"Team America" Watch

Allow me to quote for you one Hank Stuever, whose review of the new Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie "Team America" appears in today's WaPo:

Stunned by all the fun, I am almost moved to salute Parker and Stone for their nuanced and careful take-down of American jingoism and the seemingly disastrous foreign policy that Team America stands for.

Only that isn't quite how it played to an audience on Tuesday night, at one of those free-ticket radio station giveaway previews in a packed cineplex in Northwest Washington. The biggest laughs came when "Team America" assaulted any and all concepts of ethnicity, or when the joke was on gays, Michael Moore or a vast left-wing idiocy.

The movie feels like an elaborate inside joke on the very Americans laughing hardest at its easiest gags, oblivious to the sly, allegorical digs at a USA brand of bravado. What I took to be a lampoon of Bushworld seemed to be received, in the seats around me, as a triumph of Bushworld. Pollsters and campaign workers, take note: "Team America" will only further confound your election-year data.

Don't you just luv the dripping condescension? Translation: Miserable right-wing rednecks! Don't even understand when they're being laughed at!

Let me go out on a limb here and suggest an alternate theory based on years of watching "South Park": Stone and Parker are not making fun of "Bushworld" per se. Rather, they're making fun of people like....Hank Stuever, who have created in their own minds the entire concept of "Bushworld". In other words, Stone and Parker are parodying the parody. And I'd be willing to bet a considerable amount of money that this is what is drawing the biggest laughs.

I suppose there is room here for a whole essay on the curious blind spot many (but not all) Elite Leftists have with respect to humor. My theory is that this blind spot is generated primarily by the inability of such people to laugh at themselves, a trait far more prevalent on the Left than on the Right. But I'll save that for another time. Mr. Stuever will do nicely as an example in the interim.

However, I do agree with Stuever's final sentence - "Team America" seems to have the potential to make a serious political impact. This is going to be good.

YIPS from Steve: Ann Althouse weighs in with her review of the review in the NYT.

MORE YIPS from Steve: Eloise at Spitbull has her take on things, plus this delicious quote from our favorite ifBushitlerwinsI'mstrappingonthevestandblowingupaSbarrosmyself lunatic Kos:

What do we [the anti-war crowd] get? Peacenik liberal Hollywood actors coddling up to terrorist regimes (ha ha). If you hate Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Janeane Garofalo, then you'll love seeing them get killed in a bloody battle with Team America.

Seals the deal for me! Yet, oddly, I don't think Kos meant that as an endorsement....

SECRET MESSAGE TO BARRY: Dude, Nebraska football sucks, just not as much as the Red Sox. Team America this weekend? Give me a call!!!