Who cares? I would imagine maybe 2 or 3 people care. The usual number of people who care about my opinions. If anything, this post might boost "South Park" viewership, because that's the way the world is. I don't think Trey Parker or Matt Stone will lose any sleep because I've decided they're dicks and that watching their show will from now on just remind me about what complete dicks they are.
It became too much for me a couple of nights ago, partway through the episode "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow," from 2001, in which the kids reunite Terrance and Phillip for the South Park Earth Day Brainwashing Festival. I don't remember when I changed the channel, but it wasn't long after Clyde said, "Ah, excuse me? My Daddy is a geologist and he says there actually isn't any concrete evidence of global warming." Ah, excuse me, Clyde? Your Daddy gets paid to lie by oil companies. I don't think Parker and Stone have that excuse. I could be wrong, but whether they're getting paid off or they own a lot of Exxon and BP or they're actually that dumb, or whether they actually do realize that global warming is real and they do shit like this just to spite Sean Penn DOESN'T REALLY MATTER all that much any more to me.
It's the message of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night again, the one I've quoted so often in this blog, the one which has become almost a mantra for me: "We are what we pretend to be." In the introduction to Mother Night Vonnegut said he didn't think it was a particularly deep message. I must disagree. It's very deep, and its applications and implications are wide. I did a bit of research for this post, trying to find something concrete about Parker's and/or Stone's views on global warming. A quote, one way or another, "I think global warming is a hoax" or "Of course we know global warming is real and catastrophic, we're just torturing Sean Penn." A massive donation to the Republican Party or the Audubon Society. I found squat. Besides being done with "South Park," I think I'm done with RationalWiki too, which claimed that Parker and Stone are climate change skeptics and offered no evidence for this beyond "South Park." And I'm sorry I ever saw Encyclopedia Dramatica in the course of searching for info on Parker and Stone. Again, it's the we-are-what-pretend-to-be thing: if Encyclpedia Dramatica isn't a neo-Nazi website, it's pretending to be one convincingly enough that it actually is one.
I'm not telling anybody else what TV shows they should watch. Some people can't watch movies with Tom Cruise or John Travolta, because of Scientology. In some cases some of those movies used to be among their favorites, but in the meantime they learned more about Scientology, and now they just can't stand those movies anymore. I have no problem watching movies with Cruise or Travolta in them. Scientology doesn't bother me nearly as much as global warming. To me the main difference between Christianity and Scientology is that Scientology is a lot newer. But if people want to boycott movies with Cruise or Travolta, or keep watching "South Park," that's fine with me. I understand. Sometimes I can separate art from politics, as I do when I read Eliot and Pound and Yeats. I can understand progressives who love Wagner and progressives who can't listen to Wagner. I can separate the art from the politics.
Some of the time I can. But not all of the time. Not with Parker and Stone, not any more. Not with the treatment of environmentalism on "South Park," not with Parker being a Libertarian either, and not with Stone saying stupid shit such as that W and Michael Moore are equally clueless and that Alec Baldwin is even worse.
It would be great if one of them had a big come-to-Jesus moment about the climate, and they started to have a huge bitter public feud over the environment. That would be awesome. "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow"-in-real-life-level awesome.
I tried really hard to find out that Parker and/or Stone was an anti-vaxxer so that I could pile more contempt upon them in this post, but no luck. I'm not saying they're not anti-vaxxers, I'm not saying that it would surprise me to learn that they're anti-vaxxers. Anti-vax is truly rampant in Amuurkin show biz, probably more widespread per capita than in Amurrkin trailer parks, but I have no evidence to show anti-vax tendencies on the part of either Parker or Stone. At this juncture.
Anyway. Trey, Matt: screw you gazz, I'm goin' home.
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