'Point-and-laugh': The most brutal comedy weapon against Trump isn't Gavin Newsom's memes

The animated and irreverent "South Park," like comedian Bill Burr and "Real Time" host Bill Maher, isn't shy about brutally mocking liberals and progressives along with conservatives and MAGA Republicans. And the show's disdain for left-wing "woke" culture and "political correctness" is intense.

But recent "South Park" parodies of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are infuriating members of the Trump Administration, including Noem.

In an op-ed published by The Guardian on August 23, journalist Jesse Hassenger describes "South Park's" scathing mockery of Trump as the most important comedy of Trump's second presidency.

"I'll admit it: I’m more of a 'Simpsons' guy than a 'South Park' guy," Hassenger writes. "Nothing really against those 'South Park' guys — I've caught plenty of episodes over its astonishing near-30-year run, and loved the 1999 big-screen movie…. 'South Park' has a thinner bench by comparison, and as the show itself astutely pointed out years ago, it's difficult for a satirically minded animated sitcom to explore ground that 'The Simpsons' hasn't covered already. 'South Park's political bent, too, has often seemed less varied than the warmer, but still sometimes cutting, social ribbing of Matt Groening's signature show. It’s a fine line between omnidirectional satire and libertarian crankiness."

Hassenger continues, "And yet, the 27th season of 'South Park' has accomplished something vanishingly few of its peers, whether in animation or topical comedy, have been able to do: getting laughs taking shots at the second Trump Administration."

The journalist argues that the "Trump cabal" is "so outsized in its stupidity and cruelty that it's hard to distend it into a 'funny' caricature, even a bleak one. But the show's "anti-Trump blows this season," Hassenger emphasizes, "have managed to land."

"In Trump’s second term," Hassenger observes, "it has only gotten bleaker; jokes that were worn out by the end of 2020 are getting retold with a nasty vengeance, and the bar for cathartic laughter has been raised considerably…. With their most recent Trump parody, though, there isn’t much moralizing — just gratifyingly mean caricatures of deserving figures such as Trump, JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Some, not all, of their past roastings have verged on point-and-laugh bullying; here are targets worthy of that derision."

Jesse Hassenger's full op-ed for The Guardian is available at this link; watch a recent "South Park" clip below or here.

- YouTubeyoutu.be