Welcome to Trump’s America, where comedy is legal again. Unless you bring up the president’s health and appearance - that is off limits. Oh, also, satirizing ICE for their cruel, unjust, and illegal detainments of human beings -- that is a no-go. Everything else is acceptable though, unless that everything else includes mocking the president or any of his officials for their ineptitude in running the country, then that is "illegal" because criticizing the most powerful man in the world is mean.
Besides that, comedy is totally legal, except for anything pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with Trump -- Stephen Colbert learned that lesson the hard way. Assuming one follows all these minor regulations, then no one will infringe on your First Amendment right. That is, unless you talk about the right wing's weaponization of Charlie Kirk’s murder to enact further vitriol against the left -- just ask Jimmy Kimmel how that goes. Everything else is fair game -- unless of course your comedy is too pro-LGBTQ+, feminist, pro-immigration, speaks out against the Palestinian genocide, or has any ounce of empathy for someone other than yourself -- that is all woke, and woke is a mind virus.
The First Amendment has never felt more fragile. We saw the warning signs when Stephen Colbert was fired at the exact moment CBS parent company Paramount was negotiating an $8 billion merger. Industry insiders brushed it off as a “financial decision,” but the timing was too near to ignore. Then came Jimmy Kimmel: publicly threatened by FCC chairman Brendan Carr, suspended by ABC, and pulled off dozens of affiliates owned by Sinclair and Nexstar - companies with their own billion-dollar merger ambitions. For comedians, the message was unmistakable: Mock the president and his ilk, and you will be silenced.
This is how authoritarian regimes operate. Comedy is the first to go. The strongman cannot be mocked. Mockery makes him human, and humanity makes him weak. Yet, in the middle of this climate of fear, one comedy institution stands defiant: South Park.
Unlike some of the late-night shows that are deeply entrenched in partisan loyalties by their audience, Matt Stone and Trey Parker exist in their own orbit. That is to say, the same MAGA audience that tuned out of late-night TV a decade ago did not do so for South Park. The creators are making the most of it by airing out their grievances with President Trump, in a form of American political satire akin to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, which saw the most famous comedian of the time indicting Nazism a year before America joined the war efforts.
For those who have not been following South Park's existence over the past three decades, and more specifically, since Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, the show has been playing coy with Trump. Before this season, Donald Trump was not a character satirized on the show like other celebrities. Instead, there was Mr. Garrison, a teacher at the local elementary school turned bigot due to immigrants in his classroom, who stood in as the Trump figure -- even to the point of running a joke presidential campaign that he never believed he would actually win, only to find himself elected leader of the Free World. In appearance, Mr. Garrison put on a silly wig, painted his face orange, and took up the role of sending unhinged daily tweets, but the name Trump was never uttered. It was a way to still address the current political climate, without having to carry all the baggage that comes with having Donald Trump as a character within the cartoon.
Season 27 signified a demarcation for the show. Not only did Donald Trump become a character within the season, but he has become a main staple. Every episode thus far has dealt with Trump as the overarching antagonist. Yet, South Park did what no other show can do – it pushed the envelope even further.
Colbert and Kimmel can take daily shots at Trump, but only South Park can go on air and call the most powerful man in the world “fu**ing Satan,” both figuratively, and by literally depicting him as Satan’s abusive lover.
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Even people close to the administration are being put on blast, such as Kristi Noem, who is portrayed as a serial violent dog killer who has had so much plastic surgery that her face periodically falls off, or FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who is shown defecating himself so violently that he is hospitalized.
South Park is relentless, but even by the show's standards, their disdain for this presidential administration feels personal. This is new territory for South Park's creators, who made their living satirizing everyone, allowing the show to be universal in its appeal. Season 27 redefines that by not only going after one side, but also remaining unwavering in their fury.
It is one thing to make fun of Tom Cruise and his ties to Scientology, but it is another to portray the president of the United States as an egomaniacal dictator with a small penis, and doing so episode after episode, as if daring their parent company, Paramount, to presumptively cancel them.
(Photo Credit: Depositphotos.com)
Thus, Paramount finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place: Cancel the show it paid $1.5 billion to renew for the next five years, thus destroying their premiere franchise, or stand behind South Park and face the wrath of conservative media -- which, as of recently, began blaming Charlie Kirk’s death on South Park’s rhetoric. It’s a lose-lose for Paramount, of which Stone and Parker are gleefully aware.
Yet, maybe the show’s most poignant moment in recent memory came with a recent episode, Conflict of Interest, which addresses the ongoing Palestinian genocide at the hands of the Israeli government. In it, Sheila Broflovski, mother to the only Jewish family in the town of South Park, travels to Israel to confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his war crimes, screaming:
“There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism? You’re making life for Jews miserable, and life for American Jews impossible!”
Matt Stone, the Jewish-American creator of South Park, who is the inspiration for the Broflovskis, does not mince words, once again reminding the viewing audience: In a democracy -- here, or thousands of miles away -- no one is above reproach, and if we as Americans are doomed to authoritarian government oversight through the forces of censorship, then it is far more fun to stand up for what one believes by giving the middle finger and screaming obscenities on the way out.
Freedom doesn’t die with silence; it dies with compliance. The question is, does this level of defiance serve as a wake-up call to speak out -- which is what once made this country so great -- or does it signify the death rattle of freedom of speech, and thus the death of the true American experience?
Author Bio:
Ben Friedman is a contributing writer and film critic at Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine