Family Guy and Lipstick on a Pig

As our culture has coarsened over the years, raunchy, irreverent television shows and movies have been bestowed with an undeserved mantle of respectability in the media and of course by the Hollywood crowd. We can argue to infinity as to why that is, but I think it comes down to the philosophy of moral relativism turning right and wrong inside out. How else can anyone explain the popularity of a show like Family Guy? And a recent episode of this awful cartoon ripping Sarah Palin and, by extension, her family (how original) is just the latest example of getting some cheap laughs at an innocent party's expense.

According to a recent article, the premise of the episode was the teenage son dating a girl with Down's Syndrome. When asked what her parents did, her response was that her mom was "the former governor of Alaska." Clearly this was meant as a putdown to Palin herself; whether it was also meant to insult her youngest son Trig is less clear. However, an insult to the mother is at least indirectly an insult to the family as a whole. The show's writers and producer will no doubt defend this by pointing out their sensitivity in showing a Down's person leading a "normal" life. However, having the character spout that cheap-shot line is ample evidence that sensitivity was not their main objective. It also demonstrates that a show which is dedicated to crude humor has a pretty tough sell that it can be sensitive about much of anything. Therefore, it's reasonable to draw the conclusion, no matter their protests to the contrary, that their intent was to be insulting.

Let's flash back about 20 years, which seem like the good old days now. Vice President Dan Quayle was openly critical of the show "Murphy Brown" because the main character, played by Candice Bergen, had the audacity to have a child without a man's presence or involvement. According to Quayle, the show glamorized single motherhood when in fact it was shown in study after study that kids from single-parent homes were much less likely to have happy, successful lives as adults. President George H.W. Bush came to his veep's aid with the quote that "America needs more of The Waltons and less of The Simpsons." Of course, both were reviled in the media as hopelessly out-of-touch and old-fashioned.

Whether the writers for the Family Guy show are tools of Obama or have simply been drinking the Kool-Aid about Sarah Palin, in the end it's all about this: Palin is fair game to the Left, and any attack on her is just fine—the more the better. And ripping Palin is really just another way of accomplishing their push-the-envelope, in-your-face agenda that defines what they would describe as cutting-edge humor. I'll certainly buy the "cutting" part of that description.

Unfortunately, I don't think that even most leftists get many yuks out of these sorry attempts at using ridicule to get laughs. Rather, they probably have a grim sense of satisfaction that Palin and those like her are getting "put in their place" by useful idiots who are doing their dirty work for them. The Obama flacks are then free to feebly denounce the show and look like good guys while inwardly congratulating the writers for getting some fresh political digs into the enemy.

For years, the Parents' Television Council has warned anyone who cared to listen about how far moral standards have fallen in prime-time TV, and with Fox and the cable channels joining the original network lineup it's gotten progressively worse. Ironically, the ubiquitous and now universally-lauded Simpsons helped start the real free-fall which had been years in the making. The little potty-mouthed rebel, "Bart," has fostered a whole generation who believe that kids are smarter than their parents and therefore the parents don't deserve any respect. It shouldn't be underestimated just how much this mentality has had a corrosive effect on the family as we once knew it. We have many articles here, justifiably so, about how leftists are trashing the Constitution; however, not much is said about how Bart and his copycats on TV have done the same thing to the Fifth Commandment.

It's laudable that Governor Palin and her daughter Bristol have fired back at Fox and the Family Guy show for this latest insult. We need to join her and point out, whenever we can, that the "mainstream's" efforts to dress up shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. Even their hero the president isn't fooled by that.