Same here.

Maybe all those years working at Fox caused some kind of degenerative brain syndrome. I'd like to hope that he agreed to be on InfoWars to make fun of it without the host even realizing it, but I kinda doubt that's the case.

We know he's being serious because he broke out the Beavis voice.

I'd like to believe that too, but if it were true he'd have used Dale not Hank.

A different guy does Dale.

Anyway, I think we should remember that Mike Judge operates on a very... "different" level, from most people in the entertainment industry. What I mean by this is: Mike Judge is a satirist, and yet he's also a very warm, and earnest satirist. I don't think he's *ever* been serious in his life, but unlike most satirists (who make it REALLY obvious what their real agenda is), Mr Judge approaches his subjects like an anthropologist; carefully, respectfully, even sympathetically. Hank Hill is a perfect example of this approach. Beavis, too!

Consider - B&B was a tongue-in-cheek condemnation of the MTV-saturated idiocy of it's era, and I don't think any of us believe that Beavis was intended to be a role model. Yet Mike does not judge him: he presents Beavis to us, holds Beavis up to the light, and says "behold, the man!" Then he leaves, and it is up to us, the audience, alone now with Beavis, to decide what we see and how we see it.

I'm thinking it's going to be the same way with Infowars. I don't think Mr Judge is going to turn his appearance into a complete mockery of Alex Jones, but that doesn't matter. I don't even know if he loves Alex Jones or hates him, but that doesn't matter either. Mike Judge is not a professor, lecturing us and demanding we answer his questions, in the manner he deems proper. No. Mike Judge is a ringmaster, and he is here to welcome us to the theatre of the absurd.

Evilhomer - Archie Bunker is probably a better example than Hank Hill. For all Archie Bunker's many flaws, you still kind of like him, because he is still trying to be a good man (by whatever standards). We also have that in Hank Hill, except his negative character traits are limited to: he's a little chauvinistic (albeit not irredeemably so), and he wishes Bobby were better at sports.

Which would be fine, except that Judge is glossing over the xenophobia and bigotry that are fundamental components of redneck America. Hank's not a bigot, and neither are his friends, though his Laotian next-door neighbor is. (Implied message: look at how this ingrate treats us after we let him in!) Hank got accused of being a bigot once, though, and everyone turned their noses up at him for a while until he was able to prove that it was all a big misunderstanding. Because in Mike Judge's redneck America, there is no racism, just REVERSE racism. Oh what Hank Hill must endure!

Norman Lear wasn't afraid to paint Archie Bunker honestly and completely, and let people draw their own conclusions. Mike Judge takes the easier route of giving Hank no sizable character flaws, so there are no real points on which to criticize him, and in fact all his critics are the real problems. Like that episode where Peggy took guitar lessons, and her teacher (an angry feminist and probably an unshaven lesbian) tried to convince her that she was being oppressed by Hank ... well it turns out Hank was supportive of her endeavors, and when Peggy didn't turn against Hank, the tutor was personally offended. So it goes in Mike Judge's redneck America, where there are no problems until liberals, fire inspectors, and other troublemakers show up.

Ah, but is this a problem with Hank, or with us? In other words, is this a flaw in the storytelling, or with our own preconceptions about who Hank "should" be? I can't speak for anyone else, but personally, I'm really racist against poor white people. I "know" that guys like Hank are misogynists and xenophobes; that's part of my cultural narrative, it's what I've been brought up to believe. I'd like to think it's true... but maybe it isn't. It doesn't appear to be true in Hank's case. Now I totally get where you're coming from, I felt horrible every time I saw Hank suffering from "reverse racism" without returning the favor, like I knew him and his little white buddies would have done, if this was the Texas I knew in my head. But did this say more about Hank, or more about me?

Anyway, I do think Hank is flawed, deeply flawed (he wouldn't be such an object of ridicule otherwise), and I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Archie Bunker was sympathetic (I've always seen Bunker as a Cartman figure, a pantomime villain with occassional flashes of cutting insight), but it's an interesting take. I would like to point out that Hank wasn't entirely blameless in Peggy's lesbian-singer-songwriter experiment; he really wasn't connecting with her at first, and it was only when he got off his cheekless butt and went out to support Peggy that she decided to forgive him. Maybe the story would have been easier to take had her militant lesbo friend said "Hey Peggy, that's cool, we can support your hetero-normalized relationship, too, if Hank's not coercing you and that's really what you're into"? Peggy's drag-queen experiment ended on just such a mutually tolerant note, and that was nice, but whatever, what's done is done. Also, for every episode where equal opportunit laws screwed up Strickland propane, there were a dozen more where Dale's right wing fantasies, Bill's fat lonely alcoholism, Buck's crude womanizing, Cotton's colorful racism, or Luanne's being a dumb blonde redneck screwed up the entire town. Mike Judge has never been afraid to call out lefties, when he thinks they deserve it, but on the whole, we'd be remembering the hits and forgetting the misses if we tried to paint KotH as some kind of reactionary good ol' boys tale.

Caroll O'Connor himself had his Archie Bunker character toned down after the first few seasons. He saw Bunker being taken unironically as a role model due to negative and right-wing traits, and O'Connor, who was practically a communist, was not too cool with that and had them accentuate more on the family and working man aspect.

It's not just about Hank, but about the entire community of Arlen -- not a bigot to be found (except for Cotton, who is pretty clearly to be mocked for being from another time). Dale may be a right-wing reactionary type but not the sort who would call Khan a "gook", not even behind his back. Bill may be a drinker, but I have yet to see him get on a drunken tear about how immigrants are ruining the country. As for Buck the womanizer, Luanne the naive fool, etc., those character types aren't specific to redneck America, and as such can't be commentary about Redneckia specifically.

Archie Bunker turned out sympathetic not because people agreed with him, but because he was portrayed as a relatable human being who, for all his flaws, wasn't a monster. Carroll O'Connor, by the way, deserves crazy props for having done such a good job with Archie Bunker, since O'Connor was about as far to the left as Bunker was to the right.

"I would like to point out that Hank wasn't entirely blameless in Peggy's lesbian-singer-songwriter experiment; he really wasn't connecting with her at first ..." That's about the worst they ever do with Hank, which is my point: he's got no real flaws. "Not the greatest listener" is a far cry from "unwilling to listen"; the latter is a flaw, the former is only falling short of perfection.

Not sure if I made this point clearly enough, so just in case: I can't fault KotH for portraying good people who don't have a bigoted bone in their body (no matter what that reverse racist water heater repairman said, isn't that typical of those people). But I can, and do, fault KotH for not acknowledging bigotry as a facet of redneck America. Even in real world Arlen, wherever that is, I imagine there are a lot of Hank Hills who have no use for racism, but there are likewise lots of Gern McBlavinstons. "Gern McBlaviston" is a character I just made up because Mike Judge didn't see fit to create him, he's a racist buddy of the guys who likes to drink beer and say "Yep ... fucking nigger in the White House".

No mention of his literal, unironic espousing of eugenics in Idiocracy?

Took the words right out of my mouth.

So much :(

So very much :(

I really, really hope he brings Dale along.

It's not a practical solution, it's an expensive and untested 'solution' that may not work or possibly make things worse (or damage food chains).

It's cynical science and/or lazy policy making solution that would allow unsustainable C02 production rates in the short term, once again passing the problem on to another generation to fix.


(Now, it could be used as a short term solution to offset current C02 production rates while the global economy starts converting to renewable or carbon neutral energy sources)

I'm far from being a conspiracy nut, but I could TOTALLY see a certain segment of our society thinking "fuck it, we'll build our bunkers, keep on keepin' on, and when our industries have wiped out the poors and the brown people, we can rebuild our Libertopian Jesus-land."

If that turns out to be the strategy of people like the Koch Bros., I can only hope they succeed long enough to die a slow death in their domes, a la Bioshock.

I'm not against reducing carbon emissions but it doesn't remove the carbon that's already in the atmosphere and will be for hundreds of years. Even if total global carbon emissions went down to zero tomorrow, the world will still get warmer and the choices are basically live with global warming or work on geoengineering (which is all sorts of technology including carbon scrubbers, not just spraying things into the air to reflect more sunlight).

Adding sulfur to jet fuel is dirt cheap compared to the consequences of climate change. If acid rain is a concern, use it only on military tanker planes flying at stratospheric levels over the oceans. One squadron will do.

If the U.S. military doesn't do it, another country will. Bangladesh has more to lose, and could afford it.

The real problem with the stratospheric aerosol method of geoengineering is that it tackles symptoms, not the underlying disease mechanisms. Not unlike modern medicine writ large. Should the funding disappear or politics intervene, at mid-century atmospheric carbon levels of 600+ ppm we could see temperatures jump 2 C/4 F in a couple of years.

If, global conflict is present, withholding geoengineering and subsequent drought might be an effective indirect weapon / population control measure against nations near the Horse latitudes.

Steampoweredkleenex, that's pretty much the premise of Atlas Shrugged, so yeah.

Besides this PRISON PLANET you mean!?!? WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

I'm just getting tired of all these info wars.

Like they'd give YOU the titular line, stanley!

It's nice to be able to flag the censored comments calling Jones a retard as "not spam".. fight Dumb Brother etc.