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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying they don't have a political leaning, but they often focus their energy and 22 minutes on showing just how wildly absurd a situation is. For me, that's a big ingredient in why they've stayed so entertaining.

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They're also a big proponent of bothsideism. For some topics that makes sense (because there are two legitimate or legitimately absurd sides). For other topics it just pollutes discourse by elevating an illegitimate side.

"I like the style when it fits my beliefs, but this comedy show is polluting discourse when I disagree with it"

also see comments on The Onion articles

Or this is how you get the creators apologizing through the characters -for almost half an episode- of being so stupid of equating climate change with a half man, half bear, half pig creature.

Hey, it's not like any political movement, pro-climate included, has ever been without some embarrassing missteps and overstatements. You could name anything, no matter how true or virtuous, and I could find you some wayward supporters who are doing more harm than good, and some arguments that only seem right if you focus on their conclusion.

They were mocking Al Gore, who made some pretty wild doom predictions which didn’t come true. Even if you’re fully on board with climate change being a very serious issue, there’s plenty of space to mock people. For example, how about an episode which mocks Democrats for coming down hard against nuclear energy (except for Yang)? It’s incredibly disappointing to see the candidates cave to the anti-nuclear wing of their base.

Correction : Al Gore made doom predictions that haven't come true yet!

He made predictions with dates in them, if I recall correctly. So his predictions can never come true because those dates have passed.

Yours is a good example, if a bit meta, of one side arguing in bad faith and being less legitimate than the other. Arguably so is this one.

"when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

some topics they tackle are nails, others... screws.

“pollutes discourse by elevating an illegitimate side”-- What if they don't consider it being illegitimate?

I don't think "bothsideism" exist, the act itself is just a cover up for political opinions. What the accusation of "bothsideism" is actually saying is "you are actually not neutral, but biased". But SP never claimed to be a political neutral medium. It is just some opinionated comedy series that some people enjoys.

I think what Trey & Matt give us in South Park comes from a pretty genuine, sincere place, most of the time. Sometimes its some of the best comedic satire ever conceived and just the kind of thing we need in the moment - other times, there's nothing particularly inspired and its pretty apparent they just need to get an episode shipped.

But... they have a rare talent for nuking sacred cows from orbit. It always hurts when its your cow.

I appreciate that a lot of their commentary is about how people can get carried away, regardless of how good/bad the character's ideals or intention are. A fair bit of pop media really turns me off by how hard it tries to force-feed me fashionable political opinions that I already agree with.

Most of my political disagreements with people come down more to ends vs means, implementation details, unintended consequences and the like, rather than actual core goals/ideals. In that context I did - and probably still would - enjoy the original Man Bear Pig as a gag on political advocacy even though 2006 was pretty late to be denying climate change.

The OG Man Bear Pig was related to Al Gore predicting Florida would sink and there would be more aggressive storms/hurricanes caused by then-global warming.

Turns out Al Gore was right!

South Park agreed!: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/nov/11/south-p...

An illegitimate side according you, might not be illegitimate in general.

I'm not saying there are no universally illegitimate sides, but even those have their supporters and some reasonable arguments. The focus should be on deconstructing these arguments instead of marking the side as illegitimate.

The way I see it, we're drawing from a pool where most ideas are bad. Most problems (or, more broadly, "systems") have unsettlingly narrow parameters under which we can secure a beneficial outcome. Like the human body: a very narrow happy path flanked on both sides by a boundless abyss of deranged and dysfunctional pathologies limited only by your imagination.

I don't have an answer for how to identify good ideas that's convincing to everyone, especially in the flimsy-whimsy domain of politics, but I believe there are always more than two sides even if it's presented that way. There are uncountable many "sides" and most of them are bad, wrong, and insane. And to entertain all of them in earnest under the pretenses that we're being fair is a paralyzing waste of time.

Even for a comedy show. It's not really about the show anyway but the bigger picture of politics that it fits into.

>I'm not saying there are no universally illegitimate sides, but even those have their supporters and some reasonable arguments.

Like that National Association of Marlon Brando Look Alikes.

>The focus should be on deconstructing this arguments

I wonder what arguments you may see here and what the possible deconstruction may look like.

>I wonder what arguments you may see here and what the possible deconstruction may look like.

Consider a debate about the existence of God. A theist person might say 'everything must have a creator'. One deconstruction could be that the proposed God does not seem to have a creator.

Oh there are you know. Some people want to murder other people that they have never met and don't know, also they want to murder those people's children. These people don't have some reasonable arguments, instead they have a shared assumption of hate and (im)moral purpose.

Just as a counter to this, war invokes similar behaviour and a lot of people often support that.

I have to say, I don;'t see this as a counter - isn't it a norm and a good idea to try and avoid wars and stop them as quickly as possible? The implacable hatred of "the other" is the problem - not the reluctance of the sane to debate with the folks who have the implacable hatred issue.

> For some topics that makes sense

Bothsideism is always good fun. It makes 100% sense if your purpose is simply humor. Discourse is mean to be polluted, heil post-truth!

Not understand why everything needs to be so left/right. I like parts of socialism think we need to provide some common things as a society and I believe in regulated capitalism. Hey I even changed my mind how to implement things for the better. I'm not left, I'm not right.

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