Sorry to our readers who got a VERY early edition of this post in their RSS feed. Mr. Cheap accidentally hit “Publish” when he meant to hit “Save”.
“Margaritaville” (originally airing March 25, 2009) was the 3rd episode of the 13th season of South Park and it provided an amusing perspective on the current financial crisis.  After various prophets each try to explain the reason for the current crisis (one blames low interest rates, another blames corporate greedy, while Cartman, of course, blames “the jews”), Randy (Stan’s dad) wins approval by explaining that the citizens of South Park have angered “the economy” by mocking it (and it has, in turn, cast its vengeance upon them all). Channeling Mr. Cheap, he advises:
Yea, it is an angry and unforgiving Economy. To repent we must stop frivolous spending! Instead of paying for cable let us watch clouds! Instead of buying clothes, wear but sheets from thine beds! Cut spending to only the bare essentials! Water and bread and margaritas, yea.
Meanwhile Stan decides to try to return his father’s margarita maker, which stands as a proxy for mortgages-backed securities, and traces it through the retailer, lender, stock broker, and ultimately to the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington (where he discovers how political decisions are REALLY made).
You can watch the episode on-line (legally) at www.southparkstudios.com/clips/222639 (in the US) or watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/south-park/season-13/south-park-1303-margaritaville/ (in Canada). Viewers outside the US and Canada may try to watch it here, and if you’d rather read it then watch it, check out the script. WARNING: South Park’s humour can be fairly edgey (Mr. Hankey makes me feel a little nauseous whenever he’s on the screen), and it might not be to everyone’s taste.
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I agree with the idea that The Economy is angry at us and that we must appease it.
However, I don’t think that the thing that The Economy is mad about is that we have become a Consumer Society. I think that The Economy is cool with that.
I think that the thing that The Economy is mad about is that we are an Unthinking Consumer Society. The Economy wants us to think these things through more carefully.
And it’s not that we’re dumb. We’re plenty smart enough. No one has ever lived this way before. No earlier society has been so rich. We are trying to apply ideas that kinda sorta seemed to work in a very different environment to a world in which the average person possesses a far higher level of wealth. And those ideas just don’t work in this environment.
My belief is that we are going through growing pains.
Teenagers sometimes grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults after learning the lessons they need to learn to pull that off. And sometimes they get killed in car accidents as a result of driving drunk. We haven’t decided yet how far we want to take this drive-drunk-and-die-young thing. That’s the drama.
Rob
One of my earliest memories about “growing up” was my mother telling me “you can have everything in life, just not all at the same time”.
I think that the current generation wasn’t told that & sh.. is hitting the fan right now… Whatever anyone tells me, I still believe greed is nourishing our current financial problems…
@Mark
Just curious, who you are referring to as the “current” generation?
That is awesome, the problem is that usually people only see it as humor because its a cartoon but many cartoons have strong messages we can learn from.