Puerile and Pro-Life

The long-running television cartoon show South Park is not for children. It pushes the boundaries of lewd, but here's one surprise: South Park often makes fun of sacred liberal cows, including global warming, hatred of Wal-Mart, and . . . abortion. It may be hard to believe, but for the last 10 years South Park has been consistently and brazenly anti-abortion.

For example, in an April episode this year Cartman, a morally reprehensible and often disturbingly astute 8-year-old, gives inner-city high-school kids his secret for success: Cheat! When a female student is about to drop out because she is pregnant and believes abortion is wrong, Cartman tells her, "Abortion isn't wrong! What is the one thing that I've been teaching you?" She responds, "That cheating is good?" Cartman says, "Yes! And abortion is the ultimate form of cheating. You are cheating nature itself. Why do rich white girls get ahead in life? Because they get abortions. . . . They cheat that little critter in their belly right out of a chance at life."

Cartman's demographic assumptions are off but his message is clear. A female, "pro-choice" South Park fan I know said the above exchange jarred her so profoundly that she had to stop watching. She said that it "hurt" to hear it. Why? Because in American pop-culture no one speaks the most basic truth about abortion. The brashness of South Park rejects the euphemisms and obfuscations of the left.

South Park has more jewels in its manure. Kyle and Stan, the two "good" children at the center of the show, by the end of the week's misadventures usually gain an understanding that cuts through the tortured and predominately liberal logic of the world around them. So, South Park: Not worth watching for many WORLD readers, but worth knowing about.

-Kenan Minkoff is a writer in New York City