Is there any way to add template tags into javascript and css files? I would use it for anything from passing in urls to media url links (image paths, etc) to conditional javascript based on user permissions.
I just had a thought that maybe I can serve it up as if it were a template but have the url as my javascript file. Is that the only way to do somethign like this? If so, it probably wouldn't work with my media generator, so I'd probably want a better solution if there was one out there.
Yes, you can create a view that will serve a js or css file based on template, that you will fill with values. AFAIK it is the only way to do this. Or you can have some scripts or stylesheets directly inside html templates and fill them too.
Your idea is the right way to go. If you want to leverage Django's template tools then the easiest way is to serve up the JS file as a template. See this question for a situation like yours.
You can serve any type of content like a template, it doesn't have to be HTML. However, you may not be able to serve it with the rest of your static content, depending on your setup.
One option, if you only want to replace things like media URLs, is to "compile" these templates into static files that you can serve. This won't work for anything that is conditional based on the current user's permissions, though. You'll need to write a script to call django.template.loader.render_to_string and write the result to a file every time you deploy or change media URLs, etc.