that in 10-20 years the GOP is going to look more like Tom DeLay's party, or Arnold Schwarzenegger's party? Why?

Evangelical Protestants are the most rapidly expanding religious demographic in the U.S.—they make up almost a third of the adult population now—and the most religiously committed among them describe themselves as politically conservative. Evangelicals gave George W. Bush roughly four out of every ten votes he received in 2000, and white Evangelicals now make up nearly a third of registered voters. So the GOP will look more like DeLay’s party than Schwarzenegger’s, I’d say. Yet you’ll need both kinds of people in the GOP if it is to remain a governing party.

In your book you included several interviews with college age "South Park Conservatives", whose views (and actions) on some issues on things like pre-marital sex and other cultural issues were far more "liberal" than those of the current GOP base. How much do you think those views will change, if at all, once these "South Park Conservatives" get married and have children?

I’d say they’re quite likely to get more conservative, as people tend to when they get married, have kids, and start paying real taxes. The kind of out-of-control campus bacchanalia Tom Wolfe vividly depicts in I Am Charlotte Simmons is soul deadening after a while; my sense of it is that it turns off a lot of students from the outset.

The polling on younger Americans fascinates me. A recent Harvard University Institute of Politics study of college students found 47 percent of them to be liberal; but the rest placed themselves in the center or on the Right. You look at those numbers and you realize that pollster Scott Rasmussen may be right when he speaks of a possible “GOP generation.”

What's the main difference between a "South Park Conservative" and a "Libertarian"?

Again, I’m using the term South Park Conservative as a way to capture a kind of anti-liberal, anti-PC attitude or sensibility. To some extent that attitude would overlap with libertarian views, but it doesn’t imply that one is opposed to the Patriot Act or thinks the Iraq War was imperial overreach.

As you point out in your book the snobbish and dismissive responses of the MSM and other elite liberals to the "alternative media" led to the rise of the "South Park Conservatives". Are there any signs that liberals have figured out why Rush, Fox News, and right-wing blogs became so popular and have changed their approach to dealing with and responding to the ideas coming out of these mediums?

The revolt against the liberal media—against liberal elites—that I chronicle in South Park Conservatives has left some on the Left befuddled and angry. Fox News is a “fifth column,” blusters Al Gore, or “crazy people exchanging views,” according to the chairman of Time Warner. Liberal commentator Thom Hartmann likens the rise of conservative talk radio to a harbinger of fascism. The Washington Post’s David Broder blamed the lousy journalistic ethics of the mainstream media on the bloggers! “When the Internet opened the door to scores of ‘journalists’ who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering,” he complained, “old pros” like Howell Raines and Dan Rather “got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.” If only we could back to the good old days, when liberal elites handed news down to the peasants, who’d take what was healthy for them—that has been a common liberal response to the new world I describe in this book.

Some—even John Kerry a few weeks ago—would even like to see the Fairness Doctrine restored, which would wipe out political talk radio. Ronald Reagan phased out that regulation back in the late eighties. It required broadcasters airing political opinions to provide equal time to opposing viewpoints. So if you had Rush Limbaugh on, and he was getting 15 million listeners a week, you’d also have to have Mario Cuomo on, even if he was getting 20,000 a week. Radio stations generally concluded it would be best not to air any political opinions. The end of the Fairness Doctrine liberated political talk radio.

It’s no surprise some on the Left would like to see the Fairness Doctrine restored, since liberals have done so poorly on the airwaves. The Right completely dominates political talk radio, and liberals have never found a successful formula to compete on the dial. Air America, the latest effort, is drawing a 1.2 Arbitron rating in New York City, a smaller audience share than the all-Caribbean format it replaced in New York a year ago. So far, with a few exceptions, it is struggling everywhere it is on the air. I found it illuminating that Al Gore has been telling people that his Gore-TV won’t be anything like Air America goes cable—a sign, I think, that liberal radio is going nowhere fast.

This weekend Frank Rich cited your book to illustrate how the right wing's "arrogance" and "Illiberalism" in the Schiavo case is going to come back to haunt them at election time, just like Hollywood's arrogance and illiberalism caused the public to turn against liberalism at the ballot boxes? Personally I think Frank Rich is "Exhibit A" in why people dislike the MSM. But be that as it may, does he have a point?

I think we’re along way from impending “theocracy”! And there were prominent liberals, including Nat Hentoff, who saw the injustice of Schiavo’s treatment, that she had been denied rudimentary due process. So I take Rich’s warning only so seriously. But as I mentioned earlier, if Republicans do become too intrusive and illiberal, well, they could lose some centrist voters, sure. I don’t consider calling for a democratic up and down vote on the president’s judicial appointments particularly illiberal or arrogant, however, and I doubt most Americans would either.

If you were a Democrat of the sane variety (like Joe Lieberman) what would you be doing to try and win back the votes of "South Park Conservatives" who have seemingly been driven out of the party by the far left?

Tell my side to develop a better sense of humor. Tell Howard Dean to stop calling Republicans “evil” and “brain dead”—not the best way to peel off voters from the other side, in my humble opinion. Convince everyone that the party is serious about fighting terror. Kill political correctness dead, dead, dead. Don’t be so relentlessly secular. But when Harpers’s Thomas de Zengotita, a real lefty, can write about today’s Left as being about little more than seeking “straight material payoffs” to various identity groups, you can see the problem the Left in general has these days.

What has been the reaction of those on the left to the theme of your book, and have they ginned up the "lefty mill" to try and discredit you? If so, how?

Mostly they have offered variations on Frank Rich’s view: how dare someone on the Right say they like South Park? Conservatives are all nasty scolds and fascists! Or that I don’t see that the show satirizes the Right, too, even though I open my chapter on South Park and anti-liberal comedy by quoting Matt Stone, the show’s co-creator: “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.”

I’ve been on Al Franken’s radio show and he mostly complained that I was wrong about their ratings, and then he claimed—falsely—that I twisted the questions on a 2003 Program on International Policy Attitudes survey on media “misperceptions” that I cite in the book. I went back and checked after the broadcast—I hadn’t looked at the actual survey for months—and my paraphrase of the questions was almost word-for-word and Franken completely misread it. But he was pretty civil.

Some left-winger on a blog somewhere compared me to Al Gore trying to be hip. That was the harshest criticism I’ve heard.

On a personal note, you've been on several big time cable TV shows like "The O'Reilly Factor" to discuss the book. You've caught the attention of the "belly of the beast" (the New York Times) as well as scores of others in print and broadcast journalism. When you wrote the book did you expect it to get as much attention and spark the nationwide debate that it has obviously done?

I figured it would get some attention—the original late-2003 City Journal article the book grew out of certainly did—but nothing like this. Having the op-ed pages of the two leading newspapers in the country discussing your book over a three-day period is humbling. The book’s virtue, I think, is to have provided a kind of synthetic vision of where we are right now politically and culturally. It provides an explanation for how we came, seemingly overnight, to be living in a world where Sam Donaldson is declaring the death of the network news broadcasts and Ann Coulter is on the cover of Time (two things that happened the day my book was released a couple of weeks ago), and where we have a Republican president and a Republican Congress.

It’s a world that would have been hard to imagine just a few years back. I think you’ll see more change in the same direction, especially in the entertainment world. How much longer can tired liberal tropes be woven into movies? I watched this incredibly bad new movie the other night—Man-Thing, based on the old Marvel horror comic about a research scientist who does some nasty business in the lab, stumbles into a supernatural Florida swamp, and becomes a muck-encrusted, mindless monster that senses emotion. Well the movie version transformed the story into liberal agitprop: Now it was about a white Southern businessman and his Nazi-like workers, draining the swamp, which was sacred Native-American territory protected by a powerful swamp spirit—the Man-Thing of the title.

The heroes of the film were the young Yankee sheriff, newly arrived in town, the hot-babe environmentalist and Native-American affairs activist (and third-grade teacher), and the Native Americans themselves, shown to be in touch with the deepest spiritual wisdom. The bad guys: Southern crackers, businessmen, and their allies. How many times do we have to see that narrative play out? I think one of the reasons The Incredibles did so spectacularly well at the box office was its inversion of the typical liberal narrative, so that the bad guys were trial lawyers (whose nuisance lawsuits put the superheroes out of work) and a resentment-driven jerk without superpowers who wanted a world without incredible people—a kind of John Rawls-like world where excellence and distinction is punished instead of rewarded. I believe there is a huge audience for well-made cinema and entertainment that isn’t knee-jerk liberal in sensibility.

Did you try to speak with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of "South Park" either before or after writing the book to get their opinion of the book, or get their thoughts on your thesis?

I did try, but got no response—they’re busy people, so I wasn’t surprised. The book is based on lots of interviews—Colin Quinn, Sean Hannity, Glenn Reynolds, James Taranto, scores more. Writing the narrative was extremely pleasurable, since I was hearing so many fascinating observations from very smart, funny people. I do quote Parker and Stone extensively from published interviews, so I don’t think I mischaracterize what they’re up to.

Who is your favorite South Park character and why?

Cartman is probably the funniest South Park character: selfish, totalitarian, cruel, needy—occasionally right in his brutal honesty (and it’s clear Parker and Stone share Cartman’s views on hippies). But I like Kyle the most. He’s open to thinking things through and almost always tries to do the right thing.

Again, we want to thank Brian for taking the time to answer our questions.

[crushkerry]

Interview Ping.

[SittinYonder]

Here we go again.

[rdb3]

One of the most intriguing possibilities touched on in the book is the potential for tension between the "South Park Conservatives", whose outlook on some social issues (like gay marriage) is much different than that of more Evangelical conservatives. Given that these two groups will likely be big forces in the GOP in the coming years (as well as being highly sought after for votes) how do you think this ideological tension over some cultural issues will resolve itself, if at all over the next few years?

I am an Evangelical Christian, and I'm vehemently opposed to so-called "gay marriage." Even as a Christian, my views diverge with more traditional conservatives over some social issues because I believe in following the example set by Christ Himself. A change of heart cannot be accomplished by legislation.

People are going to get high, drunk, or do other sleazy things whether I like it or not. Therefore, liberty is better than coersion for non-criminal activities. Law and order is a must for violent lawbreakers and those who defraud people purposefully. Some may say that that makes me a Libertarian. I disagree, for this philosophy can not be the baseline of a political movement. But it should be used as a blueprint for policy decisions.

I'll gladly wear the label of "South Park Republican."

[Tulane]

YOU WILL RESPECT MY AUTHORITIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

[Oztrich Boy]

[Sinner6]

A change of heart cannot be accomplished by legislation.

Exactly

[SittinYonder]

I am an Evangelical Christian, and I'm vehemently opposed to so-called "gay marriage."

What about civil unions? You know, don't you, that it is impossible to enjoy South Park and be a Christian. I was informed of that earlier this week.

[rdb3]

You know, don't you, that it is impossible to enjoy South Park and be a Christian. I was informed of that earlier this week.

Then you were informed incorrectly. Be wary of whited sepulchers.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for posting this. This looks like another book, I will buy.

"This tension is nothing new on the Right, though now that Republicans have the White House and Congress, it has sharpened. But my use of the term South Park conservative is pretty loose—it basically amounts to someone who may not be traditionally conservative on issues of censorship and popular culture, or even on some social issues, but who wants nothing to do with the politically correct, Nancy Pelosi, weak-on-fighting-terror Left. I think a lot of younger Americans fall into this category. In speaking to a many right-of-center college kids for this book, I was surprised at how unconcerned they were with the gay marriage controversy. Few of them supported gay marriage, but most of them were supportive of the idea of civil unions. By sharp contrast, most were adamantly opposed to abortion. I’d love to see a serious poll of college conservatives on these matters, to see if my anecdotal observations are backed up by further data."

When we get away from the mentally ill in the San Francisco and Portland, Oregon area, we are see a lot of what would be labeled South Park Conservatives in the 25- to 30 something group. Another encouraging sign is a group of young adults we know, who have recently finished college or soon will be. They went in as conservatives and came out as conservatives. That includes a couple who went to UC Bezerkley.

On the other hand, every young person who went to Portland, Or. area has become an avowed Green lunatic leftie. Two of these commie watermelons became so bad, their parents stopped funding their left wing college expenses. They have stayed in the Portland area and become even more radical.

We have seen the same sad results for kids who went to a college or university in San Francisco. After graduation, they will work at any wage to stay there. One young woman became so bad after her graduation, her parents sold her bed and dresser and made her bedroom into a hobby room and changed the locks on their doors so she and her gay watermelon friends can't visit, freeload and tell her parents what awful people they are for being conservative Christians.

We live in interesting times, the future for the lunatic left looks grimmer everyday. Which makes them behave in more looney ways.

[Grampa Dave]

"I'll gladly wear the label of "South Park Republican."

A lot of us who are 60+ say, "Welcome Brother!" You and your South Park Republican Brothers and Sisters will be the end of the lunatic left as we know it. "South Park Republicans" will make our world a lot safer for our younger grandkids to grow up in.

[crushkerry]

Thanks Grampa Dave. If you order it through our site, we get a portion of the sale. :.}

[Grampa Dave]

I will drop a hint to my sons, DIL and wife. Father's day will be coming soon.

[Chi-townChief]

Good stuff!!!

[jmc813]

People are going to get high, drunk, or do other sleazy things whether I like it or not. Therefore, liberty is better than coersion for non-criminal activities. Law and order is a must for violent lawbreakers and those who defraud people purposefully. Some may say that that makes me a Libertarian. I disagree, for this philosophy can not be the baseline of a political movement.

I think that small-l libertarian might be a batter way to classify your social beliefs based on what you wrote. I agree that large-L Libertarians have their priorities way out of whack and will never be politically viable, but a small-l libertarian movement could gain traction, as it has with the Republican Liberty Caucus.

[OXENinFLA]

Brian Anderson on C-span2, BOOK TV...........just started.

[Bahbah]

Thanks, OXEN. Just tuned in. Putting off yard work. He's talking about the Fairness Doctrine.

[68 grunt]

... Be wary of whited sepulchers.

I was surprised to read the other poster's comment. I think of you as a fine example of a Christian.

[68 grunt]

Cool, thanks for the heads-up. I'm there.

[OXENinFLA]

Oh goody, questions...