ABC is launching a new animated series at the end of this month called The Goode Family, from veteran cartoon-creator Mike Judge (of King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-head fame). The show is about a family of Prius-driving, canvas bag-toting, African baby-adopting, politically correct, composting vegans. In short, it's a send-up of modern day popular environmentalism, centered around "an obsessively 'green' family whose politically correct life results in constant laughs."Some highlights from clips I've seen: Gerald Goode using a handmade machine to turn one roll of two-ply toilet paper into two single-ply rolls, comforting his wife by saying he's often been mistaken for a lesbian, and explaining that he can't hire illegal Latino workers to tend his garden because it would make feel like "some sort of conquistador." Watch a preview here:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKRUgzmkQk0Is this a sign that we're done with the kid-glove treatment for environmentalism, that the ideas are so mainstream and comfortable that we can have fun with them, that we're ready to take the piss out of the whole movement and cement it as a mainstay of popular culture? Or is it a sign that the way environmentalism exists in our collective conscience, it will never be more than an easy target for "constant laughs"?
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