Cher on South Park

Mr. Cher Scholar has just gotten into South Park so we’ve been watching rerun episodes so he can catch up on ten years of pop culture.

I hadn’t watched the show in years but I remember the Cher satire: South Park police playing “Believe” in a Waco-like attempt to drive the holed-up cult members insane. They call “Believe” really bad music and insist, “Nobody can stand this much Cher.” But hilariously, the closeted Mr. Garrison loves the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3tB9o5TqY

Before Christmas I saw that South Park also did a breakout riff on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in a very funny mash-up with Terrance & Phillip on the episode “Terrance & Phillip: Behind the Blow” from 2001.

I captured it on my camera. Higher quality link to .wmv: http://www.cherscholar.com/tandpsandc2.wmv

MP4:

FLV:

If I were to describe South Park, I would say it’s one of the best animated shows ever produced, consistently hilarious and well-written morality tales. The creators have impressively tackled movies and Broadway. It’s easy to appreciate well-rounded characters like Randy Marsh and Shelly (who’s hardly ever on but is one of my favorites), the eternally frustrated Mr. Garrrison, and the goodhearted Butters. And although the show is socially (and verbally) liberal, its creators are decidedly not. Occasionally they go a bit conservative for me. Combined together I’d say they skew overall middle-to-conservative politically. The Huffington Post does a good article on trying to determine the political bias of the show and the complications: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/25/matt-stone-trey-parker-ar_n_475744.html

Speaking of conservative, I came across a conservative blog complaining about Cher’s tweets.  The article is called “The Unbearable Whiteness of Cher” and it sits on the Tea Party News Network. So rest assured there’s a gratuitous amount of name calling in the article: Goddess of Botox, Queen of Plastic Surgery, dimwit, tool… My two cents:

• The article is really about how white the city of Malibu is. And the only reason the article is even worth mentioning is because the author made a pie charge to describe this whiteness of Malibu. His thesis: Cher can’t possibly like black people because she doesn’t live near them (as figured in the pie chart). Conversely, Rand Paul is not a racist because Bowling Green, Kentucky, has a higher black population than Malibu.
• His implied thesis: rich liberals who don’t have a large enough black population in their neighborhoods are banned from discussing race issues. It’s a creepy racist way of saying “It’s not your problem. We’re living with them. Stay out of it.”
• Although low black populations in rich neighborhoods is a legitimate cause of concern, we can easily find poor white people (living near black people) who would be more than willing to say the same things Cher has been saying. Do you have to live in the appropriate pie-charted neighborhood to judge Rand Paul?
• If Cher didn’t talk about issues like Ferguson, that wouldn’t go over well either. It’s a trap she can’t win. And Alex David would be calling Cher a hypocrite no matter what she did, unless she agreed with Rand Paul.
• This is good time to remind everyone how The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour hosted a plethora of black entertainers no other variety show would host or support. But unless Chris Rock becomes her neighbor soon, this probably doesn’t count for anything.