Human culture has finally jumped the shark (if it hadn’t already – suggestions as to when on a e-postcard, please). US national political debate is expressed largely in allusions to, or critiques of, er, kids telly.

Last month a New York Post writer labelled penguin-tastic ‘Happy Feet 2’ as “Kiddie Karl Marx” while last Friday (2nd) Fox News got into the action by laying into the new Muppets movie.

Anchor Eric Bolling foamed about the goggle-eyed heroes’ latest foe, an evil oil baron called Tex Richman. How could they portray a businessman as at all evil?! Guest Dan Gainor was only too happy to weigh in, “You wonder why we’ve got a bunch of Occupy Wall Street people walking around all around the country, they’ve been indoctrinated, literally, for years by this kind of stuff.” He denounced the whole pack of prankster puppets as a bunch of commies, deliberately put out there to brainwash the kids. Colleague Andrea Tantaros chimed in with the paedo-scare angle, saying “I just wish liberals could leave little kids alone.”

Yeah Fox, the Land of the Free should have rules against that kind of thing! But SchNEWS wonders why it doesn’t just make them up. Like when they recently reported on a story about whether a presumed liberal-leaning US Supreme Court Justice should be able to exclude herself from ruling against the constitutionality of Obama’s health reforms. To support their argument against her, they brought up an official looking graphic citing ‘US Constitution, Article 28, Sec. 114’. The problem? The US constitution only has 7 articles, none with more than ten sections, and none remotely as ‘quoted’!

And talking of the brainwashing the kids, spare a thought for wannabe Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. His bizarre campaign consisted largely quoting er, the Pokeman movie. Sadly his sloganic gem “Life can be challenge, life can seem impossible, but it's never easy when there’s so much on the line.” failed to set the world to right(s). He bowed out from the race last week, to spend more time with his toys (and avoid sexual harassment claims going back the 1990s).

* SchNEWS says with muppet right-wingers running the world, give us the real Muppets any day - Animal for president!