South Park Republican Bingo

by Ted on May 6, 2005

Alabama legislator proposes bill to ban libraries from buying books by gay authors or about gay people. Middle-aged anti-Bush protestors arrested and strip-searched. Christian lobbying group prepares to fight vaccine against cervical cancer because it might encourage women to have premarital sex. Florida Republican legislator proposes bill to give students the right to sue if they think their beliefs are being questioned or treated with disrespect. Republicans in Congress write one-time-only law purporting to cancel decisions of Florida courts for Terry Schiavo’s parents.
Senate Majority Leader Frist joins questionable characters on “Justice Sunday” to proclaim that the Democrats are prejudiced against people of faith. Christian lobbying group gives “Salt and Light” award for successful campaign to reverse anti-bullying program that includes gays. Focus of the drug war in the United States has shifted significantly from hard drugs to marijuana (trend started under Clinton, to be fair) James Dobson compares the Supreme Court to the KKK. Virginia bans private contracts between gay couples; no wills, medical directives, powers of attorney, child custody and property arrangements, even perhaps joint bank accounts can be recognized.
East Waynesville Baptist Church kicks out all its Democratic members. Bush administration bumps Kerry supporters from international telecommunication standards conference. Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Pat Robertson says that federal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorists. GOP rewrites descriptions of Democratic amendments to accuse Dems of protecting sexual predators.
Texas legislature bans suggestive cheerleading. Former pro-McCarthy ghostwriter given new job as ombudsmen for the Public Broadcasting System. Senate Majority Leader (and physician) Bill Frist refuses to contradict federally funded abstinence-only materials that claims that tears and sweat can transmit HIV. Conservative media saves Christmas. Texas House of Representatives votes to ban lesbians, gays, and bisexuals from being foster parents.
Top Republican lawmakers propose applying decency standards to cable television and satellite television and radio to protect children from explicit content. Chief of staff for Tom Coburn (R-OK) says, “I’m a radical! I’m a real extremist. I don’t want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!” Bush’s federal court nominee Janice Rogers Brown claims that America is in the midst of a religious war. Kansas Board of Education (not legislature, sorry) holds debate on validity of evolution vs. intelligent design. Texas legislature votes to make gay marriage extra double super illegal by changing the Texas Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

HOW TO PLAY: Well, that’s just the point. Why would you want to play?

(P.S. If anyone can help me get rid of all the blank space up top, I’d be grateful. -FIXED! Thanks, William)

{ 38 comments }

1

William Sjostrom 05.06.05 at 12:36 pm

Easy to fix. Just remove all the blank spaces in the post. That includes any carriage returns you have entered before the table.

2

Ted 05.06.05 at 12:43 pm

Hey! You’re a genius!

3

abb1 05.06.05 at 12:52 pm

Why do you hate America, Ted? With all due respect, you’re objectively objectively pro-Islamofascist, America-hating anti-family-values traitor.

4

P ONeill 05.06.05 at 1:25 pm

It could be played by taking a horizontal number corresponding to the number of Simpsons references made by Jonah Goldberg on a day, and a vertical number corresponding to number of Star Trek references he makes on that day, and then seeing which square that puts you on. Of course determining prizes is a whole different story.

5

Katherine 05.06.05 at 1:28 pm

you’re my hero.

6

rilkefan 05.06.05 at 2:33 pm

Great roundup. Off to feel scared in private.

7

SoCalJustice 05.06.05 at 3:45 pm

This blog entry took way too much effort to only have 6 comments.

Here’s number 7!

Excellent work – too funny.

Cheers.

8

Uncle Kvetch 05.06.05 at 3:47 pm

Excellent work. With all due respect to socaljustice, I don’t find it the least bit funny.

9

SoCalJustice 05.06.05 at 4:16 pm

U.K. – point taken.

he presentation is funny (to me, anyway).

The content is sad/scary.

10

SoCalJustice 05.06.05 at 4:17 pm

Whoops – lopped the “t” off of “the.”

11

Barry Freed 05.06.05 at 4:17 pm

Is anyone else disturbed by the coded language here used to disguise a pernicious slur?

The use of the word “Bingo” here has to be one of the most blatant and hateful little pieces of anti-Catholic bigotry I’ve seen since, well, since Pope Benedict XVI changed his lederhosen.

12

Uncle Kvetch 05.06.05 at 5:04 pm

‘salright, SoCal. It is a funny presentation, one that perfectly skewers the ridiculousness of the entire “South Park Republicans” meme.

But I wouldn’t be living up to my handle if I didn’t find something to gripe about, now would I? There’s a lot of funny things posted on CT whenever the subject arises of the gradual takeover of vast stretches of American public life by thugs, bigots, fanatics, and assorted ignorami. Sometimes I even laugh. Most of the time I recognize that they’re funny but find it impossible to so much as crack a smile, because it’s getting harder and harder to dismiss all of this as “just some yay-hoos out in Hooterville being silly” and assume that they can’t “get me” as long as I’m safely ensconced in the People’s Republic of Manhattan.

Just 2 weeks ago, I went to the bank with the man I’ve lived with for 10 years so we could open our first joint checking account. A tiny step into the breach for two lifelong commitmentphobes. And just today I learned, courtesy of Ted’s very amusing game, that the good people of Virginia voted last year to make just such a banking arrangement impossible in their state, so deeply do they abhor us. And I hadn’t even heard about this, because the shit is flying so fast and so thick these days that it’s really getting hard to keep up.

I’m rambling here. Sorry to be the skunk at this particular garden party, but I’m honestly wondering how much longer I want to remain in this country. Not a damn thing funny about that.

13

st 05.06.05 at 5:16 pm

Texas cheerleeding statute was introduced by a Democrat, I’m afraid. Just for the record.

I know, I know, I was shocked, too.

14

carsick 05.06.05 at 6:48 pm

Sure but gosh guys all those things are isolated incidents caused by ‘enthusiastic volunteers’.

15

Barry Freed 05.06.05 at 7:19 pm

Just 2 weeks ago, I went to the bank with the man I’ve lived with for 10 years so we could open our first joint checking account. A tiny step into the breach for two lifelong commitmentphobes. And just today I learned, courtesy of Ted’s very amusing game, that the good people of Virginia voted last year to make just such a banking arrangement impossible in their state, so deeply do they abhor us. And I hadn’t even heard about this, because the shit is flying so fast and so thick these days that it’s really getting hard to keep up.

I’m rambling here. Sorry to be the skunk at this particular garden party, but I’m honestly wondering how much longer I want to remain in this country. Not a damn thing funny about that.

And there it is people. In black and white for all to see, even those among us who only see black and white. Just one of untold myriad such, seemingly insignifcant in the great scheme of things, unforeseen, but not at all unexpected consequences of this bigotry hate-fest that is being stoked for cynical ends here.

Uncle Kvetch, you have my deepest sympathies for the suffering being inflicted upon you and your partner on account of this utterly bhorrent attempt to wound and maim that with is most sublime and transcendent in our lives, which is love (I’ve heard tell it to be a word that passed Jesus’ lips a time or two). You are most certainly not the skunk, the stench arises from another quarter entirely, it’s source, not that of natural living mammalian hormonal or pheremonal glands but the foul reek of decay, of rot, of mold, of putrefaction, of death.

These Pharisees and hypocrites are saved? Yeah, saved like the strawberries I saved to eat later that I forgot about a few weeks ago. The promise is sweet and fragrant in the begginning but now moldy and rotten throughout.

I wish I could offer Uncle Kvetch something more than the mere words I write here. Some hope to hold onto, a North Star to keep ahead of one, a guide to a true and free America. But my impression is that Uncle Kvetch is somewhat older, I don’t know how old and maybe I’m wrong, but how long this darkness? For teenagers now there’s a lot to feel hopeful about, and even more so for the generation that will follow them. This will not last. And it never does last. And we know that younger generations attitudes towards basic natural human differences (because that’s what the fuck we’re talking about here) is becoming more and more humane and by large increments. But I can easily see this lasting for another six, ten, twelve, maybe even sixteen or twenty years before it gives up its unholy ghost. So I don’t know what to say to someone like Uncle Kvetch. Except to express my outrage and horror at the depraved, cynical, and arbitrary crime which has been and continues to be perpetrated on him and his love. And this, all this suffering being inflicted on fellow human beings is done in the name of the Most High? Sin more adequately describes the perversions and outrages these Pharisees and hypocrites gleefully inflict upon those who have never even done them an iota’s bit of harm. These sanctimonious fools, these worshippers of Mammon, these molestors of the innocent and predators upon the weak, these pillagers of the common good- I declare you outside the Law that binds the human community together in brotherhood and sisterhood and in love, the most sacred. I will not rest until you have slithered back into the margins and beyond, the trash dumps, till you have faded so much from memory that you become known only as a caricature to be ridiculed, a laughing-stock to be jeered at.

I haven’t even been able to bring myself to be able to comment on the post Ted did above, but there it is, human life, and human suffering even wherever you may go, and more and more this term.

I feel anger. I feel outrage. But right now above all I feel shame. Shame and sorrow beyond measure.

16

Steve LaBonne 05.06.05 at 8:16 pm

It’s even worse in Ohio- the yahoos passed an amendment to the state constitution with much the same language as the new Virginia statute. Of course that was, among other things, an important part of their successful get-out-the-vote strategy last November. I’m not even gay and this sh*t makes me feel like emigrating sometimes. There are few things more enraging than people with the power to make one feel ashamed of one’s own country. F*ckers.

17

Xavier 05.06.05 at 8:30 pm

First off, I believe the term is “South Park Conservative” not “South Park Republican.” There are a lot of people who claim that South Park tends to promote a conservative agenda, but nobody claims that South Park is consistently Republican.

Second, finding a big list of issues where the conservative position doesn’t track with the South Park position doesn’t prove anything. South Park conservative isn’t meant to be redundant. Obviously, there are a lot of conservative values that aren’t consistent with South Park, especially where religion is concerned. A South Park conservative is someone who rejects the more religiously inspired aspects of social conservatism.

Third, how did “Middle-aged anti-Bush protestors arrested and strip-searched” make the list? I can think of no better example of South Park conservatism than harassing hippies.

18

James 05.07.05 at 12:38 am

also just to clarify–it is the KS Board of Education, not the KS legislature. School board elections are the best bets for getting stealth candidates in. This happened in KS 6 years ago too; fundies took over the Board, embarrassed everybody except themselves, and in the next elections the moderates threw the fundies out. We can only hope that those who who don’t remember the past will repeat it.

19

JayAnne 05.07.05 at 8:51 am

I am so sorry, Uncle Kvetch. Barry said what I feel so I won’t say any more, right now.

20

Uncle Kvetch 05.07.05 at 9:36 am

Thanks much, Barry, for your eloquence and empathy (and to Jayanne as well).

Of course the picture is decidedly more mixed than my comment yesterday would suggest. I’m 40 (and my partner’s 52), and of course we’ve witnessed enormous changes for the better in our own lifetimes. I need to remind myself of that every once in awhile. And we’re still making great strides–at least in the blue states. Connecticut’s legislature just approved civil unions–the legislature, mind you, so we won’t be hearing “activist judges” run amok. There are gay-straight alliances in high schools–high schools! Something that would have been positively unimaginable in my own high school days. We’re present in the popular culture like never before. For many gays & lesbians in much of this country, the closet is quite simply a thing of the past, and that’s something to celebrate.

But of course it’s precisely those great strides that are producing the vociferous backlash that we’re seeing over there in the other America. As ever-greater numbers of people come to think of people like us as pretty much “normal,” the reaction from the ignorant and fearful–and from the hucksters who exploit that ignorance and fear for political gain–gets ever uglier. So while things are getting better for some of those teenagers that Barry refers to, for others, it’s getting worse by the day.

A defense of bullying–just ponder that for a moment. I’m sure we’re all aware that there are parents out there who are so terrified by the prospect of having a gay child that they might look the other way when their child is harassed for being “different”–maybe it’ll straighten him out, after all. But most right-thinking folk would recoil from that mentality–wouldn’t they? Not anymore…that very kind of thinking is actually celebrated by an organization that purports to represent the “persecuted” Christians.

Now ponder the fact that, as the Rolling Stone article Ted links to (the “Salt & Light Award” link) mentions, “The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove.”

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? I’m honestly not sure…but it’s looking increasingly like what’s in the glass isn’t water, but gasoline.

21

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally 05.07.05 at 12:36 pm

Uncle Kvetch, My deepest appologies for the pinheads who vote. The family values brigade never met my family, with values like physician-shopping for more prescritions for Valium and Elavil and closet abuse of those drugs, checking out on their responsibilities to their kids and abdicating that responsibility to hired others, and wrecking my stepsiosters car and saying her brother did it.

Everything I learned about monogamy and real family values, the ones that have afforded me a 23-year-and-counting marriage, I learned from my “Uncle Billy and Aunt Richard.” They have almost 40 years together, the record in my family, with my husband and I in second with 23. May we remain as happy and committed and devoted to one another as they have.

22

Benedict XVI 05.07.05 at 12:48 pm

B16!

I win.

23

razor 05.07.05 at 3:04 pm

Middle aged anti Bush protesters is not the definition of hippies, though maybe it is good enough for South Park conservatives, smug south park conservatives being redundant.

24

Crissa 05.07.05 at 3:53 pm

*cry*

Might note that the ‘banning of contracts’ is between any adults, not just gay ones. So my grandmother can’t choose via contract who has joint access to her property and will make emergency decisions for her. Glade she doesn’t live in Ohio.

PS: Your table is wider than your frames; the left frame dangles over the table making the final column unreadable at 600 pixels browser…

25

Robin Green 05.07.05 at 7:03 pm

Banning of contracts?? Where is the outrage from the libertarian fraternity?

*sound of crickets*

26

moni 05.08.05 at 6:41 am

Here’s another depressing one to add to the table:

FDA set to ban gay men as sperm donors – New rules aimed at preventing spread of AIDS, officials say

“Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years,” said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

I have a feeling it’s more about the fear of some magical passing around of gayness to offspring, which would be oh such a Bad Thing.

If it was fear of HIV, why aren’t they testing everyone already?

27

Nicholas Weininger 05.08.05 at 9:15 am

Oh for Christ’s sake, Robin. There’s no damn “sound of crickets”. Start with Arthur Silber’s blog if you want a bunch of libertarian outrage at this stuff:

http://coldfury.com/reason/index.php

For some more detailed examination of the latest legal outrages, Kip Esquire at kipesquire.powerblogs.com is always good too. And Hit and Run had an item on the Virginia outrage a year ago, back when it was breaking news– they’ve also reported on several of the other bingo squares, most recently I think the Alabama legislator thing.

Really, this sort of formulaic “where’s the outrage” bullshit coming from people who’ve obviously not bothered to look around *at all* is just silly.

28

Uncle Kvetch 05.08.05 at 9:40 am

Nicholas, I may be wrong, but I think of Arthur Silber as the exception on this kind of thing, not the rule. Are the Cato Institute and Reason magazine anywhere near as exercised about things like the Virginia legislation as they are about phasing out Social Security?

29

Nicholas Weininger 05.08.05 at 11:10 am

kvetch: I dunno. How do you measure relative degrees of exercised-ness? David Boaz, who is executive VP of Cato, wrote an article on Virginia’s history of bigoted legislation for Reason magazine in April:

http://www.reason.com/hod/db042805.shtml

Cato’s policy analysts probably spend more time on economic issues, but that’s Cato’s particular niche. Reason these days is (sadly) more into tangential culture commentary anyway.

In any case, neither is a particularly good barometer of the libertarian movement as a whole. I don’t know that there is such a generalist barometer, frankly. Your typical libertarian blog, for example, will have a distinct specialization– the economists do econ stuff, the rights-theorists do rights theory, etc. Silber makes the “bingo issues” his specialty to a greater degree than most, certainly.

30

Doctor Biobrain 05.08.05 at 1:05 pm

In the long run, the South Park Conservatives are far more dangerous than the loony religous ones. The religious conservatives have no real power, which is why politicians need to find empty, rhetorical ways of pleasing them; like with Schiavo and opposing gay marriage. But if the Repub’s actually banned abortion and the rest of the religious agenda, there’d be no way to keep them voting Republican. And in the end, nobody can satisfy the religious loons, and they’ll eventually realize that Republicans don’t represtent their interests.

But the SP Cons are a new wave which DOES represent conservative thinking. They’re much smarter than the religious conservatives, and their nihilistic attitudes towards laissez-faire are much more infectious. And while they dislike the ineffective religious cons, they’re more than willing to keep their mouths shut in order to focus on their true enemy. Us.

Or, to quote SP’s Matt Stone, “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” They’re coming after us, and are more than willing to temporarily cozy up with the religious cons to do it. We can laugh at them, but we do so at our own peril.

31

luci phyrr 05.08.05 at 8:28 pm

Do South Park Conservatives have a lot of overlap with the typical young ‘n smug, techie-libertarian types? Thinking politics and social organization works like computer algorithms, and they’ve figured it out…

Border-line Asperger’s syndrome might explain a bit of it.

32

SamChevre 05.08.05 at 8:49 pm

Do South Park Conservatives have a lot of overlap with the typical young ‘n smug, techie-libertarian types?

Some, but not a great deal. What “South Park Conservatives” tend to hate most is nanny-state niggling, not the state per se.

33

Matthew Edge 05.09.05 at 7:59 am

The Kansas legislature is NOT holding debate on evolution vs. intelligent design. The hearings are sponsored by the Kansas Board of Education, which is a separate body with members elected in their own right. It’s probably only a trifling different, but all the more reason you should get it right.

34

Ted 05.09.05 at 8:46 am

Fixed. Sorry about that.

35

Paul Watson 05.09.05 at 9:35 pm

“They’re coming after us, and are more than willing to temporarily cozy up with the religious cons to do it. We can laugh at them, but we do so at our own peril.”

Who’s “us” and “them” here? What seems to be getting missed is that age, not nominal left/right political affiliation is the great divider.

For the record, I’m well to the political left. And like SP’s Matt Stone, I really fucking hate *middle-aged* liberals. “Hippies” who hog the roads in their SUVs, hog the mainstream media airwaves (and the white-collar job market more generally), and whose greed has made buying a property unaffordable for my generation . . . I could go on.

While I don’t like conservatives of my generation, either, they are still to be preferred to sanctimonious middle-aged liberals.
In particular, the youthful Right can hardly be blamed for growing up in the greed-is-good 80s – the decade in which liberals entirely spent sitting on their hands (apart from once going to Live-Aid, perhaps).

So it’s chuffing for me that Doctor Biobrain actually sounds a little bit threatened. It’s been a long time coming, Dr B, but the payback’s going to be a bitch. And the more your generation squeals, the more we’re going to impassively respond that it was *your* generation who invented ageism, anyway, with that “never trust anyone over 30” BS.

36

Uncle Kvetch 05.10.05 at 7:38 am

“Hippies” who hog the roads in their SUVs, hog the mainstream media airwaves (and the white-collar job market more generally), and whose greed has made buying a property unaffordable for my generation . . . I could go on.

So you’re able to figure out the political opinions of someone by the way they drive their SUV, or by the houses they buy? I’m sure there are lots of sociologists & political scientists reading this blog who would love to hear about your methodology–it would be a great time-saver.

37

Paul Watson 05.10.05 at 5:21 pm

Uncle Kvetch,

My point is precisely that I don’t give a damn about the political opinions – past or present, professed or “real” – of those born between 1946 and 1961.

Actions speak louder than opinions, and baby boomers over the last two decades have – by act or omission – thoroughly convinced my generation that boomers are all the same in the end. Like I said, *we* didn’t invent ageism . . .

38

sashafoo 05.10.05 at 6:09 pm

Dear Paul,

What the friggin hell are you rambling about? I’m part of “your” generation and nothing in this world pisses me off as much as someone else purporting to speak for me. You are so, so wrong and your logic is atrocious! “We” (meaning *you*, of course) didn’t “invent” ageism, so we (you, again) are free to club everybody else over the head with it. Yeah, nice.

As for liberals spending the 80s sitting on their hands, I actually work with a whole slew of liberals in the age bracket you delineate and they were quite busy. They have been busy For The Past Forty Years. Unlike you, apparently, Mr [moderated]. (Wah, I’m going to blame everybody else, since it’s too hard to work together to foment change.)

As a member of the generation that Paul here is attempting to hijack, let me say that NO, in fact MY generation does not think that boomers are all the same. Because that would be stupid and lazy, and really some of us do enjoy thinking.

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