Spanish Columnist Rants Against American Dad

A note for the readers: I've changed the title of this post, because the author of said rant is not a Murcia native. But he's Spanish, so, hence the correction.

While I was having breakfast this morning, around 12.00 (Spanish morning!), I bumped into this beautiful piece of journalistic literature in the local newspaper La Verdad.

I believe that most visitors of this blog can more or less manage the Spanish language, but for those who don’t, here’s a recap of the article:

The columnist/journalist/writer begins by saying that if the reader wants his or her children to hate them forever, than make them watch American Dad, with the aid of (insert name of television channel broadcasting the series).

Then, he goes on to give the reader a short description of American Dad: an animation series created by Seth Macfarlane, focusing on “throwing crap into the average Republican voter, and therefore, any kind of traditional values’ lifestyle”.

This inspired and witty author then takes the opportunity to badmouth certain sectors of the Spanish press and society that he names as being “politically progressive”. He explains that he doesn’t understand why these sectors consider American Dad to be “politically incorrect”: in his opinion, the “politically incorrect” would be to create an animation series which would teach children the values of family, religion and fatherhood.

The punch line, obviously, comes in the end, when he insults the author of American Dad and Family Guy by writing the following (direct quote): “In other terms, I’d like to know what is going on inside Seth Macfarlane’s mind (…) for him to have so much accumulated hatred. I suppose his parents named him Seth after Set, the third son of Adam and Eve; however, with this final stroke, Seth, his name resembles the one of a sinister Egyptian god, lord of evil and darkness, god of the drought and the deserts. These sorts of things make one’s character.”

Ok, so my first reaction was a simple and round WTF?????

Even if La Verdad is a local newspaper highly connected with the region’s government, known to be very much into the right wing values, the fact is that the newspaper’s mission is to inform and educate its readers. La Verdad is supposed to cater for all the people who live in the Region of Murcia, and most of these people – unlike this columnist may think – are way over the whole “Nation, Family, Flamenco and Values” motto that lead the most common of dictatorships.

Second, although I agree that American Dad and Family Guy are not children animation series, the responsibility of the airing schedules lies with the television station that broadcasts them at improper times. Such responsibility does not lie with the creator of the series.

Third, I believe it is of extremely bad taste to use a third-party creativity work to criticize groups in society that offend the writer. True, it’s the press, and it’s free press. However, this is an abuse of that right. If this writer wants to rant against the “more progressive sectors of society”, then perhaps it’s more intelligent to do so with facts, not with a TV show those sectors haven’t created.

Fourth, the writer has forgotten that his column has been published not only in paper, but also on the Internet. As a global medium of information, it means that even if his text is in Spanish, a lot of people will read it and, if necessary, even the author of the show. That’s right, his words have a higher reach than he considered. This has two consequences: first, he gets to be undeservedly read by more people than he should; second, he gets to pass off as an idiot for his uninspired rant.

Fifth, and this is a personal one: who do I have to get it on with to get paid for writing garbage in the most read newspaper in the Region? Because if he can do it, so can I.