While Sarah Palin spent the weekend basking in overexposure because of cameo on Saturday Night Live, the FOX animated comedy Family Guy was making a not-so-nice dig at the Alaska governor and her running mate, John McCain.
Sunday’s episode featured a time travel road trip with Stewie, Brian and Mort Goldman traveling back to 1939 and the German invasion of Poland. Nazi jokes were plentiful, but one in particular stood out. While dressing in Nazi uniforms for a disguise, Stewie noticed something strange on the shirt: a McCain/Palin button.
Family Guy‘s distaste for the Republican party is rather infamous. The show never misses an opportunity to demonize the right, and having a Nazi support the McCain/Palin ticket certainly reaches that bar.
Earlier this season at a Family Guy Halloween party, one of the characters dressed as the victim of a car accident, claiming to be the person Laura Bush ran over and killed. The characters then repeatedly claimed “Laura Bush killed a man.”
Family Guy‘s McCain/Palin joke might be seen by some as crossing the line, but that’s just what the show does. Creator Seth MacFarlane is positively fearless when it comes to politics, whether’s it’s comparing Sarah Palin and John McCain to Nazis or showing President Bush in a photograph next to the Devil.
The most impressive part of MacFarlane’s far left humor is that he’s able to joke about the dangerous world we live in, something no one knows better than him. In a story that is now the stuff of legends, MacFarlane was originally scheduled to be on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, but a scheduling mistake by his assistant caused him to miss the flight.
That sobering close call with tragedy would likely cause most people to reevaluate things and look at the world in a more serious way. MacFarlane isn’t one of those people. Instead, he uses the power of television to critique and mock the politics he disagrees with.
It’s not mature, it’s not sophisticated, it’s not a lesson in proper debate. But it’s Family Guy, and comparing McCain and Palin to Nazis is exactly what we’ve come to expect from this extremely politically incorrect comedy.
Watch This Episode of Family Guy
-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image courtesy of FOX)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
