The Gospel According to South Park

Somehow, five years have passed since the COVID summer of 2020. My son had just “finished” fourth grade. His mother and I were distracted parents of him and his seven-year-old sister, both of us teetering from cabin fever. It felt like we were hanging on to our sanity, and our marriage, by a thread.

We held on to both, thankfully. Our kids seem to have recovered, too. But by this time that summer, it’s fair to say we had completely “lost contain” of our children. Even under normal conditions, we’ve favored a loose-reins approach to parenting, with a healthy dose of Lenore Skenazy-style “Free Range Parenting.” But that summer? I gave up entirely. I let my son watch TV. A lot of TV.

By the time school resumed, he had watched every episode of The Simpsons and every episode of South Park.

At the time, I felt more than a little guilty about letting a 10-year-old binge-watch two decades of South Park. It was a bit early, I thought, for him to be learning proper condom application techniques from Mr. Garrison. When I told friends later, the story always got a laugh – a kind of comic confession from a parent who’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

But as my son made his way through middle school and into high school, something changed. One night over dinner, we were talking about wars when I mentioned Saddam Hussein. My son chimed in casually – he knew exactly who Saddam was. I asked him how. His answer: “South Park.”

That kept happening. From Michael Jackson and Neverland Ranch, to Mormonism, to the NSA, to wokeism … my son was not only familiar with these topics, he was informed, funny, and incisively skeptical. I realized that this crash course from Butters and Cartman and Mr. Mackey had functioned like one of those downloads Neo gets in The Matrix; except that instead of instantly learning martial arts, my son had instantly become culturally literate. And, just as important, that literacy came wrapped in a sense of humor rooted in satire, absurdity, and a deep mistrust of power, regardless of party affiliation.

He jokes about Joe Biden’s senility and Trump’s grifting grossness. He refers to COVID-era masking as “chin diapers,” a phrase South Park coined while many adults were still double-masking alone in their cars. It struck me: my greatest parenting lapse had somehow turned into one of my best decisions.

Of course, it’s not just that South Park is anti-authority and unapologetically crude. So was Beavis and Butthead. The difference is that South Park is crafted. It endures not just because of what it says, but how it’s made – with discipline, speed, and storytelling intelligence.

South Park co-creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone are master storytellers. In a short video that should be required viewing for anyone who writes, they explain that if the beats, or scenes, of your story are best linked by the phrase “and then,” you’re doing it wrong. Instead, each scene should be connected by “therefore” or “but.” It’s deceptively simple, and it’s the single best explanation of narrative momentum I’ve ever seen. (Watch it here.)

Combine that storytelling mastery with a relentless work ethic that has allowed them to churn out weekly takes on almost every major current event of the last three decades, and you get the South Park that we know and (that most of us) love today. A generational institution that’s still funny.

And still winning.

Just days after closing a new five-year, $1.5 billion deal with Paramount+, South Park opened its 27th season with an episode titled “Sermon on the Mount,” which gleefully eviscerated both President Trump and Paramount+. What’s the point of having “fuck you money” if you never say “fuck you”?

The episode instantly stole headlines from CBS’s other big news of the week — its cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was reportedly losing $40 million per year while paying Colbert $15 million annually. I haven’t seen any news that other media companies are jumping on the opportunity to hire Colbert. In contrast, Parker and Stone land a deal that far exceeds their previous deal with ViacomCBS.

The relative math reveals a comical, orders-of-magnitude gap. The market has spoken because viewers have voted with their attention. Colbert and Fallon and Kimmel are tired. South Park is still relevant. Still funny. Still something people want to watch.

South Park even predicted the demise of late night. Just last year, Parker and Stone introduced “Jimmy Valmer, King of Woke Comedy,” hosting a faux show called Late Night with Jimmy. On a garishly-lit set, Jimmy hobbles onstage with double-forearm crutches and opens with: “Geez, what’s the deal with these Mexicans, huh? I mean, they have fabulous food, their country has amazing beaches, and they’re really fantastic people.” Canned applause follows this virtue-signaling disguised as comedy. Hilariously, the only group Jimmy still makes fun of? Canadians.

The skit gets at the heart of what Parker and Stone and the comedic legends that preceded them have always understood: you can either tell jokes, or you can try not to offend anyone. You usually can’t do both.

And the difference between South Park and the late-night crowd isn’t just about the comedy. It’s about the message. During COVID, while Colbert and others were fawning over Fauci, hawking Pfizer ads, and pushing for school closures, South Park was mocking all of it – the masks, the panic, the bureaucratic gaslighting. As a concept, “chin diapers” wasn’t just funny – it was accurate.

When comedy becomes propaganda, it stops being funny. Parker and Stone have never forgotten that the job is to make people laugh. That means skewering whoever is in power, without asking for permission.

Late night talk shows are dying, not entirely but primarily because the product is borderline unwatchable. But, despite the best efforts of the hall monitor, cancel culture crowd, satire – real, cutting, offensive, hilarious satire – is alive and well. My son, now in high school, is living proof. He is a great conversationalist, comfortable speaking with just about anyone of any age; in large part, thanks to a show I once felt guilty for letting him watch.

As it turns out, enrolling my son in summer school at South Park Elementary wasn’t a parenting blunder at all. And, of course, Parker and Stone had it right from the beginning. In the words of Stan Marsh from one of the show’s very first episodes:

I think if parents would spend less time worrying about what their kids watch on TV and more time worrying about what’s going on in their kids’ lives, this world would be a much better place.

Nearly thirty years later, these words still hold up.