Tag: Ben Southwood

South Park ‘Apologizes’ to Al Gore for ‘ManBearPig Episodes’

South Park Studios/Comedy Central
South Park Studios/Comedy Central

Audio version.

South Park has “apologized” for mocking super serial Al Gore in its ManBearPig episodes. Naturally, the liberal media is going wild with righteous jubilation.

According to one sanctimonious commentary in the Guardian, it’s a sign that South Park has finally seen the error of its ways – part of a growing recognition by TV that politically correct snark has no place in this more enlightened, caring, woke modern world of ours.

Many TV shows which felt groundbreaking even a decade ago now appear problematic. Friends, Seinfeld and Ally McBeal: all have been criticised for demeaning attitudes to women and a lack of minority characters. But they are still celebrated as products of their time.

Shows which began in the 1990s and are still going to face a different, more complicated reckoning. The most high-profile example has been The Simpsons, in which the character of Apu has been severely criticised for stereotyping south-Asian Americans. The makers of the show have responded bitterly and a dispute continues.

South Park has demonstrated more humility, while managing to stay funny. It acknowledged a major misstep without any pressure to do so and found a way to apologise while remaining on brand. And for good measure, it had an episode this season which mocked the Simpsons’ saga.

Then again, it could just be another example of a phenomenon that has featured quite a lot in South Park over the years and which left-wing journalists often have trouble appreciating: a joke.

Read the rest on Breitbart.

Annoying Tosser of the Day

My annoying tosser of the day is ‘Professor’ David Phoenix, ‘Vice Chancellor’ of South Bank ‘University’.

I feel all those inverted commas are necessary because it’s only a jumped up polytechnic and I suspect his title – and his OBE: he’s got an OBE FFS! – owes more to services to time-serving, bureaucracy and rampant left-wingery than anything he has achieved in academe.

You can listen to him on Radio 4 Today which I’ll post below. The section is about 2.48 in.

He’s responding to a study from the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) which suggests that about 9 out of 10 university lecturers swing left rather than the right.

Well we hardly needed the ASI to tell us this. Anyone with even the remotest association with academe knows it to be the case. Universities are the Helm’s Deep of PC lunacy. Only a reality denying idiot would dispute this.

Step forward ‘Professor’ Dave – who did just that.

The sample, he said, was too small.

And there was no left-wing bias on campus – because at South Bank ‘University’ they really valued free speech.

That was it. That was his argument. “There is no left-wing or free speech problem on campus anywhere in Britain because I, ‘Professor’ Dave say so.”

Mind you, the whole segment was a farce. Why did Today have to book such a dogmatic, naysaying leftist who just killed the discussion stone dead? Why couldn’t it have been somebody with something germane and informed to say like Professor Frank Furedi? Or a woman? How about a woman? Radio 4 loves women and there are loads of really good ones it could have got to strike the right gender balance – Claire Fox, say?

And why did the author of the report, Ben Southwood, have to present it in such a meek, almost apologetic way that he damned near went along with interviewer Justin Webb’s suggestion that the report was meaningless?

Here was an opportunity for Britain’s premier daily current affairs programme to broach one of the major cultural issues of our times: our kids at universities are being brainwashed by a bunch of thick trots; they actually believe ‘safe spaces’ are an important thing; free speech is increasingly constrained.

And BBC Radio 4 Today programme – as per sodding usual – ducked it completely. Shame on you, Today programme. You are such a piece of shit. And the worst of it is, you don’t even know WHY you’re so shit. You think that non-debate you conducted there was emblematic of fairness and balance.

Listen for yourself. Keep a sick bag handy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hd4ty