By MARLENE SOKOL, Times Staff Writer
Published October 28, 2005
Either you've seen South Park or you haven't. I have, many, many times.
I'm not ashamed that I received a VHS of the movie version for, I think, Mother's Day. It's one of my all-time favorite gifts.
The show is one of my guilty pleasures, at 9:30 p.m. when the kids are asleep. I have as sick a sense of humor as anyone.
It's all right. I'm over 21.
It is not all right for my 9-year-old son or 11-year-old daughter to watch the long-running hit on Comedy Central (shown, too, on the public airwaves now, good old UPN 44).
Saying so does not make me a hypocrite.
I am allowed to drink a glass of wine, or two, or three if I'm not driving.
Does Junior pop a Budweiser when the Bucs are playing? Not hardly.
A big no-brainer, you would think. Or so I thought, until one day I happened to overhear a conversation in the courtyard of my son's elementary school.
"Did you watch last night's South Park?" one second-grader asked.
"I did," another said. "It was so funny."
I was shocked as I reached my destination, the school office.
And almost as shocked when several of the women working there reported never having seen the show.
Watch it, I told them.
And to all you parents out there: Watch it.
Know what your kids are talking about on the school bus. Know what they could be tuning in to if they have televisions in their bedrooms, which - to hear my daughter tell it - is true in every household in America, except mean old mine.
Know that there is such a thing called a "Kenny Zap Lamp," sold online for $39.99, that "zaps" the cartoon's Kenny character every time you turn it on.
Comedy Central sells close to 100 commemorative items, including pillows, refrigerator magnets, action figures - Christmas stockings, even.
I had to search around in the knockoff sites for the lunch box I kept hearing about (a secondary character named "Timmmmmah," remember him?).
Interesting to read that television icon Norman Lear joined up with South Park after enjoying the show with his teenage son.
Was that kid 19? Or 13?
Where do you draw the line?
Line-drawing, of course, is a tricky business for most parents born after, say, the Second World War. It's hard to be a prude and a hedonist, and everybody has a different standard.
Show of hands if your child ever happened upon Friends, The Simpsons, or Two and a Half Men? You need a remote in hand for almost anything shown on prime time. Quick! Cut to Bay News Nine and hope nobody's bleeding too bad.
My kids see all kinds of stuff that gets red lights from the Parents Television Council. My daughter and I love a good romantic comedy and, yes, the better-scripted ones are PG-13 or higher.
Let's face it. Some find even Disney objectionable.
But South Park? Again. If you've seen it, and it's okay if you enjoy it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
If you've never seen it, and you have kids, you owe it to yourself to TiVo it up and sit for a viewing. Unless you have a television-free home. I know such families. Their children are terrific.
But I digress.
Go watch South Park, each and every one of you.
Then decide, for yourself and your children, where to draw the line.
