South Park creators get poison Penn letter

IOL: South Park creators get poison Penn letter

This gets more hilarious by the minute... If I needed another reason to see this movie, Sean Penn has given me one more. Parker and Stone have really hit this nail on the head and the proof is evidenced by the amount of irritation sparked on both sides of the issue. For a topic which is so deathly serious and depressing, the comic humor must be this offensive to get over the emotional walls both sides have erected around their platforms. For me it is a reminder (much needed these days) that there is the world "out there" and then there is the world "right here." The one with your family & friends; the one in which you get up every morning and go to work, the one with laundry and vacuuming to be done. The great political juggernaut seem to be pushing Americans to forget about the lives we have right here, and worry endlessly about the world "out there." That's all well and good... But the world "out there" is simply made up of billions of "right heres."

Depression is a debilitating state of mind... nothing gets done when things are depressed. And now, more than ever, things need to be getting done. So we need to break this spell of gloom and doom that we've had draped over us and get our sense of humor back. I lost mine for years after September 11th. I have a brother in law who is a fire fighter in NYC, family in D.C., the months following the attacks were morbid and the news and politics sucked the life out of me... I've been determined since last year to get my self back together for the sake of my family and my well being... that is to say, I need to have as much focus on the "right here" as I do on the "out there." A movie like this does that by smashing the media/politics induced veil of seriousness that surrounds these issues.

We have to realize that we are Americans... our culture is based on selective amnesia and unflagging optimism. That is how we move forward as a nation. We don't become mired in the past... we look to the future. But the last 20 years have been very retrospective for America... the media has gone to great lengths to produce a European style historical conscience for Americans. It's a poor fit. Yes, the Europeans are generally more serious... but frankly it makes them rather sour and unproductive... When I was young I firmly believed, in my adolescent seriousness, that the Europeans were more mature... they aren't that's a myth. They are just more pretentious. More convinced of their superiority. Americans lack that confidence. We remain curious and brash... irreverent and iconoclastic. Tearing down idols makes room for the novel and exciting. Getting bogged down in social sensitivity and political correctness promotes stagnation and perpetuation of the status quo. Change does not occur... so things can get neither worse nor better.

So with regard to Team America, it's high time we had some serious idol smashing... And some serious idol smashing without a particular political agenda. Fahrenheit 911, even if it was meant to be satire... Was a politically sided satire. It had a goal in mind. Team America's only goal seems to be the crushing of the inflated seriousness that surrounds world issues right now. Both sides of the debates need to have their egos popped. The media is going to spin this all over the place, but in the end it's the media which is in the cross hairs for handing Parker & Stone such a ripe setting for this farce. Hollywood and Washington can cry all they want, but of all the people in the world, those two towns are as out of touch with the "right here" as any can be.

BTW: The critics are painting this movie as something only juveniles will enjoy, implying of course that if you are a "mature adult", you should be more serious and not go see it... LOL. The "mature adults" need to see it more than anyone!