King Of The Park

Last night's King Of The Hill was a pretty funny episode. Titled "Earthly Girls Are Easy", it mocked the environmentalist delusion that purchasing "carbon offsets" can compensate for rampant pollution.

For the blissfully unaware, "carbon offsets" are the Indulgences of the tree-hugger faith. (Incidentally, I'm disappointed that I'm not the first person to make that comparison, although I wrote the previous sentence before seeing the page I just linked to.) The idea is that as long as you pay a tax, presumably to be used toward good works, then your personal transgressions can be overlooked.

In practice, this means that as long as you bribe people in developing nations to stay agrarian (and starving), you don't have to forgo trips on your personal jet. As one might imagine, this "fine for me but not for thee, but here's some gold" approach is very popular among the hypocritical, selfish wealthy.

I enjoyed the episode, but something about it seemed a bit...off. Toward the end, as Hank tried in vain to explain to a crowd of nitwits why offsets don't work, it struck me: this wasn't an episode of King Of The Hill.

It was an episode of South Park.

Mocking superficial celebrity trends, showing a protagonist trying in vain to explain the problem to dolts who couldn't care less - this is Parker and Stone's stock-in-trade. Hank Hill might as well have been Stan Marsh up on that stage.

Last night's Family Guy rang a little familiar, too. Jesus was established as a "regular guy" character, eventually having fame go to His head. At least He wasn't hosting a community access cable show.

Other cartoon producers seem to have a problem on their hands when they try to engage in social commentary. No matter what they try, South Park Already Did It.

And so we come full circle. I'm pretty sure this means Parker and Stone get the last laugh.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. The guy on the left is my pastor, and the guy on the right is my attorney.