I’m actually glad that South Park parodied Glenn Beck
As much as Glenn Beck might get frustrated, as seen in:
GLENN: He has gotten so much flack from his friends because, you know, they buy into, “Oh, he’s a fascist.” I don’t care what you do with your life. Honor the Constitution. Limited government. Maximum amount of freedom. Throw them all out. Get people who understand the founding fathers. Libertarians are eating each other alive. And it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense. But see, there’s no, there’s no structure to it. And I’m fine with that. But that’s why libertarians lose is because there’s no, there’s no system. There’s no system. And so there’s no one to defend. And so the, both parties, when they start to grind down on you, you have the entire system against you, and it’s quite amazing. It’s quite amazing.
So here’s Cartman. Now, this is South Park, and I’m flattered. But remember these guys are libertarians. Here’s South Park. …
STU: Everyone’s got their role in society and South Park’s is to make fun of everyone that’s around.
GLENN: And everybody. It was Tom Cruise and Scientology and Jesus is know was a full episode.
STU: It’s on everything, global warming.
GLENN: Global warming. So it is a compliment. I have to watch it, although it is I have to tell you, it would be nice to have somebody, somebody that wasn’t that just had the facts right.
As much as I like Glenn Beck (although I haven’t watched him in a while, along with the Factor, mostly due to lack of time; I don’t count anyway, as far as Nielson ratings go), I am glad that South Park did a piece on him—if they didn’t, I couldn’t trust them any more.
After all, they are entertainers before they are libertarians (or any other political ideologues). Their job is to make fun of people, make obscene humor, and comment on current events (by way of doing either of the two above). If they chose not to make fun of someone or went easy on someone just because he was a libertarian, well, then we would know that we can’t get good libertarian jokes from South Park.
We can all benefit from understanding that there is some part of what we do that is independent of our ideologies or beliefs. Comics shouldn’t be afraid of making fun of someone out of reverence (see: SNL and Obama); scientists shouldn’t misrepresent science because existing results are unfavorable to left-wing (or sometimes right-wing) agenda; and journalists shouldn’t let their political viewpoint affect what they cover and how they cover it.