BILL ANTHONYS DREAM COME TRUE

When I was State Chairman of Youth For Reagan during Reagan’s original campaign for California Governor in 1966, I assembled a memorable cast of characters.

There was Mr. Energy, Shawn Steel (who just retired as chairman of the California Republican Party), Mr. Enthusiasm, Dana Rohrabacher (now R-CA), our resident geniuses Arnie Steinberg (now the famous pollster) and Dennis Turner (whom we still call The Wizard), and the gorgeous Tammy Zebold in charge of the Reagan Girls. But most lovable and memorable of all was our Social Director, Bill Anthony.

I had known Bill since we met in UCLA College Republicans in 1962. It was virtually impossible to dislike Bill. There was only one thing that really bugged him, that he would grouse about. He put it as an unfathomable mystery, a question for which he had no answer: “Why can’t the Right be hip?”

Because no one was hipper, no one was cooler, no one was more plugged in than Bill. And it drove him crazy that the Barking Moonbats of the Left were perceived by society as jet-set couth, while denizens of the Right were sneered at as uncultured redneck troglodytes.

Bill always dreamed of a time in the distant future when the Right would be Hip, and the Left’s clueless hypocrisy was exposed for everyone to witness – exposed, Bill dreamed, by those who set the standards of hipness in popular culture, the guys in Hollywood.

Yet even in Bill’s very creative imagination, not even he could have come remotely close to guessing how this dream would be achieved in the 21st century. For it has been – by two Hollywood guys named Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They have made Bill Anthony’s dream come true, by making a movie called Team America.

Phrases like “over the top” and “totally outrageous” do not begin to hint at how completely off the wall this movie is. It is gross beyond description (the vomit scene in particular), the expletive-laden language way beyond scatological. Parents who take or let their kids see this movie are morally flawed. Repeat: Do not take or allow your children to see this movie.

But if you’re all grown-up, you have got to see it. You have never, ever, ever seen anything like it. I saw it yesterday with my friend Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, and both of us agreed – we have never laughed so much or so hard in our entire lives. Right now as I am writing this, one out of dozens of lines will pop out of my memory banks, and I collapse once more in a laughing paroxysm.

Remember – this is a puppet movie. Puppets with strings you can see like Howdy Doody albeit with animatronic heads. If you’re offended by seeing “graphic puppet sex,” don’t see it. If just the phrase “graphic puppet sex” brings a chortle, then off you go.

There have been a lot of reviews now about how Parker and Stone make fun of everything, that they’re libertarian anarchists satirizing the Left and Right equally. Drivel. Sure, they take some rightward potshots and there’s the occasional moment providing Christian heartburn.

Sure, Team America’s anti-terrorist cowboys blow up the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, The Sphinx, and the Great Pyramid, but we can handle that. The overwhelming bottom line is that Team America eviscerates the Left.

The Left is going to hate this movie. Not just for making fun of Hollywood airheads (“I need you,” croons a Team America hero to his love, “like Ben Affleck needs acting lessons”; all Matt Damon can do is robotically repeat his own name, “Matt Damon”). Sean Penn declares that under Saddam, Iraq was a paradise with “rainbow skies and rivers of chocolate,” where all the happy children had “gumdrop smiles.”

When Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Samuel L. Jackson, Liv Tyler, Janeane Garofalo, Helen Hunt, George Clooney, and Alec Baldwin, as named puppet look-alikes, deliver equally moronic gibberish, each has the initials FAG identifying them as members of the “Film Actors Guild.”

Michael Moore is shown stuffing himself with hot dogs, ketchup and mustard dripping out of his mouth and all over his torn sweat shirt, called a “giant socialist weasel,” and blows himself up as a suicide bomber. All of the liberal airheads above plus Martin Sheen are sliced in two, beheaded, disemboweled, thrown off balconies and smashed like watermelons, or gorily devoured by cats.

Hans Blix warns Kim Jong-il to turn over his weapons of mass destruction “or else.” “Or else what?” Kim asks. “Or else the United Nations will be very angry with you and will send you a very strong letter of protest!” Blix answers. With that, Kim throws Blix into his shark tank where he is graphically and bloodily torn apart.

As Kim Jong-il prepares to blow up the world in cahoots with Moslem terrorists, he laughs about how he got Alec Baldwin to help him. Then he explains, “When you see Alec Baldwin, you see the true ugliness of humanity.”

At the World Peace Conference jointed sponsored by North Korea and the Film Actors Guild, Baldwin, as President of FAG, explains to the audience, “We must talk and reason with terrorists – that’s the FAG way.” Then he loses his sanity, mumbles incoherently, and repeatedly shouts “Global warming!” Kim Jong-il machine guns him to death.

Parker and Stone gut the left’s pretensions as brutally as they do the puppets who personify it. Left-wing celebrities are shown to be ridiculously uncool. Stupid, shallow, seriously unhip liberal laughingstocks.

You’ll watch this movie with the deepest sense of satisfaction. Yes, you’ll be shocked and grossed-out, but that’s the necessary part of the hip package. Your sides will come apart at the seams. I can hardly wait to see it again – and this time with Bill Anthony. Finally, it’s hip to be Right.