Performing a dedicated and difficult duty for the American people, an editor for conservative media outlet The Federalist has outed one of America’s most beloved sitcom characters as a liberty-hating fascist: Parks And Recreation’s Leslie Knope. Yes, as reported by senior editor David Harsanyi, it turns out that Amy Poehler’s smiling face and boundless optimism hide the heart of a freedom-loathing paragon of hate, one who “believes it’s a politician’s job to impose her notions of morality, safety, and decency on everyone, no matter what voters want or what the system dictates.”
We know, we know. We were surprised, too, when we learned that Leslie’s wall of inspirationally powerful women—including Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Nancy Pelosi—could just as easily have been a shrine to a sickle-and-chain-wielding Mother Russia, striding atop the remains of the Statue of Liberty and holding hands with her boyfriend, Stalin. After all, outside of her religious zealotry for waffles and a distaste for libraries that the uncharitable might characterize as “Pol Pot-esque”, it’s hard to see much fascism in a democracy junkie like Ms. Knope.
But that’s the danger of fascism, always lurking behind the eyes of the sitcom character you least suspect. As right-minded Americans, wary of the disease’s creeping, laugh track-backed tendrils, we can only anxiously await Harsanyi’s next essay, in which he lays out the totalitarian underpinnings of the New Girl cast, or reveals the Modern Family crew as a secret squad of jackboot-wearing stormtroopers, lurking in the heart of middle America like a big, pulsing, Ty Burrell-faced tumor. Keep watching the skies, America. Don’t turn your back on the cast of Friends, and for the love of God, keep watching the skies.