I don't understand how you don't see it.
That season was all about embracing the alt-right boogeyman of "PC Culture" and attacking safe spaces. Incidentally both are concepts that minorities benefit directly from. The alt-right despises "PC culture" and safe spaces because they don't like being criticized for the hateful fucks they are. Period. And SP told them "hey, you're right to despise them, oh also, virtue signaling is totes real and not at all a meaningless buzzword you made up because you can't believe that anyone could genuinely care about minorities without being out for themselves". That's literally all that season was. It was asinine to a degree that SP has never been before. Which is hard since the show already sucked pretty hard.
In essence, SP gave them an outlet and justification for their beliefs with how over-the-top and villainous they made both concepts while attempting to showcase how little people who support minorities actually care. It's the most ridiculous and off-point commentary possible. It was a season that was nothing but a mouthpiece for the vile shit spewed by alt-righters. I couldn't dislike that season and SP as a whole even more if I tried.
I seriously don't get how anyone can not see it.
Their Hillary commentary just further nails in the coffin. I forgot that episode even existed but geezus is it cringe-worthy.
This is juvenile, hyperbolic and toxic. Your false cause and effect makes no sense. You might as well be mad at the internet itself or Pizza. Also used and loved by the alt right.
South Park is purposely offensive pop culture, and like other topical comedy it's an outlet- Not to punch down or to trivialize anything, but to look through events with a different lens where the social norms are different.
The show has a 20+ year history in which they have made fun of pedophilia, child killing, abortion, torture, rape, handicapped, suicide, school shootings, incest, domestic violence, prostitution, cancer, abusing animals, and many more irredeemable topics that are no fair interpretation of the show could make you conclude is making a platform or making light of events.
You can, in the right avenue make fun of things that would not otherwise be funny because you see the stupid in the world we live in- and the stupid in what we are- stupid and sad beings who cannot get even basic shit right.
Laughing at obscene things that are not otherwise fun, can be reflective. Being roasted and being made of and being called out can help change the way you look at yourself and bring yourself down a few pegs. When I think of great stand up comedians, I think of many of them who have highlighted their own hypocrisy which the audience relates to without pulling back- it's not about them, but they relate to it, and it can help them realize their own shortcomings in a vacuum where their own barriers would have otherwise been there.
A lot of the interesting thing about South Park is how everyone- the caricature characters deal with the events of the show. When the show had an episode about transgender bathroom rights, Randy functions as a catalyst to the average white male. He wants to use the female bathroom for convenience sake, selfishly, but then the episode takes form, and he becomes Lorde and it turns into this thing where he is discriminated against, and his coworkers are uncomfortable with him, but ends with them figuring it out, and the world not ending.
That episode was not a victory for transgender rights, because it's not about touting any movements horn or do what is right. They are just writing a story and doing outrageous things. The creative output of the stories in south park being able to go places where you do not expect them to go, might come from them not telling stories that force feeds an agenda in the mouth akin to Kyles satirical "You know, I learned something today".
The whole point of a show like South Park is to be able and free to make fun of things that would not in other venues be remotely okay. One can hold the opinion that something is serious, while at the same time, find a place to look at things through a lens where one tries to laugh at this depressive horrible world that we live in.
It upsets me seeing posts like this that make it their business to guilt, shame and pervert the meaning of what it is. Particularly when its something I've gotten so much out of.
I'm not of the opinion that everything goes in comedy without exception. I think things should be looked at throughout a lens where we can talk about it. I'm reminded of a special in which Tracy Morgan talked about gay people with actual contempt and hate- no satirical punch lines, no reflection, no story anecdotes. Just "look at how disgusting these gays are". Tracy did the right thing apologizing in that instance because there was no clever observation or any shed of dramatically telling. Nothing was learned or shared, and in that instance one could say that the comedy platforms was being used for hate.
But South Park, Bill Burr, George Carlin and other people with offensive comedy are not like that. They are not making light of any of it. What is happening is that people make it their business to make it about themselves and start creating this vortex. You know what you're getting when you're watching South Park. You watch that show because you know what it is, so being so angry over them having a go at the progressive movement in last season, and having that make more airwaves for condemnation that any other upset in its history tells me that a nerve was hit, that was needed to be hit.
Furthermore, last season does not say that PC culture is bad. PC principle is not a good character because he is silly or fun to laugh at. He is just a great character in contrast to the others, and clearly he is well intentioned, albeit amplified to the extreme like so many of the other characters. I don't think most people watched last season and took away from it that PC culture was bad. What was entertaining about it was how the characters reacted to it.
Like Randy suddenly becoming this psuedo liberal who becomes a slave to this fake sense of wanting to be progressive by shopping at whole foods, but still retaining his old selfish values. Probably a interesting social comment on many people today who engage in slacktivism.
