Fight Child Obesity... or Your Chunky Kids Are Gonna Get Waxed During Recess.

Did South Park just advocate breast cancer awareness? Yes, yes it did, and it was hilarious. I don't have breasts, and I haven't had a struggle with cancer, but I'm willing to bet that if I had I would have found it even more hilarious and probably empowering. If you didn't watch it, go here ("Breast Cancer Show Ever"), and then read the rest of my comments.

Without having experienced cancer, there can't have been many ways for South Park's writers to relate to ladies affected by it. What was great about the episode was that they didn't try to relate. They kept it simple, light, and funny. And let's be honest, who didn't laugh hysterically when Cartman ate his underwear, or when he took a dump on Mr. Garrison's desk all to avoid getting beat up by a girl. Everybody was a winner tonite on South Park. Even opponents of child obesity.

Message - If you let your kids get fat, they're gonna get beat up. Maybe by a girl. Fact.

I read a book recently called Then We Came to The End by Joshua Ferris, which is about folks at a failing ad agency. One of their projects was to come up with a funny/uplifting ad targetting women battling breast cancer. Understandably, it was a very difficult assignment because none of them had ever had breast cancer, and obviously, there's nothing funny about it.

But tonite's South Park was able to do that. Admittedly, it wasn't really about breast cancer. Mostly, it was about Cartman being insensitive, and the fact that, given some clear advantages, a slow grossly obese 10 year-old boy likely will get beaten up by an in shape, aggressive, highly motivated 10 year-old girl.

By the way, who didn't love the Snatch and There Will Be Blood references during the fight scene. Epic.

Clearly, as South Park Elementary's Principal encouraged Wendy to fight by comparing cancer to an annoying kid who has an uncanny ability to manipulate bad situations to his favor (including AIDS, pretending to have Tourette's in order to make highly offensive comments, etc), South Park's writers were not only promoting breast cancer awareness (who knows if any viewers actually got on webmd, or the american cancer soceity though to learn more, probably not many), and doing so through their medium without making light of the terrible disease. And, at the same time, it was a very solid episode.

Talking about serious issues on funny shows is not easy-- but even spending a couple minutes using a serious issue as a metaphor for something that is not serious keeps it in the conversation. I'm willing to bet that any women with breast cancer that are also South Park fans and watched this episode found some at the very least some laughter, and isn't that really the best medicine?

On top of that, I guarantee you that any 200 pound pre-pubescent little dudes out there that watched this are gonna strap on some running shoes tomorrow. Maybe to actually exercise, or maybe in a feeble attempt to flee some fired up chick on the playground.

Either way folks, tomorrow the world will be a better place because of South Park. Yea, I said it.