It’s not often that a show in its 19th season earns renewed critical praise. And it’s not often that a program dedicated to critiquing the received wisdom of the politically correct left earns plaudits from outlets as diverse as the New York Times and Salon and Reason and this here Washington Free Beacon.
And yet South Park’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker managed just that feat, turning in a blistering season that prompted praise for taking on the absurdity of modern outrage culture. Re-casting the forces of political correctness as a white frat boy who bullies those around him into obeying a certain set of values, South Park managed to put a humorous spin on a very real problem.
No one was safe from South Park’s scorn. Vacuous celebrities, those who find everything under the sun to be problematic, Donald Trump, Caitlyn Jenner, even native advertising: all were targets of the Comedy Central cartoon’s ire. Never a show known for its subtlety, Parker and Stone laid the hammer down extra hard this year, perhaps most memorably in the form of the character Reality. "What’s the matter with you people," the mustache-twirling miscreant says to a group of social justice warriors. "You’re sad that people are mean? Well I’m sorry, the world isn’t one big liberal arts college campus. … No. You want to put all your shit up on the Internet and have every single person say hooray for you! F--k you! You’re all pricks."
If there’s a better ethos for our day and age, we’ve yet to hear it. And for speaking truth to power, Matt Parker and Trey Stone are each a Free Beacon Man of the Year.
