Because of the reference in Frank Rich's column¹ I decided to watch the March 30^th episode of South Park, Best Friend's Forever. It was hilarious, as I'd assume it would be. But, aside from the Schiavoesque plot-line, I found the references to nerd martial culture extremely amusing. I assume that the non-nerd audience could make out the obvious mimicry of the LotR films (they make it explicit by the end), but how many people would catch the Ender's Game allusion? Details were altered, but it seems pretty clear that Kenny was Ender Wiggin (was the soulless Japanese kid Bean?). Anyway, for me at least, as a mid-level nerd, the genius of South Park is that it's rather like classic children's literature: for the kids like Frank Rich the colorful and simplistic Schiavoesque plot-line catches their attention and bombards their senses with naked allusions to recent cultural touchstones, while for adult nerds there are subtle references to powerful motifs of the geek subculture which nourishes the mature mind with greater richness and depth.

1 - I have never beek a fan of the whole "South Park Conservative" weirdness. It seems kind of like shitting in a public space, and declaring it sanitary. So, while I rarely read political columns, this time I had to check it out. It seems to detach the term conservative from any social or historical context and transforms it into a plain dictionary definition, a defense of the social status quo, from the Bush twins to Federline Yo. Michelle Malkin strikes at the South Park Conservatives from the Right, and it is an especially hard hit since she herself has been labelled as such by the creator of the concept.