Brian Anderson is the senior editor of the the Manhattan Institute's estimable City Journal magazine. He has a new book that's just hit the streets (and Amazon) called South Park Conservatives. It builds on themes discussed in this Tech Central Station piece by Stephen Stanton a few years ago, and also Brian's own article from 2003, in which he declared that the right had achieved parity with the left in the culture wars, thanks to a combination of talk radio, Fox News, shows like South Park, web-based publications such as NRO and the Weekly Standard.com, and of course, the Blogosphere.

Brian brings all of those topics up to date to cover The Passion, the Swift Vets, RatherGate, and their November 2nd dénouement. He also has some thoughts on where we go from here.

The title subject of the book is the unlikely Gen-X conservatives who are fans of shows like South Park and The Simpsons. In other words, they're not your traditional, Bill Buckley/Alex P. Keaton-style blue blazer wearing conservatives. They're hipper, rowdier, but also deeply patriotic, distrusting of most of the media, and driving their college professors crazy. And for obvious reasons, South Park appeals immensely to them.

Which brings me to a fun announcement: because I am the paragon of existential Internet coolness, I'm mentioned in the book.

Brian quoted a little from the piece I did for Tech Central Station last year, in which I ripped apart the statistics quoted in a then-recent CNN.com article on Weblogs. Prior to that, Brian and I had exchanged some correspondence when I interviewed Bernard Goldberg for TCS, and mentioned Anderson's article on culture war parity. I knew he was working on this book, but hadn't heard from him again until this morning, when he emailed to let me know it's been published.

So look for my brief cameo appearance inside South Park Conservatives, which is inside your local bookstore--or better yet, just click on the Amazon link on your left!

(And look for additional posts about the book, and an article elsewhere from me about it; details to follow.)

Update (4/14/05): My profile of the book and its author (along with numerous quotes from an interview we recently did) is now online at Tech Central Station.