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Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

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Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#81
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

south park is a product of the 1990's! its origins lean heavily on the still-true left/democratic party's pro-censorship leanings just because the recent right/republicans were able to more effectively lean into the meme-heavy southpark-type (crude, male-targeted) humor as marketing doesn't really track with your last assertion (for me)

The US-Left is pro-censorship? My recent memory of headlines was the US-Right attempting to ban books. What am I missing?

Tipper Gore targeted music and Hilary Clinton targeted video games (remember - 1990s)

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perception is that the left is in favor of censoring slurs and hate symbols. As a reaction, Trump/MAGA has brought back the R-word for instance. Saying the Left are "pro-censorship" is not factually incorrect but definitely has a different connotation.

broadly speaking, it _is_ factually incorrect to say that. Censorship is the government controlling what information the public can access. No one on "the left" is trying to pass a law saying that people should get jail time for using the R-word. Political correctness, woke/cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is not censorship. And it's not splitting hairs to say this; words have meaning and though 'censors…

> Censorship is the government controlling what information the public can access

Wikipedia and the ACLU both use a more expansive definition, where your definition is only 1 type of censorship. The "Left" uses empathy to convince people to self-censor and less often uses "Cancel Culture" to pressure companies into private censorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://www.aclu.org/documents/what-censorship

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#83
post #38
post #33

Pretty clear there’s a lot of people here without a sense humour.

[flagged]

>It's not clever satire because unlike say, the Gulf of Mexico, South America is an actual real geographical designator in common usage.

It's almost as dumb as renaming lake Ontario to Lake America to "punish" Canada (presumably because it shares its name with the province of Ontario), when that lake has had its name since the 1600's (before the USA or Canada even existed) and is based on a Native American Iroquoian word. And the province of Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around.

But at least with South Park, I can understand their motivation.

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#84
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

south park is a product of the 1990's! its origins lean heavily on the still-true left/democratic party's pro-censorship leanings just because the recent right/republicans were able to more effectively lean into the meme-heavy southpark-type (crude, male-targeted) humor as marketing doesn't really track with your last assertion (for me)

The US-Left is pro-censorship? My recent memory of headlines was the US-Right attempting to ban books. What am I missing?

The Christian right was trying to ban books in the 70s/80s. Fought heavy metal music in the 80s. Then you have 911 censorship. But after 2008 the left brought woke to power which saw banning people from twitter, social media, right speech. Then we reached covid which saw banning of facts. Deplatforming / banning / doxing became the norm until the return of Trump who then moved the needle and started pro Jewish censorship which has pushed the needle for the anti Jewish censorship crew which is taking over.

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#85

I watched South Park for almost 20 years, but stopped about a decade ago. Have the creators ever reconned with their role in normalizing and popularizing.. the current situation? What I mean is, SP is one of most prominent cultural examples of " both sides are equally bad, everyone and everything sucks", they've had great success with this schtick, ManBearPig, Turd Sandwich, etc. They did a lot of prep work for the c…

They have not changed. They still maintain this "enlightened centrist" persona, while claiming "both sides are the same". And their social commentary, if you could call it that, is very tame. They did briefly lean into making politicians out to be evil, but they kind of walked that back and now their story lines read more goofy than anything. The whole premise of the new season is telling. It's not about the sufferin…

>They did briefly lean into making politicians out to be evil,

Shame. I wonder if they got "talked to."

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#86
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

south park is a product of the 1990's! its origins lean heavily on the still-true left/democratic party's pro-censorship leanings just because the recent right/republicans were able to more effectively lean into the meme-heavy southpark-type (crude, male-targeted) humor as marketing doesn't really track with your last assertion (for me)

The US-Left is pro-censorship? My recent memory of headlines was the US-Right attempting to ban books. What am I missing?

If Tipper Gore weren't such a prude, there might have been enough votes to overcome that butterfly ballot issue.

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perception is that the left is in favor of censoring slurs and hate symbols. As a reaction, Trump/MAGA has brought back the R-word for instance. Saying the Left are "pro-censorship" is not factually incorrect but definitely has a different connotation.

broadly speaking, it _is_ factually incorrect to say that. Censorship is the government controlling what information the public can access. No one on "the left" is trying to pass a law saying that people should get jail time for using the R-word. Political correctness, woke/cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is not censorship. And it's not splitting hairs to say this; words have meaning and though 'censors…

Political correctness, woke/cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is not censorship

Cancel culture is literally censorship. Deplatforming is censorship. Debanked is censorship.

I don't know what the R word is but there is a group of people you can't even look down at because they have been deplatformed and cancelled.

The left has passed laws and people do get jail time for social media posts in the UK.

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#88
post #30
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're largely making fun of extremes, whether left, right or Kanye West, Disney/China, Scientology etc. (And once in a while apologize when they get it wrong, like Man Bear Pig) Lately the extremes are more extreme and powerful on the right and so more episodes target that The last season made fun of ICE, Peter Thiel, Trump-gift-based-economy, shitcoins and so on (Labubus, 67, ...) They also poked fun at th…

Agreed. And they have been poking fun at the right for decades. Heck they made a whole movie about how ridiculous the global war on terror was, back in 2004.

Which is still the best satire on American foreign policy, ever

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#89
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-park-issues-rare-... How is that not changing?

See the word "rare" in the headline? They didn't go after Gore because he was wrong. They went after him because he committed the cardinal sin of really, earnestly taking a stand on a big issue. That is NEVER okay in South Park. There is never a correct side. Both sides must always be bad, on every issue. The "correct" view in South Park is always to not really take a stance on anything, and any character who is stro…

Pedantry is a double-edged sword, I replied to a comment beginning with the unequivocal: "They have not changed."

In fact they've changed a lot, their sense of humor, how they make the show, their willingness to embrace a broader viewpoint, and yes their ability to admit that they screwed up something important. It may not be as much change as you'd like, but that's a different question.

Re: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America

#90

I watched South Park for almost 20 years, but stopped about a decade ago. Have the creators ever reconned with their role in normalizing and popularizing.. the current situation? What I mean is, SP is one of most prominent cultural examples of " both sides are equally bad, everyone and everything sucks", they've had great success with this schtick, ManBearPig, Turd Sandwich, etc. They did a lot of prep work for the c…

south park is a product of the 1990's! its origins lean heavily on the still-true left/democratic party's pro-censorship leanings just because the recent right/republicans were able to more effectively lean into the meme-heavy southpark-type (crude, male-targeted) humor as marketing doesn't really track with your last assertion (for me)

I feel it worth pointing out an important distinction between censorship coming from "the left" vs. that coming from "the right".

On the left, when someone uses a racial or sexist epithet, for example, the reaction is to exert social pressure against that individual. Social media escalates that to a giant dogpile, which, in some cases, results in some extreme cases where the individual loses their job in addition to becoming a social pariah.

However, all of this is merely an exercise in free speech and free association. The person in question suffers no legal consequences for their speech. Instead, it is a large number of onlookers who decide they disagree with the individual and choose to counter him/her with their own speech and/or dissolve any association they have with him/her.

I won't say I condone how little it takes for the crowd to react sometimes or the extent to which they do, but everything is well within First Amendment rights of free speech and association.

In contrast, when something the right doesn't like is discovered, they take legal action. Books are removed from public and school libraries. Laws are written to target anyone who is guilty of the offensive speech (e.g., Florida's Don't Say Gay law). More recently, it's been popular to write these laws such that the offending individuals are opened to civil suits by third parties rather than suffer jail time, as a loophole trying to avoid the Supreme Court striking them down as blatant First Amendment violations.

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