The largest producer of pigs in the United States has promised to gradually end the use of hog crates. The Humane Society promises to take their initiative drive to outlaw farrowing crates and poultry cages to more states. Many of the counties in my own state of Missouri have chosen to outlaw the the building of confinement facilities. Barack Obama has been harshly critical of animal agriculture. We are clearly in the process of deciding that we will not continue to raise animals the way we do now. Because other countries may not share our sensibilities, we'll have to withdraw or amend free trade agreements to keep any semblance of a livestock industry.

We can do that, and we may be a better society for it, but we can't change nature. Pigs will be allowed to "return to their mire," as Kipling had it, but they'll also be crushed and eaten by their mothers. Chickens will provide lunch to any number of predators, and some number of chickens will die as flocks establish their pecking order.

In recent years, the cost of producing pork dropped as farmers increased feed efficiency (the amount of feed needed to produce a pound of pork) by 20 percent. Free-range chickens and pigs will increase the price of food, using more energy and water to produce the extra grain required for the same amount of meat, and some people will go hungry. It is also instructive that the first company to move away from farrowing crates is the largest producer of pigs. Changing the way we raise animals will not necessarily change the scale of the companies involved in the industry. If we are about to require more expensive ways of producing food, the largest and most well-capitalized farms will have the least trouble adapting.

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South Park’s major problem with Family Guy is the insert gag. In “Cartoon Wars,” the fictional episode of Family Guy seems to be a string of (uncharitably flat) cutaway jokes that do not relate to the narrative action. For South Park, these gags are not funny because they are “random,” not because the joke isn’t funny. The “randomness” interrupts the diegetic reality of the central emotional narrative of the episode by diverting the plot (momentarily) into a parallel universe without a causal or physical relationship with the narrative universe. Since the jokes can never change the circumstances of the central narrative, they are without emotional weight. The audience is not permitted to relate to these gags as anything other than cleverness. It is the narrative equivalent of a stand-up monologue, rather than improv theatre.

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