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Idiot Wind

David Weigel | 9.5.2006 9:31 AM

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You'd think the new film by the creator of Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, and King of the Hill would get the kind of promotional push accorded to powerhouses like John Tucker Must Die or Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. But thanks to Fox, Mike Judge's Idiocracy lies a-moulderin' in the grave. The hard-hitting satire about a future America where generation after generation of white trash have degraded the gene pool (they do this, somehow, without being outbred by Mexicans. Pat Buchanan take note!), where Gatorade has supplanted water, and where the most popular movie of the summer is a 90-minute loop of a man farting. The movie isn't being released in New York; it doesn't even have a trailer. Quint at Ain't it Cool News wonders why this is.

With the success of TALLADEGA NIGHTS, one would think Fox would jump at the chance to release this film wide. They both exist to poke fun at the ignorant and TALLADEGA is doing damn well for itself. You'd think Fox would want to grab ahold of them coat-tails, cut some trailers in a similar vain, but sell it as an R-rated comedy that isn't afraid to go past the line where Will Ferrell stopped, and let loose the movie. Instead, they're hiding it in this invisible, minor release and dumping it to video.

Indeed; why do movies that exploit dumbed-down American culture get wide releases while a comedy making light of that, by the creator of Beavis and Butthead, is getting canned? Ilkka Kokkarinen thinks (via Steve Sailer) it's because it broaches the topic of Social Darwinism.

Normally such advertising and publicity tour would have indeed been in proper order, but even though this movie is nowhere as satirically biting as it very easily could have been, consisting mostly of fart jokes instead of, say, just casually pointing out the well-known negative correlations between intelligence and future time orientation and certain lifestyle choices that are known to have highly negative social effects, even the few worms that escape by creaking open this particular can of worms are so immensely serious that it is simply unimaginable that any studio boss would take the slightest chance of becoming the next Mel Gibson over the idea that society of stupid people is worse than a society of smart people.

At least deep down, leftists know perfectly well that they don't have any real arguments against soccer mom eugenics, and they also know that IQ is strongly correlated to most good things in life. Therefore they have no choice but to hysterically shout down and crucify anybody who even dares to approach this forbidden territory as a "Nazi", instead of engaging them in a honest debate. And at least nobody who wants to have a future career in the movie industry would want that for himself. As fun as it is to be right, it is way more fun to be successful.

Yes, I know this argument went from zero to creepy in about 20 seconds. Still, explain: Why can't we see a movie that can inspire an argument like that?

To watch the devolution of America in the form of one comedian, check out this classic H&R post on the health inspector mentioned previously,

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NEXT: One Thing To Cheer About When it Comes To Politics This Fall: Inaction on Immigration

David Weigel is a contributing editor at Reason.

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