A cold boil (2019)
Maybe, just maybe, satire will help save us from Trumpism
Before I put it aside I’d worked more than a few hours on the piece I’d chalked in for Sunday. It was a thoughtfully pared chronology focusing on an egregious persecution emanating from Donald Trump’s White House—one bristling with racism, cruelty and the rogue president’s signature disdain for due process of law.
But, mercifully (I think) I put it aside. There comes a point where spotlighting the Trump regime’s torrent of vice only makes the rubble bounce, so to speak. Of course he lies, of course he bullies, of course he violates one law after another in exacting “retribution” on his enemies. In a rational and just world, the person who is in the White House (when not at Mar-a-Lago, or flagrantly cheating at one of his favorite golf courses) would be doing hard time in prison for sexual assault, white collar crimes and treason. For someone with a curious passion for Alcatraz, he really does belong there.
Trump in bed with satan, from the creators of South Park
We do not live in that world though. Not yet, anyway. Donald Trump has escaped the best of our journalism, and he has escaped the law and the votes of a sizable majority of Americans.. His once unthinkable ascension to become the most powerful person on the planet unfolds in daily increments of evasions, exonerations, grifted emoluments and crypto-swag.
We have suffered him and his enablers with fits of rage and angst but also with fleeting hopes that this too would pass. But those hopes are dashed daily. Beginning with the DOGE rampage last winter he has unilaterally purged federal agencies of scores of competent, devoted, and even heroic public servants whose only offense is to be involved in work (climate science, disease prevention, humanitarian assistance, prosecuting white collar crime, etc.) that the MAGA movement regards as worthless, if not subversive. It’s rational to believe—or want to believe—that the truth will save us, because the truth is more powerful than the daily propaganda that casts journalists, scientists, educators and non-partisan prosecutors as enemies of the state.
It may still be true—in the immortal words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.—that the “long, moral arc of the universe” ultimately bends toward justice. It’s just, in the short run, we’ve been getting our asses kicked by a demagogue, con artist and convicted felon now delivering the “retribution” he promised his followers. This includes not just the harassing lawsuits filed against law firms, universities and news organizations, but the purges and massive cuts in Medicaid, public health research and development, renewable energy and federal law enforcement.
It’s no wonder millions of us live with the fear that we are sliding toward our demise, like the proverbial frog who fails to realize the warm water in the pan in which it sits is inexorably heating toward a lethal boil. Thus the frog stays in the pot. And succumbs. Our challenge is to change that, and do so sooner than later—to un-boil the frog so to speak.
As radical as it may seem, maybe it’s time to accept we can neither reason nor negotiate with a cult.
Since confronting with facts clearly doesn’t work, perhaps mocking them will. After all, comedy poking a stick at celebrities and public figures is broadly protected by the First Amendment. Maybe the instrument we’ve needed all along—to pierce the swamp gas dirigible of the Trump regime—is the needle of satire.
There’s precedent for this in our history with comedians who’ve challenged us to walk with them into our fractured house of mirrors—i.e. Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Paula Poundstone, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, John Oliver and Samantha Bee. But into this most tangled and precarious moment of the present steps the duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running (26 seasons and counting) animated cartoon South Park on Comedy Central.
My son reminded me a couple nights ago that his mother and I barred him from watching South Park when he was growing up. Because South Park is on cable (and, now, streaming) it is not regulated by broadcast licensing that discourages profanity. South Park boils with profanity and cartoonish obscenity. Nothing is out of bounds for Parker and Stone, who were among the first to brutally mock “wokism” and liberal hypocrisy. Their biting humor—largely transmitted by wayward kids layered in winter clothes (fictional South Park is in the mountains of Colorado)—comes at a rapid pace.
In the past two weeks, with the start of their 27th season, Parker and Stone have turned their acid humor on Trump and Trumpism. What’s remarkable is that in between their first two episodes, the duo signed a five year, $1.5 billion contract with Paramount for streaming rights to South Park. Yes, this is the same Paramount, recently acquired by Skydance media, the same Paramount that recently paid out $16 million to resolve a ridiculous “election interference” claim Trump brought against Paramount/CBS for an episode of 60 Minutes that didn’t even involve Trump. This was followed, a few days later, with the announced cancellation of another CBS property—The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—after Colbert bitterly roasted Skydance and Paramount for giving into Trump’s bullying in order to ensure the Federal Communication Commission’s approval of the lucrative Paramount/Skydance merger.
In short, it wasn’t the principle (standing up to thugs) but the money that mattered.
But what few expected was the brazen reaction of Parker and Stone, using the South Park platform to mock Trump and his minions in brutal and hilarious fashion. For example, the 27th season of South Park opened with scenes of Trump having a tryst with a reluctant Satan who seems to think Trump is just a little too weird and too evil, even for the devil.
The second weekly installment—for which the audience doubled to nearly a million streamers—has an even more vicious bite. It begins with the elderly South Park high school guidance counselor, Mr. Mackey, being laid off due to federal budget cuts. Needing to replace his “nut” income, he enlists in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service when he learns of the bonus money being doled out under Trump and Homeland Security director Kristi Noem. The ambivalent Mr. Mackey is quickly fitted with a mask and an assault rifle, and sent on ICE raids to round up and haul away hispanic detainees. He reasons he needs the money, but is increasingly horrified that he’s helping to round up and imprison terrified people who are just trying, like him, to get by.
The reluctant (and recently fired guidance counselor) Mr. Mackey, joining an ICE raid as part of his new job in 2025’s second episode of South Park
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—tjc
