Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Family Guy Has Balls

I haven't always been a fan of Family Guy. I've thought their strong points, the only funny parts, were in bits that usually had nothing to do with the story line, as opposed to, oh, say... The Simpsons, who fit their jokes into a story line, which when done right is much better, subtler, smarter, but when done wrong becomes obvious, apparent, contrived and cheap. In recent seasons, The Simpsons have gone back to doing it well, for a viewership in the modern era, when they had gone more '50s and forced on their base in seasons previous.

But Family Guy has taken a few bold stances worth noticing recently, and it would be wrong to not mention it at all. For instance, this clip takes a bold stance on the upcoming U.S. Presidential election by showing a nazi who supports the McCain-Palin ticket - of which I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

It remains to be seen whether Family Guy can go the South Park way and become a quintessential big-audience animation show that ignites position-taking and provokes thoughts on a constant basis (on current divise issues, more often than not) rather than just go for a cheap pop-culture laugh - and I'm not even sure it's their intention to get there either. But this particular shot was bold, and deserved mention.

On either side of the political spectrum, when someone has balls, it's good to talk about it; even more when they're on the right side.

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