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Comment by khurs | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

I wonder if Peter Thiel took umbrage at how South Park portrayed him recently [0] and is lurking in the shadows planning Gawker v2 [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfSOC6-G044

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thi...

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South Park has been sued many times. A famous case vs Tom Cruise, in which their defense was that they make fun of everyone, so it's not libel.

> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell

tl;dr:

> Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

And indeed South Park has always made a point to have extreme satire that is implausible to help establish that such is parody. [0] The episodes in the last year have gone to extreme lengths to help make the distinction as clear as possible.

[0] - We can go back as far as, I don't think it has been established that Barbara Streisand can in fact turn into a robot...

> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

they've been sued a bunch. But they make comedy central boatloads of money and have free speech protections on their side (for now...)

I am in no way a public figure, and will likely never be one, but if the South Park writers decided to go after me my strategy would be to hunker down and just hope the episode isn’t good.

They certainly went easy on his demonic looks.

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