Comedians and Kings
CrowdSource 8.4.2025
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: South Park, Stephen Colbert and POTUS.
Join us! CrowdSource features the best comments from The Crowd — our cherished readers and subscribers who, with their comments and emails, help make Wisdom of Crowds what it is.
South Park Mocks Trump
Last week, Matt Stone and Trey Parker of the satirical show South Park shocked America with its depiction of Donald Trump as a lawsuit-happy, tiny-membered petty tyrant in bed with the devil.
Deep Cut. The final scene of the episode shows a naked Donald Trump trudging through the desert — a clear allusion to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema.
“The Jester’s Power.” Last May,
lamented the lack of good, anti-Trump comedy that can “make it possible to imagine the end of kings.” This week, we’ll see whether Mary thinks the new South Park meets the mark.
In the meantime, some reactions to the episode:
“Donald Trump Poses a Real Conundrum for Comedians,” writes critic Tyler Foggatt. “He’s an endless wellspring of material, but what he says and does is inevitably more absurd … than any satire could be. … it is refreshing to see what happens when satirists are willing to play on the President’s terms ...”
Where the Taboos Are. Liberal columnist
sees America waking up: “There’s no more pretending, in South Park or in America, that it’s rebellious to be reactionary.”Goldberg cites an interesting 2005 book, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, by Brian C. Anderson.
F*ck You Money. A conservative perspective, from Jeffrey Blehar: “… on a level of comedic execution, [the episode] simply didn’t take me there. … the market reality is what really hits me. South Park’s creators can say or do what they want because they make money for Paramount.”
“Mexican Joker.” It’s not the first time South Park has mocked Trump. In 2019, for example, they attacked Trump’s child separation policy:
Who Canceled Colbert?
Did The Late Show get canceled because Stephen Colbert annoyed Trump? Jon Stewart thinks so. Others aren’t so sure:
Not Worth It. Blehar again, noting that South Park and Colbert are both owned by Paramount: “Parker and Stone just signed a deal with Paramount for the rights to South Park reportedly worth $1 billion. … it is proof that, in Colbert’s case, censorship is not the issue at all: Colbert got canceled because he simply wasn’t worth it.”
Mass Culture is Dead.
argues that Colbert got canceled mostly because of bad ratings and the decline of late-night: “Outside of sports and perhaps Taylor Swift, there’s really no mass culture anymore. And the job of a late-night host is to at once be an arbiter of mass culture and to push against the boundaries of acceptable taste. … the era of the late-night host as a broadly acceptable cultural focal point is as dead as Blockbuster Video.”“Mainstream Mascot.” “One reason for Colbert’s cancellation could be that he may no longer be as irreplaceable as he once was,” writes
. “What once felt transgressive during the Bush years now risks sounding predictable in a media ecosystem flooded with liberal late-night hosts.”Just Do What’s Funny. Last week, Jay Leno, former host of the Tonight Show, inveighed against the partisanship of late-night hosts, like Colbert: “Why shoot for just half an audience all the time? … I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group … I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.”
Colbert Mocks Bush
For the younger Crowd, the full video of Stephen Colbert’s legendary roast of George W. Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondent’s dinner.
From the Crowd
A week of reflecting about AI and the futility (or not) of writing trend pieces.
Engineered Narratives.
’ piece about AI and free speech became the excuse for this fruitful exchange between and . Here’s a taste (from Rickie):
… plenty of “anti-establishment” narratives are just as engineered (and still stuck in memetic scapegoating cycle). These can prove just as harmful to epistemological integrity because they give people the illusion of dissent while keeping them in the same general frame, preventing them from truly thinking outside it. Whether views are mainstream or fringe; branded as collective or individualist; left or right, etc., has no bearing on this—as what’s important is how you got your beliefs, how often you question them/how willing you are to reassess them when new evidence emerges, and how tightly they’re fused with your identity (to find out, one can ask themselves if a counterpoint or challenge to their views feels like as an attack on something deeper about them. How one replies to dissent/counter argument is revealing, as I’m sure you’ve picked up on).
AI may be trained on us, but it can also continue “training” us to accept a limited set of evidence or false equivalence as sufficient for determining truth. Especially given that it’s not immune to the same interests that benefit from algorithmic targeting and creating opposing camps that argue endlessly with each other while making people intolerant to questioning their own beliefs.
#NotAllTakes. After listening to our podcast about modern love,
challenges :
Damir should be required to write a post explaining what he thinks the top 5 significant changes in the world have been since e.g., 2000. I appreciate the point that it’s useful and wise to have a longer view on things, but if your analysis just amounts to “nothing ever really changes,” then the whole idea of having a Substack and a podcast is kind of moot, is it not?
Like ok, there is a genre of dumb takes that have been getting printed. The critique cannot just be that they are dumb because on a long enough timeline nothing ever changes. That kind of critique is self-undermining. What makes that genre particularly dumb? or to put it another way, isn’t every trend/newsy/events essay going to be dumb for the same reason?
See you next week!
Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!
Santi, appreciate the engaging pieces to start the work week