This column is nearly a week old, but it's pretty timeless in the sense that Stephens applies the South Park Gnomes formula to the Obama administration. Or rather, he shows how the Obama administration is applying the South Park Gnome formula to everything they do.
"What," you're asking yourself, "is the South Park Gnomes formula?" Stephens explains:
Consider the 1998 "Gnomes" episode -- possibly surpassing Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" as the classic defense of capitalism -- in which the children of South Park, Colo., get a lesson in how not to run an enterprise from mysterious little men who go about stealing undergarments from the unsuspecting and collecting them in a huge underground storehouse.
What's the big idea? The gnomes explain:
"Phase One: Collect underpants.
"Phase Two: ?
"Phase Three: Profit."
Lest you think there's a step missing here, that's the whole point. ("What about Phase Two?" asks one of the kids. "Well," answers a gnome, "Phase Three is profits!")
"Profits!" Seems a bit like Obama's GM & Chrysler plans, no? Can't you just feel the money rolling in?
Sorry, my mistake. That sensation you feel is your tax money going to pay back Obama's "grassroots" fundraising/election juggxrnaught, er, the UAW.
