The Comedy Central Centrist

The book South Park Conservatives has gotten a good deal of attention. It’s ostensibly about the younger generations’ revolt against liberal media bias, but all reviews (and the South Park Conservative website) make it clear that it’s more about the revolt against rampant political correctness.

If a revulsion to political correctness is the only qualifier to be a South Park Conservative, The Yellow Line would like to apply for membership. Except, there’s something completely disingenuous about the whole South Park Conservative paradigm. Are fans of South Park “conservative” or are they merely “not liberal.”

They certainly can’t be good Republicans. South Park is a show of intense vulgarity and regular blasphemy. Sure, it’s funny as all get-out, but it’s not the kind of show likely to be favored by James Dobson.

This is the problem with the whole split-screen style of modern American politics. If South Park fans are not liberals, they must be conservative, right? Wrong. Let us postulate this: South Park fans are part of a growing group we’ll call, Comedy Central Centrists.

The Comedy Central Centrist is defined by a desire to live free of the left’s stifling political correctness and the right’s strict religious beliefs—of a revulsion to spin and a thirst for straight-forward truths. Whether delivered through the anti-authoritarian mischief of South Park or the unadulterated humor of Dave Chappelle or the snarkiness of Jon Stewart, Comedy Central rejects ideology and presents the world as it is: complicated, uncomfortable, dirty and down-right funny.

Traditional conservatives seem to think they will own so-called Gen X and Gen Y. We think they’ll end up as Centrists.