McFarlane's Regrets Ring Hollow

Seth McFarlane has proven beyond doubt that he is not interested in anything or anyone save himself. His cartoons, Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show regularly prove it.

Episodes are often so unbelievably gross and so downright crude that it is difficult to imagine he truly sought to entertain his audience. He more likely wants to insult our decency and intelligence, first by employing repugnant story lines, and then by trying to make a statement on the meaning of life (or lack thereof) afterwards. There is no actual comedic purpose to the former, and no worthwhile insight on the latter.

Yet he has the gall to complain about what someone has done with an unaired episode of Family Guy centered around one of his characters massacring runners during the Boston Marathon. While his anger is understandable after this week's tragic events, it is all the same hypocritical in light of his routine and uncharitable lambasting of people, events, and institutions which he has displayed through his aired episodes of Family Guy and his other creations. He would not have been upset with the entire version of his show if nothing unusual had happened at this year's Boston Marathon; why is he upset that a cropped version gets spread around the web? Because it's crass? That hasn't stopped him before.

He clearly believes that as a Big Cartoon Producer he has the right to say and do whatever he wants, and that it should pass as decent intellectual fare. Or he is snidely playing his audience by going so far off the path of creative entertainment, knowing that they'll watch and praise his avant guarde attitude? Where has his arrogant attitude gone now, now that his work might be immediately offensive? Either way, it demonstrates not artistic merit or any real concern for the folks in TV land or folks in general. It is little more than the arrogance of a small mind.

We are Right, if so for the Right Reasons

Well, what do we have here? An innocent event of longstanding tradition becoming something tragic. And who is at fault?

Someone wishing us to stop us living as we do, by making us afraid to go about our everyday activities.

They do not seem to realize that one of our everyday activities involves doing what can be done to make the everyday activities of our compatriots safe. They do not realize that that is our strongest quality: the one which will defeat them, those who oppose the mere safety of all involved merely because they do not like that we revel in such simple pleasures. Our strongest quality is that we deign to strive for a world free of such selfish acts.

This is a selfish act. As such, it will be shown, in the end, to be no threat to our way of life. And why?

Because it is not. If, that is, what we strive for is right and true.

The cowardly threaten; they sometimes act. Yet they will never prevail. It is that simple. If, or course, we really believe our way of life to be just and true, and for just and true reasons. If we don't believe that, then what they want and what we want are pretty close to the same. If all is actually up to the individual, then we have no ground with which to argue with terrorists. Their being individuals as well as we are, then this act is as likely to be right as our reaction to it. Yet if truth is beyond the person, they are wrong in what they did. If truth is beyond the person, we are right.

On which side of this question do you stand?