South Park has rarely been hotter than it is right now. In the past year, it’s made creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker billionaires, enjoyed its best ratings in years, and sent shockwaves through the corridors of power that may or may not have caused the East Wing to collapse. Who would’ve thought that mocking a deeply unpopular, relentlessly sleepy, poop-obsessed president would’ve been the key to it? Not Stone or Parker. In a new interview with The New York Times, they claim that, initially, Trump jokes were going to be a one-off, then they discovered the rich “vein of comedy” they’ve been following all season. While they could attribute the recent resurgence of popularity to mocking Trump, though, they argue that the show really hasn’t changed. “It’s not that we got all political,” Parker said. “It’s that politics became pop culture.”
Of course, for years, the show had been wrestling with something only the brain trust on Twitter feels threatened by: “Woke.” Yeah, before landing on such bits as “Donald Trump has a little penis,” the South Park guys spoke truth to power by going after the “extremists” who think slurs are dehumanizing. “Any extremists of any kind we make fun of,” Parker said. “We did it for years with the woke thing. That was hilarious to us. And this is hilarious to us.” Parker describes himself and his partner as “down-the-middle guys” provoked by “any extremists,” whether that be a president ordering masked federal agents to kidnap people off the street, or someone arguing that using slurs can lead to a president who orders masked agents to kidnap people off the streets. But the White House can blame its old bugaboo “government overreach” for the pivot to Trump—that and podcasters.
“It’s like the government is just in your face everywhere you look,” Parker said. “Whether it’s the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it’s just all political and political because it’s more than political. It’s pop culture.” He certainly isn’t wrong about that. Amid the government shutdown, his attempt to block SNAP benefits, and 1,100 canceled flights, Trump jumped into the Fox broadcasting booth during the Commanders-Lions game. Thankfully, Parker and Stone’s bosses don’t seem to mind their target. Despite Paramount Skydance’s frequent overtures to the Trump administration, the South Park guys maintain that “they’re letting us do whatever we want, to their credit.” The second that changes, we’ll know.
