Those closest to me know what a die-hard Beavis & Butt-Head fan I am. I have been since I was a child, way too young to be watching such trash television. My uncle gave me a VHS tape he recorded in the 1990s. On it was a five-hour "Moron-athon" of the show. That tape became a part of my television diet, especially when I had days off of school (fitting I write this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, one of the days I probably spent watching the tape 20+ years ago).

To this day, I have the (real) complete series on DVD that I pop in often, and catch myself watching the reruns on Pluto TV as a form of comfort. I've always wanted to write about Beavis & Butt-Head on my radio station platforms, but could never find the appropriate local tie-in. That was until last week when I discovered that a former Iowa governor took such offense to the show that he took drastic steps to prevent it from being seen in his mansion.

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Beavis & Butt-Head's controversy is well-documented. It was once seen as key evidence in the "degradation" of television, down there with The Jerry Springer Show. Its intimate focus on two teenage Neanderthals obsessed with stuff that was "cool" (car crashes, violent TV shows, metal music videos) and hellbent on railing against stuff that "sucks" (school, books, boredom) was seen as an endorsement of such culture.

Watching the program in the modern day, not only is it remarkably tame and laidback, it's also a quietly biting satire about how the culture around Beavis and Butt-Head (from the school system to television itself) created the two youths. It's less an endorsement of teenage nihilism and more of a social critique/satire. A damn funny one at that.

That said, you couldn't have told former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad that. He wanted no part of it. Branstad served as the 39th Governor of Iowa from 1983 - 1999 and again as the 42nd Governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. During his first tenure, Governor Branstad became aware of Beavis & Butt-Head when he saw his nine-year-old son, Marcus, watching it inside his residence.

Branstad said the MTV show was "a really bad influence on our 9-year old" back in 1993, and added that the perennial underachievers reinforce the wrong kind of values in children and young adults. He went as far as to have a Des Moines cable company install a "trapping" device on the cable service the governor's residence had. That would make it impossible for nine-year-old Marcus to watch MTV at all.

According to a UPI article from 1993, the trap device and installation cost the governor $28. Branstad added that he and his wife, Chris, had watched Beavis & Butt-Head "once or twice" and that was enough for them to decide that the show was not ideal for an impressionable child Marcus' age. The story was also corroborated on the website Deseret.

I can respect this a lot, frankly. For one, Governor Branstad didn't launch a statewide crusade against the show. He didn't bang on the door of then-President Bill Clinton and demand action at the national level. He didn't say every parent should own a trap device. He never even publicly said that people shouldn't watch Beavis & Butt-Head. He simply didn't want his son watching the program; his right as a parent.

In an era where politicians love to tell us what to do, and this weekend, tried to obliterate one of the most popular apps ever created, Governor Branstad's decision about the entertainment diet of his son was made entirely up to him, for the benefit of his family and his family only.

As for Marcus Branstad? He's doing well for himself as part of the American Chemistry Council, following a stint in the Iowa General Assembly.

For those who of us who love the idiot savants, Beavis & Butt-Head is currently streaming on Paramount+ and sporadically airs on Comedy Central and Pluto TV.

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Gallery Credit: Stacker

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