Is “South Park” Getting Scared?
Characters from the cartoon TV show “South Park,” including Elton John, rear, with, from left, Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny, featured in a 1998 episode. (PC: Hulton Archive/Getty Images/TNS)
The adult cartoon “South Park” has a reputation for being highly political, vulgar, and offensive to everyone and everything. The most recent episode, titled “Conflict of Interest,” is no different.
The boys get addicted to a prediction market app, and Cartman and Kyle go head-to-head when somebody posts a prediction that Kyle’s mom is going to bomb a hospital in Gaza. However, at the end of the episode, she travels to Israel and rebukes the prime minister. As a bonus, Cartman, the loveable sociopath, gets put in his place.
In the same episode, Trump tries to kill Satan’s baby using various methods, such as offering him cigarettes and alcohol, putting a tripwire at the top of the stairs, and burying him in a mountain of cat litter. However, his schemes backfire because Brendan Carr always gets there first.
While this episode parodies relevant world events, it seems to have forgotten the biggest one: Charlie Kirk’s murder. The second episode of the season, titled “Got a Nut,” made fun of Kirk, featuring Cartman dressing up like him and starting an extreme right-wing podcast.
Upon viewing the teaser back in July, Kirk admitted that he “kind of laughed” and that he viewed it as a “badge of honor.” After Kirk’s death, the episode was permanently pulled from the Comedy Central broadcast rotation, but it can still be viewed on Paramount Plus.
No one is safe on South Park. So why was this specific episode censored? Furthermore, why did Trey Parker and Matt Stone shy away from mentioning his death in the most recent episode?
Episode 5 was actually postponed for a week, from Sept. 7 to Sept. 24. Viewers speculated that it was originally about Kirk’s death and had to be rewritten.
However, Parker and Stone claimed that it was simply because they didn’t reach their deadline, and assured their audiences: “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true.”
They could’ve easily tackled Kirk’s murder by parodying the response, rather than the murder itself. But while the show is satirical, it’s not mean-spirited.
Perhaps Parker and Stone didn’t want to be insensitive to Kirk’s grieving family or fuel arguments on social media. Parker and Stone clearly are not afraid of Trump’s administration, but perhaps they’re afraid of his supporters.
