Robin Williams, an acid trip, and moral panic: “Blame Canada” at the Oscars | Hacker News Reader

Robin Williams, an acid trip, and moral panic: “Blame Canada” at the Oscars

theringer.com

200 pointsAndrewBissell118 comments

"Basically, for every stance they’ve gotten right—like this past season when they refused to back down to China—there’s another one that’s aged like a bowl of Cheesy Poofs left out in the rain."

It's never felt to me like South Park was trying to be right about anything. I think of them more as a court jester, they play a role where they mock everything, all the time. The mocking is the point. Getting it right is irrelevant (my take, anyway).

When you mock everything, though, you will naturally convince a lot of people that everything is equally worth mocking (which may necessitate, say, readdressing climate change).

Somebody far more eloquent than I am summarized the problem with this attitude: https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/comment...

By poking fun at everyone who tries to do anything, you end up defending the status quo

They do not poke fun at everyone who tries to do anything. They poke fun at self-important people who have latched onto progressive ideologies once they can gain something from it. They poke fun at crowd madness. They poke fun at hypocrites. The comment was a response to the perfect case in point: Caitlyn Jenner. The public face of trans women and 'Woman of the year', who didn't even believe in gay marriage.

The average South Park episode has Cartman representing the extreme of some issue, and the issue is mocked. But there will also be a foil, possibly Butters or Stan, who represents the core of the issue, ignoring the hyperbole surrounding it. This character is the one who succeeds.

They poke fun at people who wrap their entire identity up in those activities or causes. Plenty of SP characters do things and have opinions and don't get ridiculed. It's the ones who take that activity and those causes so seriously and extremely that they become personal embodiments of them: Those characters get roasted.

> It's the ones who take that activity and those causes so seriously and extremely that they become personal embodiments of them

Is that really an issue? Looking at our democracies, is the real issue that people take their causes seriously and extremely? Or is the issue the cynical apathy that opposes that?

History is full of pompous self-important people who took their causes very seriously indeed, and advanced humanity through that dedication.

The problem seems to be that people are very bad at what the stoics prescribed: do what you can and accept the rest.

I mean there's a very steep diminishing returns curve for most kinds of activism. You can't protest 0-24, because eventually you will run out of food, water, money, etc. Of course social networks and the constant breaking news media pours napalm on everything continuously, just because. (And yes, Trump is going to be Trump every day, just as China will be run by a paranoid oppressive power-hungry regime for the foreseeable future.)

And this kind of overdoing things, not backing down, not compromising, not accepting incremental change even if it costs people a lot what seems to be the problem. (Eg. see how some people unironically think that a big collapse is an acceptable way to get to whatever next glorious stage the world will get to. See also how most far-anything ideologies all operate as very simple recipes and try to derive "solutions" - or maybe they are better called proposals - for every problem they see. And this ideological purism is what SP seems to ridicule with contrived situations, that are allegorical - usually to an almost direct correspondence - to the complexities of reality. )

Exactly, because the world seems to have become a competition for virtue signalling. Many folks without nuanced understanding of topics becoming experts of everything under the sun, judging others etc. I understand that ultimately we have many different problems that only get resolved when highlighted a lot, however relying on attention economy and pumping out new issues to be outraged about day in and day out is also not the right approach. All it does is make people feel happy about themselves.

I’m not sure that apathy is more of a problem than people caring so much about things that they’re willing to hurt people to accomplish their goals. The status quo is often fiercely defended.

FWIW, South Park’s main impact on me has been to make me constantly wonder what stuff I believe that is actually wrong and ridiculous. It’s raised the bar for when I feel it’s appropriate to force my beliefs on other people, which could look like apathy, I suppose...

This is why I've always felt very uneasy with South Park. They seemed to me to ridicule the act of giving a damn at all. That's not being a court jester, that's being an extremely lazy and apathetic cynic.

They satirise that too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_Getting_Old

To get a bit more meta, Simpsons did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IWGz72U210

If you're doing it right, you should be mocking the status quo just as often and twice as bitterly.

Yeah, I think this is right on. And I feel like there's some value in that -- pointing out the hypocrisies and flaws in even the best causes can be useful. Nothing should be above criticism.

There are some negative side effects of leaning too hard into that though, I think, like you mentioned in your last paragraph.

Slaying sacred cows is all fun and games and everyone loves South Park for it.

Right up until the point at which your own sacred cows are slaughtered. Then suddenly it's not funny any more. Blaspheming the sacred has long been grounds for jesters to be fired or beheaded, even though that is the jester's role in society.

It's still funny, you just don't like being ridiculed. Which is proof positive that your sacred cows must be ridiculed as much as possible.

That seems really reductive. Not all campaigns of slaying sacred cows are the same, and there are a lot of ways it can be biased, some of them bad.

> just don't like being ridiculed. Which is proof positive that your sacred cows must be ridiculed

"You're being defensive, therefore you're wrong." That's nothing more than an insulting fallacy, where the person saying it gets to feel morally superior and always right. There's no possible response, either they admit defeat or they 'prove you right'.

>Not all campaigns of slaying sacred cows are the same

Yeah. Your sacred cows are not OK to ridicule, but when it's The Other, definitely their sacred cows should be ridiculed, and it's hilarious.

But what happens when you get classified in the Outgroup? Suddenly the shoe's on the other foot and you don't like it one bit.

Maybe tolerance and understanding towards The Other is the answer. Whether The Other is communists or people who live in middle America.

Again, you're just being insulting. "If you object, then you MUST be motivated by it being 'your cow' and NEVER correct" is a very stupid thing to say. Stop being so smug and think it through! If one person goes after cows ABCDEF, and the other person goes after cows ACCCDC, there's a significant difference between the two. Someone complaining about the latter is not automatically wrong, unjustifiably mad that their cows got slayed.

I’ve always taken that to be the implicit lesson - that there should be no such thing as a sacred cow.

Every opinion must be open for discussion, debate and yes, even ridicule.

Like the time they did Scientology and Isaac Hayes quit?

But isn't that what comedy is all about - you make fun of everything, the truly great ones, Chapelle comes to mind, expose naked truths and come off with blinding insights.

You can't be too great at it though, or you get beheaded. You have to carefully limit the societal critiques and "blinding insights" to something acceptable enough for your audience.

The ritual "I've learned something today..." bit is usually funny and meta, but there's clearly a consistent worldview behind the sentiments in the sum up. They aren't very subtle about it.

And yet, they went out of their way to show they changed their minds about Al Gore's climate change agenda. A jester doesn't do that.

The inside joke of most Shakespearean plays was the the jester was the smartest person in the room, often because of the ability to take a perspective of external observation and self-awareness.

Learning and change is part of intelligence...honestly the biggest part. Of course the jester would change their mind, and poke fun at themselves as they do, which South Park did.

Not to mention I never really thought of it as poking fun at climate change as much as Al Gore's self-centered approach to climate change.

Well it sounds like the Jester acted like the Greek Chorus. I guess that’s what good satire is, that fourth wall being broken by a character, or the chorus explaining the current state of affairs.

to put it back in the context of the article...I have (personally, and there is certainly elements of my own projection in here) always interpreted Matt and Trey's perspective as 'we need to change grow and improve as a society but stop doing it in the the most self important and reactionary way possible. I place them as left-leaning libertarians in part based on their 'hate liberals even more'. They believe in people not performance. I look at the episodes post Obama being elected as the height of satire of both sides and quite profoundly insightful for what came next.

Even a smart philosopher like George Carlin downplayed the 'environmental' agenda. However his comments should be viewed with the context of the time and his primary targets.

Well, Al Gore's "climate change agenda" was hypocritical corporate crap, even if (or especially if) you believe in human-induced climate change and the need to stop it...

Same with the "new green deal" which is mostly "business as usual with a green facade".

I’ve seen this hot take before, and it always struck me as coming from someone that had seen very few episodes.

About half the time episodes end with exposition to spell out the point for people that didn’t quite get it. The creators definitely take positions. Those positions just happened to be expressed through satire.

The whole episode 201 debacle should highlight the fact that the creators have the courage of their convictions. Contrasted with someone like Seth MacFarlane, who just... doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a moral principle [1].

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=diW3OwMYdrk

It's not so much a matter of getting it right or getting it wrong. It's more a matter of "getting it", which often doesn't come without passage of time and some hindsight.

As Parker himself says a bit further in the article,“We beat ourselves up pretty good. We could just do an entire season atoning. It’s been fucking 22 years. We’re pretty different people now.”

I wrote a paper about this in college but South Park does both. There are times where they are just poking turds at things and people they find funny, and there are times they try and be more poignant.

Further, I think a lot of the recipients of that mockery are those who aren't so much genuine in their liberal or otherwise intentions, but those who just want to be seen as right about whatever it is they're saying. Wanting to be seen as having been right, is worth mocking. That's something that was true in the 90s, and that's true today.

I disagree. They believe in what they are saying. They mad fun of Al Gore about Global warming and eventually apologized to him for being wrong:

https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s

Al gore on the apology: https://youtu.be/sG-Cp1y0UO8

Just saying you're satire is usually cover for being offensive. There's a simple formula for offensive humor to be acceptable and that's that is has to be funny. The more offensive, the funnier it has to be. South Park usually nails it. Not 100%.

South Park is wonderful because it gives the finger to all people who judge media based on whether it gets things "right" or "wrong"

I think many adolescent men don't get that though.

A court jester plays to the appeal of the court. The things they poke fun at are the things the court will tolerate being made fun of.

So you're right. South Park is like a court jester. It makes fun of everything society deems acceptable to make fun of and gets away with some light ribbing at the expense of the "Middle American normal" that is its bread and butter.

And they eat it up, thinking that the show poking light fun at them is the same as how the show treats actual minorites and other marginalized people (ie. very very very gross), and that makes it ok.

The analogy is apt. It just doesn't say what you think it says.

I don't know a ton about jesters historically, but in Shakespeare and in contemporary fiction (Robin Hobb's Fitz and the Fool comes to mind), the jester is one of the few characters who says the things that aren't socially acceptable, and since it's a "joke," the criticism isn't cause for offense.

This is a very romantic idea of it. There are always limits, and if you think those limits were the same strictness for the people the court loved as for those they hated or thought beneath them, I have a bridge to sell you.

Naturally.

Third base!

I don't really agree with what you say, but I'd add that they did do an episode where the theme was the meta joke of whether or not society had deemed it acceptable to make HIV/cancer jokes yet, as well as 911 if memory serves. Everything in life can be joked about for one reason or another, I don't accept that there is anything out of bounds. Whether you personally find it funny is up to you, but making broader statements about this or that because a joke was made is a sign that probably you're unable to see outside of a fairly narrow field of view imo.

https://youtu.be/ip5OWcoE6GE

Here's the performace mentioned in the article. I'd never seen it before. It's pretty fantastic though. Robin Williams does a great show.

My friends & I watched the South Park movie on an almost monthly basis at the time and frankly I remember feeling like they'd completely butchered the song. The whole point is that blaming Canada is arbitrary and deflects from solving the real issues, hence why the song in the film barely says anything about Canada at all: the only two actual references are to hockey and Anne Murray because of course that's all the bumpkins of South Park are going to know about the place.

Then the Oscar performance comes along and Robin Williams pads the song with a lot more references to actual people from Canada and I think it ruins the point. The people of South Park don't want details or to know anything about the problem, they want an easy target to blame and a rousing call to go kick ass.

The joke's even continued when Sheila gives her morale-boosting speech to the troops, and can't even think of what the Canadian army would be attacking with: "Men, when you're out there in the battlefield, and you're looking into the beady eyes of a Canadian as he charges you with his hockey stick or whatever he has..."

What did he add to the song that wasn’t in the movie? I didn’t catch anything “new”, except that they left out the “it’s not even a real country anyway”

But I agree that the joke of almost every South Park joke is not what they say, but who says it.

It's a little hard to catch, but that line was kept in.

Hard to catch? It is very clearly stated at 1:25.

Blaming Canada is not arbitrary, they are angry about Terrance and Philip, who are Canadian. Doesn’t mean they know a lot about Canada but it’s not like they spun a globe and pointed somewhere random.

I honestly thought that nominating that song was because they were too cowardly to nominate Uncle Fucka.

I legit always thought it was because they were too cowardly too nominate Kyle's Mom Is A Bitch, which was the high point of the movie for me. Especially considering the all the dance numbers, costumes etc.

Did :(

> Marilyn Manson famously told Michael Moore in 2002’s Bowling for Columbine that, rather than saying anything to Harris and Klebold, if given the chance, he would instead opt to listen to them, because “that’s what no one did.”

Wrong. The quote wasn't about talking to the perpetrators. Moore was asking Manson what he would tell the victim's parents, the community, the other kids at the school, and he said he would listen instead.

It then cuts to Moore interviewing two surviving kids from the school.

Link for anyone looking: https://youtu.be/lrHFB2KP8fc?t=222

  Moore: "If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine, the people in the community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?"

  Manson: "I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say. And that's what no one did."

Regardless of who he was talking about, this is an amazing response from someone who had been vilified for the events that had happened.

His music may be not everyone tastes but Manson is genuinely a decent person.

I went back to the clip and while you are right, that was the question - im almost certain Manson heard "the kids at Columbine" and took it to mean Harris and Klebold and answered that question, not the one that was asked.

Maybe, but I don't think so. Before this interview, Moore shows a number of clips from news networks and other talking heads blaming the crime on all sorts of things -- video games, music, etc. Then later Moore interviews the very level-headed parent of a victim who says nobody from any news organization tried to talk to him or listen to what he had to say.

The idea I believe Moore is trying to convey is that news people told the community & survivors why this happened, placing blame according to their own biases (or those of their corporation), instead of asking and investigating and listening. This ties into the title of the film and the result of the next interview with the two survivors: the perpetrators were also heavily into bowling, so how come nobody was blaming that?

Manson may still have misinterpreted the question but his answer does make sense in the context of what Moore shows -- that nobody went and actually listened to the people in the community.

Nobody was interested in what mass murderers have to say. It just inspires more mass murderers. Did anyone read the manifesto of the New Zealand mosque killer? It was censored for a reason.

It can actually be very important to know what they have to say because it can provide insight into their actions. Whether you agree with their views and actions or not (which likely you do not, in the case of mass murderers). But knowing what they're thinking creates the possibility for intervention in similar cases elsewhere before they go on to commit violent acts.

Yes, it definitely should be available for prevention research.

I have sometimes read manifestos of perpetrators of similar incidents because I was trying to understand what possesses a person to do such a thing. The most common conclusion I have made from that is they were mentally ill. They have varying levels of rationalization. Sometimes they have touching stories of their childhood or their grievances, even though they are actually insane and the grievances don't make sense.

> I have sometimes read manifestos of perpetrators of similar incidents because I was trying to understand what possesses a person to do such a thing.

I think I understand where the frustration comes from, at least for mass shooters in the recent years. It comes from the hypocrisy of the progressive discourse pushed by mainstream media.

Of course their manifestos don't make any sense. In part because 95% of people (including me) couldn't write a coherent and logical political essay to save their lives. But also because they don't understand where their anger comes from. They vaguely know mainstream media is manipulating people and pushing pernicious ideas, but they can't explain why they're wrong. So they just resort to saying the opposite of what mainstream media is saying.

"You say we should have open borders and everyone that says otherwise is a racist bigot? Oh I'll teach you what it's like to be a racist bigot. How do you like that?"

"I'm transphobic for saying that a trans woman is biologically male? I'll show you what a real transphobe looks like"

Meanwhile, progressive media keeps publicly jerking off to their moral superiority and writing articles about how they're saving the world from these abhorrent alt-right white supremacists, which just keeps adding fuel to the fire.

This is not a new idea, Rob Hoffman has a good article about how Trump rose to power thanks to 'liberal smugness' [0], but I think everyone knows that already.

[0] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/how-the-left...

I read “ A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy“ by Sue Klebold last year. It’s on my must-read book for anyone seeking insight.

Mental illness definitely played a role, and a mix of disorders turned into a toxic mix.

This book is a no-holds-barred look into the events from the mother of one of the perpetrators. She apologizes for his actions, and for not being able to stop him — but there’s absolutely no victim blaming.

Very much worth the read.

If Marilyn Manson was saying to listen to the shooters, I believe he was saying to listen to the shooters before the shooting (so as to try to befriend them and prevent the shooting).

> Did anyone read the manifesto of the New Zealand mosque killer?

I did. Not very interesting.

Why would you assume that? It makes no sense.

Definitely not considering history of that shooting interpretation.

As I got older, remembered Marilyn Manson, and did some research about him as a phenomenon, and in a lot of his interviews around the time he was (un)popular, he came off as thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate. And dressed like a freak, but that's his schtick.

Also, what an amazing power to give to someone as a reward for their violence.

Yeah, plus we already know what they had to say because they wrote numerous blog posts before hand. They wanted to cause as much carnage as possible to take revenge against reality.

If you think you know everything about South Park, I still recommend you read it. It's a really good article that analyzes old South Park from a modern perspective.

There's a lot of pieces that go much further in analyzing South Park [1], but the best analysis I've read is actually a three-year-old Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke2/comments/5li8i9/south_...

The opening paragraph:

> South Park has always been fundamentally reactionary; those pushing for change are wrong no matter what change they push for. Nothing is a bigger crime to Matt and Trey than Giving a Shit. Their ideology is apathetic-libertarian; whether you're on the left or the right, if you're asking me to change my behavior, you suck.

[1] A Washington Post piece links to a bunch of them, "I criticized ‘South Park’ for spawning a generation of trolls. And so the trolls came for me.", https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/21/i-critici...

I think this analysis is completely off. They are not reactionary, they are antagonists towards those with power and who take themselves too seriously: Parents (esp. in the minds of children), Politicians, Celebrities.

That's not 'apathetic' and not 'nihilist' (from the article).

That they've done 20 years of such things and the only 'really wrong' thing they will have done is 'Man Bear Pig' is not bad - especially in the 00's when there was still a lot of popular debate about Climate Change. FYI Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, is why you see 'Parental Advisory Stickers' on music, which I don't care about but 'antagonists' will perceive that as a problem.

The Washington Post article is wrong to suggest that 'South Park' created any kind of trolling attitude. The Author is part of the group of those who 'take themselves too seriously' and can't grasp that. That the author was 'trolled' is an artifact of anything popular these days. Sports Journalists are trolled by Ronaldo fans because they say 'Messi is good'.

FYI: I should add they describe themselves as 'punk' in the article and that label fits well: it's not political, it's visceral, and if anything a shade anarchist, though their politics lean 'libertarian' as they have noted some time ago.

I also think the analysis is completely off. South Park has always spent much more time making fun of the status quo than of those pushing for change.

South Park is reactionary when rich white people have decided to take up a cause that they previously ignored. It makes fun of the self-serving, hypocritical actions of those in charge, not of the change itself.

The word for the impression I get of the people who are trying to "analyze" SP, is sanctimonious. or douche. They're both fantastic.

These are people who thought South Park was on "their" side, only to get ridiculed by South Park. Thus they feel bitter and have to lash out.

They don't realize that they are the authoritarian jerks that South Park despises. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

That comment wasn't even the original. It's a repost of a comment from 2012, and the discussion the original one sparked is worth reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/south_p...

haha that ending sentence "South Park is, if you'll excuse the expression...a "safe space.""

In a sense it really is. If you are certain type of person. I used to be that person and yeah it felt really good.

I’d argue don’t read any analysis on it. It’s not ancient text, the source material is pretty available and relevant. Watch it, come to your own conclusions.

Censoring foul language seems almost quaint now. We're busy taking it to the next level.

Censoring foul language is arguably the main thing that we're on about now---with a redefinition of what counts as "foul".

They used to censor language and 'ideas'. You could not attack Christianity, or present civil figures (ie the President, the Flag) in a bad light. Hollywood up to 1970's was very much about projecting morality in the classical sense. (Edit: Cohen Brother's 'Hail Caesar' depicts this hilariously with 1950's Hollywood execs in a funny meeting with various Priests and Rabbis trying to get approval for a big '10 Commandments'-like epic. Hilarity ensues as the various sects begin to argue about God ...)

1970 - 2010 it was mostly just language i.e. this or that word.

We are now back to censoring 'ideas' but it's the other side of the fence. NYT called for banning 'Paw Patrol' (kids cartoon) for its 'normalisation' of the social roles of police, 'COPS' was dropped because of its ostensible 'glorification of police'. Which I can possibly understand in an intellectual sense, but pragmatically it's completely ridiculous. 30 Rock, one of the smartest and best comedies every madd - and it's not even 10 years old - is already getting episodes banned.

Feels like you either missed the point of some of those specific recent examples, or you're oversimplifying them.

With the show, Cops (Live PD as well), the overriding concern was that the film crew and the process had turned law enforcement work into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), and possibly even influenced the officers being filmed to engage in their duties differently than they might have otherwise.

Left out, also, is that 30 Rock's "censored" episodes featured blackface, which at this point, the issues with the practice have been covered exhaustively, and large corporations are only now deciding to care as they see public opinion shift, but it wasn't a great idea when they produced those episodes at the time, either.

You are forgetting about Paw Patrol, there is no excuse to try to cancel an innocent (and very popular) show for preschool kids just because one of the characters is a puppy dressed as a cop.

That was the kind of article you would've expected from The Onion, not the New York Times.

I get it, people are desperate to do something for the cause or to prove they belong to the "good side", but this is insane.

Paw Patrol has not been canceled

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-paw-patrol-get-cancele...

Cancel culture cancelled. Good luck getting your next job if you have Paw Patrol on your resume.

Magic: the Gathering banned the card "Stone-throwing Devils" because it reminds people of Antifa.

It was banned because it's a racial slur. It was always near the top of the list for any permanent banning. Mark Rosewater has gone on record about not printing it further because of this more than 5 years ago. https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/106100301518/

All seven recently banned cards are indefensible in both casual or competitive play.

Banning MTG cards is absolutely cancel culture in action, and is a completely indefensible act. Anyone who supports it is supporting cancel culture.

Stone-throwing Devils isn't a racial slur, unless it's one of those weird things where they go back and dredge up something forgotten. As certain segments of society are absolutely expert at doing. They exult in creating division and making us fight with one another, when we should be united against the ruling classes.

I knew that but I also was misremembering the article. The idea came from twitter comments, the article was just reporting it, not advocating it. I was wrong.

> into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue),

The entire news media is like that in a large sense. What purpose does interviewing a family whose home got destroyed in a tornado serve? Of course they feel bad. Of course they will cry. “If it bleeds it leads”. Just like a car accident on the side of the road, people are drawn to watch. The news media profits off of that voyeuristic impulse to watch the misery of others.

And that's a fully valid criticism of a certain style of mainstream news that I completely agree with, and that is also being discussed in some circles, and even by some journalists, although it hasn't hit mainstream media level consideration openly. All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for.

> All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for.

More appropriately I think (at least for TV), it falls into the discussion of how new doesn't see falling revenues. In the past, news was a payment back to the public major networks paid to get access to the spectrum they were using. when it became obvious there was a way to make the news divisions positive in cashflow instead of cash sinks, they were optimized for that.

Now, where most news is probably delivered through an entirely different medium, even that minimal connection to the public good incentivized through the spectrum allocation is almost gone.

In the distant past, NBC, CBS and ABC would probably have been happy to do away with their news divisions, because it cost them to run them. That they would now fight you tooth and nail to keep them for the opposite reason should put into stark contrast how the incentives have completely changed.

Is it possible to completely disentangle money from news? Probably not, and it might not be a good idea. How do you fund investigative journalism if you do? Influence will flow from the money no matter what, but then again maybe that's not any different than it is now.

I don't know the solution. I'm also aware I'm glossing over the fact that different parts of the news industry had perverse incentives long before this (newspapers...), and that news probably was never as altruistic as I'm making it out to be, but it does seem like it's gotten worse. I have to imagine if the Founding Fathers had the current status quo in mind when they wrote the constitution and initial amendments, they would have tried to put some restrictions on the ownership of the press to go along with those freedoms.

> What purpose does interviewing a family whose home got destroyed in a tornado serve?

Fostering empathy, ginning up public support for emergency response. Whereas COPS etc were more effective at ginning up public support for brutal policing.

Also there's a key difference: film crews don't influence tornadoes.

"Whereas COPS etc were more effective at ginning up public support for brutal policing."

This is hugely speculative, in fact, I would argue just the opposite: if anything, it shows how ugly, grinding, boring and hugely 'social' policing is, as opposed to anything physical. It's literally about dealing with really weird and sketchy people in difficult situations all day every day.

https://reason.com/2020/07/01/police-departments-asked-live-...

I'm well aware of the nuance of 'COPS' but those issues don't remotely rise to the need for cancellation. There is quite a lot of 'reality' that comes through even the producers lens, and that's worth something. It's the original 'reality TV'.

And as for 30 Rock: they were obviously not doing 'Blackface' - they were using the notion of Blackface as a comedic device.

'Blackface' is a vaudevillian concept of dressing up as Black people in order to mock them. In 30 Rock, the device was used only by idiotic characters doing stupid and embarrassing things. If anything, they were embellishing the obvious social principle that 'Blackface is bad'.

That people misconstrue 'doing Blackface' with 'mocking Blackface' is quite literally at the heart of the problem of the 'mob mentality' - and that's not even getting into the more complicated issue of whether 'dressing up as someone of possibly another race' is even wrong or immoral in the first place.

And of course, sometimes jokes are a little off - that's comedy and it's ok. In what world do we start banning gags for this reason?

Blackface was obviously wrong 10 years ago and nothing has changed. It's still wrong.

What has changed is the fascism and power of the Twitter mob's ability to deny any kind of context.

Edit: I should add that 'Banning 30 Rock' is not 'catching up with popular interest' - this is misconstruing the opinion of the mob (or your opinion) with the opinion of 'most people'.

Nobody cares about 30 Rocks antics but a few people on the fringes with outsized voices. Network and Ad execs are fearful of said voices - and that's mostly it.

We all live in 'thought bubbles', it's worth walking down the street and looking around, because it's immediately clear that 'most people' are not 'like us'.

If you were to show 100 random episodes of comedy, with a few 30 Rocks sprinkled in, to a 100 Americans, I don't believe a single person would initiate an objection to any of it, let alone 30 Rock.

I'll go further: not even those people who even noticed the cheekiness of the comedy thought to themselves that they ought not to publish it. Not even most of the press writing about it - they're just following the themes and narratives of the hour because that's what they do. It's being pulled because some people (a very small group) are looking for reasons to be outraged and in a hyper-sensitive moment, nobody, but nobody wants to 'disagree' with said outraged person.

>And of course, sometimes jokes are a little off - that's comedy and it's ok. In what world do we start banning gags for this reason?

This one. To be honest, I'd be real careful right now to pick any hills to die on right now with respect to language, humor, and various other things unless you're really prepared to die on those hills.

George Washington was attacked heavily towards the end of his term, so I'm not sure that part is accurate.

GP didn't place their comment in a time-period context, but I think it's safe to say they're referencing 1940s-1960 Hollywood censors.

In the United States, I think we're living in an era of remarkably _little_ censorship; compare Hays Code-era Hollywood to today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code)

Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...) touches on censorship in the context of information systems.

Almost nobody considers how much the "censorship" discussion lags behind what media conglomerates were willing to broadcast to begin with, see Wu's comparisons between media standards in the States vs. the British Broadcasting Company's.

Wu also conceptualizes information systems/paradigms as a cycle, in which radio developed a lot like the Internet:

1. wild west days; diversity of both content and quality.

2. Winners emerge by both ruthlessness, inside dealing, AND winning on quality.

3. Their "quality" becomes a standard and a cashcow, and begins to stagnate as the formula is milked. At the same time, they continue to starve and/or absorb competitors, which has two negative effects: first, innovation slows or is actively suppressed. Second, (the key point in this context) as the industry centralizes, the few players (or player) remaining becomes a target for pressure groups. And they are all too willing to comply, because at this point they are either monopolies or near-monopolies and are eager to show the government and public (read: advertisers) that they are "serving the public interest", and shouldn't be regulated, investigated, and broken up. (The Hays Code was adopted "voluntarily" by the studios)

> We're busy taking it to the next level.

Thankfully, 'tis but a phase, and we're almost through it.

I wish I still shared your optimism

What evidence is there that this is a phase? Seems very clear that the majority of people are illiberal, and one subset of the country is salivating over the chance to wield cultural power for a generation at least.

> On Wednesday, all 23 seasons of South Park come to HBO Max.

HBO is censoring 5 episodes

https://www.ign.com/articles/south-park-hbo-max-muhammad-cen...

One of my favorite things of this show is the freedom to mock most of the topics in a way Cartman represent that extreme, others represent the common sense, but is very important for both left and right which have gone extreme to reason and discuss, this show is a good example of how any topic can be discussed just not ignored

"... the show that portrayed earnestness as the only sin and taught that mockery is the ultimate inoculation against all criticism." https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/14/south-park-tweet-leaves-fans-...

I always thought that song got the nomination as a proxy for the much catchier Uncle Fucker, which would have been a bit... problematic to nominate.

The documentary about South Park studios production process "6 days to air" is pretty great

I watch it regularly to not forget how to give everything you can in a short time span and still enjoy what you're doing

I learned to work 6 months/year and make a full year salary

I've been working at a more reasonable pace for the past few years, mostly because I'm not consulting anymore, but sprints have become more of a challenge that I still enjoy once or twice a year.

> I learned to work 6 months/year and make a full year salary

Just post the affiliate link to your vitamins already...

In Italy we work approximately 220 days a year, 5 days a week, we have 52 weekends (as everybody else) 24 days of payed holidays and another 10 days of national holidays.

six months, 6 days a week it's about 160 days.

Working an hour and half more everyday day is like working 7/7, so about 185 working days.

It's totally doable.

But admittedly not for a long time and not if you're forced to do it

This article is riddled with false or misleading statements, it's got lots of interesting information but take basically anything it says about south park (negative or positive) with a giant grain of salt. Doubly so for any other topic.

The whole article is filtered through the lens of a far-left extremist who just got off a 48 hour marxist bender.

Maybe so, but please don't post ideological flamebait or call names in HN comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

“Their nihilism and contrarianism have proved to be occasionally quite frustrating over the years, often serving as a twisted, reversed version of what we now might refer to as the “very fine people on both sides” philosophy. (One quote they will never escape came from Matt Stone in 2005: “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.”)”

So everyone has to pick one of these 2 idiotic and emotionally driven sides now? There is no room for a 3rd point of view? That’s where we are at? Look, I know Trump is a racist, lying, dipshit but we need to recognize that both parties have nothing but their own interests at heart. I mean come on. Just look at policy from the Obama era and compare it to policy from the Bush era. Hard to see much of a difference. They are two wings from the same bird and the only way we can make America work for all people and close the income inequality gap is to overcome partisan politics.

I hate this kind of argument - of course the parties care mainly about their own power - they are literally political parties. Obama's policy was quite different from Bush's in many ways (domestically especially) and similar in other ways (say wrt the Middle East). The Democratic party also did not have control of both house and Senate for more than 2 years. During those 2 years the ACA was passed.

What are you getting at? Do you believe that because both parties care first about power means they are equally bad? Or even close?

If you think one party is a lost cause, and the other is our only hope, then you have to focus on the flaws of the latter, don't you? The logic is cruel.

Yes. Two wings, one bird.

It isn't there isn't room, there isn't time. People don't want to spend time thinking critically. Everything is us vs them but it makes it easy. If you are liberal, you are automatically against the conservatives; not thought required. You don't even have to read the articles, just the headline. The headline must be true. This is how we've turned into a plutocracy. They fund the distraction and get rich while we hate our neighbor who is 99.999% the same as us but somehow we've convinced ourselves they are the devil.

>One quote they will never escape came from Matt Stone in 2005: “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.”

If you agree with and/or care about one group more than another, you should care more about their flaws, shouldn't you?

It's like someone said about "my country, right or wrong" - it's like saying "my mother, drunk or sober".

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