'Lil' Bush' big on infantile political humor
It's a bad week for television. First the best show on TV, "The Wire," ends its run on HBO, and now the worst show on TV makes an unwelcome comeback.
That's right, believe it or not, "Lil' Bush," Comedy Central's crass, stupid and determinedly unfunny satire, returns at 9:30 p.m. today.
Unfortunately, one last year of the Bush administration means at least one more season of "Lil' Bush." It can't continue on after Bush ends his second term next January, can it? Considering that this miserable show still thinks making fun of Donald Rumsfeld -- who long ago left the Bush administration -- passes for topical political humor, it can. And unless viewers put their feet down now it will.
Let me put this in the strongest possible terms. Do not encourage this sort of thing by watching it, no matter how much you might enjoy a hateful lark aimed at George W. Bush. This kind of garbage has to be stopped and put out now.
The premise for "Lil' Bush" is actually quite promising. Using crummy, cheaply made Saturday-morning cartoons like "Muppet Babies" and "Baby Looney Tunes" as a jumping-off point, it imagines childhood versions of George W. Bush and his pals Lil' Rummy, Lil' Condi and Lil' Cheney dealing with his dad and mom when George H.W. Bush was still president.
The potential for satire -- making fun of both Bush and bad animation -- is great, and it would seem to be a sure thing.
At this point, how could anyone set out to make fun of President Bush and not succeed?
Yet "Lil' Bush" settles for such obvious jokes and wallows in such scatological humor, it wouldn't amuse a bunch of hyperactive 7-year-olds locked in a room with nothing but a television. And most of the humor would be inappropriate for those kids besides.
Tonight's season premiere puts Barbara Bush in a bikini because the very idea of Barbara Bush in a bikini is just so hilarious, and it finds Al Gore constantly eating for the very same reason. This isn't satire; it's infantile schoolyard bullying.
That's relatively harmless, however, compared to other far more tasteless gags. Put it this way: On the sophistication scale, "Lil' Bush" makes "Family Guy's" Seth MacFarlane look like Preston Sturges in his prime.
Ordinarily, I'd say that President Bush -- no matter which one you're referring to -- deserves everything he gets. Yet "Lil' Bush" is so cruel and nasty and blithely disrespectful, it makes a viewer feel sorry for the Bushes and Cheney -- something I wouldn't have thought possible.
This being an election year, "Lil' Bush" expands the butts of its so-called humor to take in the Lil' Dems, including Lil' Hillary Clinton, Lil' Barack Obama, Lil' John Edwards, Lil' Nancy Pelosi and Tiny Dennis Kucinich.
Now that's funny, but one joke does not a season make.
"Lil' Bush" does score a couple of casting coups. Former "Saturday Night Live" trouper Tim Meadows turns up tonight as Lil' Obama, and none other than Kevin Federline gives voice to M.C. Karl Rove, but their talents (what talents they have) are squandered, same as with Iggy Pop playing Lil' Rummy.
"Lil' Bush" deserves to be impeached before its second season runs out on the grounds of being just too stupid to be funny. But hey, if stupidity were an impeachable offense, we wouldn't be where we are today.