| Herbert Garrison | |
|---|---|
| |
| Character Information | |
| Gender | Male/Female |
| Age | Presumably in his 50s |
| Hair | Grey |
| Occupation | School Teacher |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Appearances | |
| Debut Episode/Fic | "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe" |
Herbert Garrison, during sex change Janet Garrison, is the fourth grade teacher at South Park Elementary in South Park.
Personality
Herbert Garrison suffers from many psychological problems that are touched many times throughout the show, though it appears nothing is ever done about it. The most noticeable of his problems is dissociative identity disorder and heavy schizophrenia. At the beginning of the series, while Mr. Garrison still taught third grade, he held a puppet on his hand known as Mr. Hat. Mr. Garrison used this puppet to show a second, more aggressive personality and to emote some of his most inner conflicts. One of these conflicts being the fact he was gay, and his inability to come to terms with that.
Mr. Garrison is racist, first shown as a running gag where he proposes the town gets rid of all the Mexicans every Christmas, to which the Mayor angrily replies "Mr. Garrison, every year you suggest that, and every year we tell you NO!" When rich black people were moving to South Park, he was able to gather the town's men into getting rid of them, under the pretenses that the rich people were taking over the town. He convinced people to dress up like "ghosts" to scare them away, and burned lower case T's on the black peoples lawn standing for "Time to Leave". Mr. Garrison was also seen among a KKK group, but insisted that Mr. Hat was a member, again using his puppet to dispute the conflicts inside himself.
Mr. Garrison is an incompetent teacher, who teaches his students useless things, such as why Chubby Checker left the Beatles, and once spent a whole week of just showing his class old Barnaby Jones tapes. He has also taught his students a few times subjects far too advanced for them, like Stalin and Communism. He insults the kids when they get an answer wrong, which is often. It is possible that Mr. Garrison teaches the students more about pop culture because he himself does not know a lot about the school curriculum, or just doesn't pay attention to it.
From seasons 19 thru 24, he was a candidate for and elected President of the United States, as a stand-in for Donald Trump, a move that provoked controversy among fans.