NYT: How ‘South Park’ Perfectly Captures Our Era of Outrage

[dogknob]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/arts/television/south-park-sketches-grander-satire-themes.html

And where past “South Park” satires once looked at single issues, this season is sketching something like a grand — if messy — unified theory of anger, inequality and disillusionment in 2015 America.

Even as the p.c. wars rage, the town of South Park is being gentrified: It’s attracted a Whole Foods and built Sodosopa (South of Downtown South Park), an enclave of hipster eateries and condos built literally around the house of the dirt-poor McCormick family. The townspeople are delighted, until they realize many of them can’t afford to join the few, the smug, the artisanal. Under the town’s chichi new facade is a familiar slurry of resentment (of the privileged, of immigrants, of elites) and fear (of terrorism, of crime, of economically falling).

And all that, in the “South Park” worldview, drives people to a self-pitying narcissism that extends to politics but also goes beyond it. In the season’s darkest episode, “Safe Space,” the townspeople assign a single child to filter every negative comment from their social media, to protect their self-esteem from all manner of “-shaming.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/arts/television/south-park-sketches-grander-satire-themes.html

My widdle snowfwake bwain is melting!

[valerief]

1. Looking forward to the PC Principal Final Justice episode tonight! nt

[Dr. Strange]

3. What a ... weird ending.

So he'll be back next season. On the one hand, I'm surprised. On the other, I'm glad, because I'm hoping to see him and Cartman go at each other. That would be epic. Not unlike the epic service offered by the fine people at State Farm.

[independentpiney]

2. This season has been amazing

I always visualize the pc bros posting on du