South Park is not your friend

0:00President Trump has a new adversary. And this adversary is really going for it. They're hitting him where it hurts. They're taking no prisoners. They're depicting the president in bed with Satan. Another random comment on my Instagram that you're on the Epstein list. The Epstein list? Are we still talking about that? It's South Park, guys. All two episodes of the show's latest season have skewered the president. and it looks like Trey Parker and Matt Stone are going to make it a three-peat tonight. Wow! Washington, D.C. Your reaction, Mr. President? I never watched Southpaw. I don't want to hear about Southpaw.

0:47Don't worry about it, sir. Today, Explained from Vox is going to catch you out.

1:00This is Today Explained. Brian Stelter, S-T-E-L-T-E-R, Chief Media Analyst, CNN. Great. And are you now or have you ever been a fan of South Park? I would call myself a passive South Park fan. Fuck you, Kyle. I was the kind of viewer that if I saw it on Comedy Central, I would watch, I would enjoy it. But now, in the past month, I am now an active fan. Dude, I totally didn't mean that, Kyle. Like a lot of other people. I'm now going and seeking out the new episodes because this show has defied the odds. I mean, this show is almost 30 years old and it's suddenly more relevant than ever. How did it do that?

1:42How did it defy the odds? By speaking truth to the ultimate power right now. You know, the creators of South Park have always hated bullies and they seem to believe Trump is the biggest bully of them all right now. The very premise of the first episode of this new season is about Trump targeting the media. Eric, the character Eric Cartman, is angry that NPR has been forced off the air. What do you mean the president canceled NPR? That was like the funniest shit ever. It was seriously the best show. It had like gay rappers from Mexico all sad because girls in Pakistan got stoned to death. From the very first seconds of the new season, you know that this show has something to say.

2:21There's some bull crap going on in this country, and I'm not going to let it corrupt the environment of this school. You also see how South Park Elementary is being transformed due to Trump's actions. There's only one thing that can bring some normality back to these corrupt times, and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What? This is, of course, a dramatic exaggeration of what's happening in real life, but it is true. I'd like you all to put your hands together in welcoming Christ our Lord.

2:55Hello, my children. I am the light and the way. When Trump is introduced in the show, you see him, you know, fighting with the Prime Minister of Canada over tariffs. People of Canada will not be devalued like this. Hey, come on. You don't want me to bomb you like I did Iraq. I thought you just bombed Iraq. Iran, Iraq, what the hell's the difference? Relax, guy. But most memorably, you see him getting in bed with Satan himself. Hey, Satan. I don't want to right now. What? Hey, relax. Come on, Satan. I've been working hard all day. And I'm going to use some words I don't typically use on this show right now to describe that particular scene because Trump derobes before you even see who he's about to get into bed with and has, I guess, like a micropenis.

3:47Oh, come on, Satan. How do they follow that up? I think like two weeks later. The most ruthless jokes in the second episode were about Christy Noem. They were about that old scandal involving her shooting a dog on her farm. The reason that this story is in the book, because people need to understand who I am. Welcome to the team, recruits. I'm Christy Noem, head of Homeland Security. Well, she seems nice. Okay, very pretty. You saw her over and over again in this episode, shooting at dogs. A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face. because sometimes doing what's important means doing what's hard.

4:26This episode was really, really personal in the way it targeted Gnome, showing her face maybe falling apart. I think I can't handle myself because I'm a lady with good looks. You know,

4:43pushing this idea that she was overusing Botox or other face fillers. Also, this idea that she cares so much about photo ops and PR, that she's always out there dressing up in various outfits, posing for photos and videos. And as always, there are elements of truth to these critiques or these satires, you know. It is true that Noam has tried really hard to be front and center, very visible, playing to the cameras, going out on tours, appearing in the field, you know, showing that she's doing the work, so to speak. Another job? Well done! Noam did not take this episode in stride. She said, For Noam, this was personal, this was ugly, and she wanted to be on the record about it.

5:34Is this the first time this show has gone after Donald Trump and his administration? No, but it is by far the most direct, the most vicious, I'd say. You know, back during Trump 1.0, right, Trump's first term in office, there was this storyline where one of the teachers at the school, Mr. Garrison, was becoming president and, you know, over time acting more and more Trump-like. Mr. Garrison, you believe the immigration problem is easy to solve. Yes, f*** them all to death. Let's make this country great again. This served as a way for the creators of South Park to ridicule Trump and to speak out about some of his behavior, some of his conduct in the first term.

6:11But this was not nearly as direct, not nearly as aggressive as what we're seeing now. I guess it's not that big a surprise that South Park would go after Donald Trump when he is Donald Trumping harder than he's ever Donald Trumped before. Yes. But they're not even sparing their parent company in these new episodes, right? Right? Madden Trey are like a lot of creators that they like. They love to poke fun at the parent company when they can. The timing of this new season has been really extraordinary because Paramount was in the final moments, the final days of this protracted, politically tortured merger approval process when the new season premiered.

6:50So you literally had this anti-Trump episode, sticking it to the administration, putting the president in bed with Satan, airing on cable at the same time that the administration is having to review and approve this merger. The second episode of the season aired on a Wednesday. And then on a Thursday, the new Paramount took shape. The FCC just approving that long simmering merger between Paramount and Skydance, a media company. This is a deal getting the green light just weeks after Paramount agreed to settle with the Trump administration for$16 million. And just days after Paramount fired Stephen Colbert.

7:28What's more, as part of the deal, Skydance agreed to address the Trump administration's concerns about alleged bias at CBS. The emerged company, Paramount and Skydance, they came together. There was this big formal press conference on Thursday around lunchtime in New York City. And the new CEO, David Ellison, took questions from media reporters about his grand hopes and dreams about this new company. I said to him, so what about this South Park problem? You know, what are you going to do about this problem? Do you view it as a problem? Ellison's response was really telling. He started out by saying he's a huge fan of the show.

8:06He's been a fan of South Park for his entire adult life. He's 42. And he then went on to praise Madden Trey as being really unique, really, really talented creators. And he said to me, they are equal opportunity offenders, and they always have been. So I think Ellison was saying they're not just targeting Trump because they're a bunch of lefties who want to attack the Republicans. They have always called out people on the left and on the right, whatever. They're equal opportunity offenders. I think he was trying to differentiate South Park from late night shows like the late show with Stephen Colbert, which was recently canceled.

8:44I think he was trying to say these two creators are special. They are one of a kind or we would say two of a kind. and they're going to be protected by Paramount. And obviously the other context here is the new owners of Paramount had just struck a five-year deal to exclusively stream South Park on the Paramount Plus streaming service. This five-year deal is worth well over a billion dollars for the creators of South Park and for their production company. This is a huge, huge vote of confidence in South Park as a tentpole of the future of Paramount. And the whole idea here, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

9:23South Park has a library of 325 episodes going back to the 90s. This is a really, really valuable library in the streaming era. Because people like to go back and watch episodes from 10 or 20 years ago. These episodes have a really long shelf life. So it's really valuable on streaming. And that's why Paramount was willing to fork over so much cash. I think this might be where some people get confused because you've got everyone from, you know, Brown University to Meta to CBS and Paramount themselves settling with the president, making, you know, donations to the president's inaugural committee.

10:05And then you've got Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who work for CBS or do business with Paramount Plus or Paramount, not only going for the president, not only making fun of his administration, his own manhood, but like making literally a billion dollars while doing it. How are they able to get away with something that seemingly no one else is right now? Now, this might be a case of business actually trumping politics, of profits actually trumping politics. For Paramount, for the Paramount Plus streaming service, for the future of this newly combined company, big, loud franchises like South Park are key.

10:48They are crucial. They're more important now than they were 10 years ago, and they might even be more important 10 years from now. They are the foundation of the house that David Ellison is trying to build. and he can't compromise with something like that. And the difference here between South Park and Stephen Colbert is that, you know, the late show was losing money. So, yeah, Stephen Colbert is a staunch critic of President Trump, one of the loudest Trump critics on TV. He's been canceled. A lot of his fans worry it's for political reasons. CBS says it's purely for financial reasons. And in a way, South Park actually affirms the CBS claim, right?

11:28South Park also, you know, going for the juggler, taking on Trump directly. And yet, because the show is really profitable and crucial for the future of streaming, it's not only back for a new season, it is being praised. It's being celebrated by Paramount for having high ratings. Paramount keeps putting out press releases touting how well South Park is doing. The show is beating some of its very old records on cable, meaning records that date back to the 90s and the early 2000s in terms of what share of the cable universe South Park is nabbing on Wednesday nights. But more importantly, if you add up the cable audience and the streaming audience, you're seeing 5, 6, 7 million viewers tuning in for South Park for these new episodes.

12:14Those are the kinds of numbers that almost any creator would kill for. certainly creators of animated comedies

12:30Brian S-T-E-L-T-E-R CNN check your local listings I'm Sean R-A-M-E-S-W-A-R-A-M South Park is not your friend when we are back on Today Explained

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16:57oh my god they killed today explained

17:03nicholas qua you write about culture for vulture you wrote about south park for vulture you watch these latest episodes how are people reacting to south park's treatment of donald trump well they're reacting with their eyeballs right they're watching it the first two episodes of the season so far has been drawing the biggest ratings that the show's had in many many years um it's drawing a lot of strong feelings right i think a lot of the um you know i can sort of uncharacterially call them the normie libs or the uh trump critics uh are you know responding very positively to this very visceral depiction of the president i did notice more people in my life were texting me about South Park than have ever texted me about South Park ever before.

17:49Probably a lot of people that you have never heard talk about South Park, maybe ever. Some people you might not expect, like your aunt or your uncle, who maybe have more genteel tastes. And this is kind of what's so interesting about this moment. It's seen South Park, which has been part of our lives for, frankly, almost for as long as some of us have been alive. Like they're not, they're breaking once again to the culture in a very, you know, unexpected way because look, they're on Comedy Central, but Comedy Central right now is a very small concern in terms of their broadcast and streaming footprint.

18:22So the fact that they're able to punch through like this, it's quite remarkable, frankly. But as you point out in your piece for Vulture, which is called South Park Speaks Only for Itself, this show has not been afraid to turn on liberals, to mock liberals viciously in the past. In fact, the first episode of this new season, Sermon on the Mount, starts out with the show just ripping on NPR. The reason that we decided to work on this piece, or that I wrote this piece, is because we started noticing that South Park was getting celebrated by the same corners of, you know, the quote-unquote normie liberal community, the same kinds of folks that took a lot of pleasure from SNL's, you know, satire of Trump.

19:06Yes, this is real life. This is really happening. On January 20th, Donald J. Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. And then two months later, Mike Pence will become the 46th. You know, even way back when, like in the first Trump administration, the way like John Oliver would treat him. It's kind of this critique, satire, but still ultimately gentle, still ultimately very polite. Donald Trump can seem appealing until you take a closer look, much like the lunch buffet at a strip club, or the NFL, or having a pet chimpanzee. South Park, because of the way it's always operated and the worldview and ideology which it has, which is somewhere between libertarian and nihilism, you could argue, or everybody's fair game kind of mentality, they've often been at odds with each other in the past, right?

19:57So South Park has constantly drawn controversy over the course of its existence for depictions, you know, left and right. Like it goes after religion. Joseph Smith was called a prophet. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. Goes after Da Woke. What I'm upset about is a wee little thing called cultural appropriation. Ever heard of it? That's why we can't wear sombreros on Cinco de Mayo. It went after Occupy Wall Street back in the day. Porting from the middle of a protest where two fourth grade students are fed up and have decided to occupy Red Robin. And so the fact that we're seeing a lot of Norvielibs like celebrate South Park at this point in time.

20:36And specifically celebrating an episode that, you know, contains elements that they would have found reprehensible in the past. There's an interesting development there. And it is a suggestion of like some sort of weird kind of coalition or at least a coalition of aesthetics kind of forming. So I wrote that piece to be like, soundproof is not different. It's doing the same as always done. It is the same as it has always been. And it would only ever speak for itself. It's not positioning itself as a savior, as some people on social media has been sort of like kind of congratulating, celebrating them for.

21:11And, you know, that's kind of that's kind of part of the interesting thing about this. that, you know, what unlikely bitfellows to emerge at this point in time. Yeah, I mean, you dug up an old interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone in which one of them said after an episode that they got calls from their atheist friends a couple of times saying, what the fuck, we thought you were on our side. And they said, we're not on anybody's fucking side. The takeaway for me was, you know, like South Park is not your friend. whoever you may be is do you think people are forgetting that right now i do think there's a tendency uh when it comes to um again quote unquote normulip expressions of uh disdain or or um or exhaustion over administration to like find heroes wherever they can and i think part of what i find somewhat uncontraproductive and distasteful about that is that like you're just it's just putting way too much emotional stock on parties that are just temporary allies, right?

22:17And South Park, essentially, you know, they are somewhat libertarian of labor in which they really embrace the notion of free speech, they really embrace the notion of sacrificing or cutting down sacred cows. And that has not been the dominant political frame for a lot of the past couple of years, at least when it comes to the left, the liberals. And so there's a very uneasy tension when it comes to the relationship between those two sides. Did you think at all about how the politics of Trey Parker and Matt Stone have evolved, or have they not evolved over the course of this period of time in which American politics have certainly evolved or devolved, if you will?

22:59No, I mean, many, many years ago, the writer, blogger Andrew Sullivan tried to coin the concept of the South Park Republican, which is a variation of like fiscally conservative, socially liberal. I, you know, my gut feeling is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone reject any and all labels that Stone and Dem, and they kind of want the freedom to move around in many senses. There are two things that are true at the same time. One is that I think they've been ideologically consistent throughout their entire careers, which is they believe very much in saying whatever they want. They believe very much in that everything is worth critiquing, that earnestness is maybe something that they don't prize personally.

23:39But at the same time, they can also change. They also change in worldview. And one of the more interesting examples of this is kind of how they handle climate change. So there was a talked about episode back in the mid 2000s called Man, Bear, Pig. It is half man, half bear and half pig. where South Park essentially satirized Al Gore's climate advocacy, basically. Man, bear pig simply wants to get you. I'm super cereal. You could read it somewhat uncharacterially, but somewhat honestly as them going, you know, this sort of fear on climate change. It's a little overblown. And, you know, Gore is in it maybe for the attention, right?

24:21That is like one interpretation, one very strong interpretation of the episode. And they just went after Gore with it. then about like 12 years later I want to say they released sort of a kind of a two-parter that revisited Man Bear Pig where essentially they're like Man Bear Pig is real Man Bear Pig being this sort of creature that Al Gore is like kind of warning against which is a standard for climate change it is real you want to believe it's real you go right on ahead Susan no it's right there it's right there behind you That's kind of widely viewed as like, look, they revised their view on making fun of people who are advocating around climate change.