For the last two weeks, Comedy Central’s South Park has been celebrating its 200^th episode. Now in its 14th season, South Park has become notorious for its use of explicit sexual references, extreme profanity (including an infamous episode in which the s-word was used 162 times) placed into the mouths of little children – not to mention the show’s gore-filled violence. In recent years, South Park has used passing vaginal gas, little girls performing oral sex, and rape as subjects for “humor.” South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, proudly boast that they are “equal opportunity offenders”; but when did the word “comedy” become synonymous with “heartless” and “disgusting”? 

Defenders of this dreck typically respond by calling South Park “satire,” and saying, “Comedy has always made fun of social conventions and standards, and mocked and challenged authority.” This is true; but once (and not that long ago), comedy didn’t feel the need to viciously exploit genuine tragedy…and true satire attempts not only to cause scorn, but also to motivate social change.

Comedians may claim that they are boldly “questioning authority” and “speaking truth to power.” In truth, most are motivated less by idealism than by their own desire for fame, money, and popularity; and their “comedy” is far less about actually drawing attention to real problems or provoking a search for solutions than about simply getting a startled, nervous laugh through shock. And by callously and unconcernedly exploiting the pain and misery of others for these pathetic ends, they do a greater disservice as well. 

People tend to laugh at trivia -- things that may be incongruous but which, in the big picture, don’t really matter all that much. By reducing subjects like child molestation and the Holocaust to fodder for juvenile humor, what these comedians are actually saying is: “These are not serious subjects. They aren’t really important. They don’t matter.” The result can be an audience – and a culture -- desensitized to matters of gravity, incapable of taking anything seriously or considering anything of importance. Lives scarred and broken by sexual abuse? Millions dead in gas ovens? Effin’ hilarious, man! Like, I wonder what’s on South Park tonight, dude?

The PTC is not saying that a single episode of any TV show – even ones as noxious as South Park and The Sarah Silverman Program – necessarily has this effect by itself. But a steady diet of such shows, watched hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and glorified and promoted by an entire cable network devoted exclusively to such fare, cannot help but erode concern for things that truly matter.

An old expression says that “familiarity breeds contempt;” but a more truthful rendering would be, “familiarity breeds acceptance.” The end result of an entire network devoted to nothing but mockery can be an audience no longer capable of taking anything – except their own comfort and desire to be entertained-- seriously.

Surveys show that a large percentage of younger Americans today get their news coverage from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report… and these shows fit right in at Comedy Central. From South Park and Ugly Americans to The Sarah Silverman Program and Comedy Central’s various “roasts,” have all used such subjects as child molestation, racism, and the Holocaust as subjects of humor; and mockery of anything and everything, no matter how serious, carries through even to its “news” programming. And if the current generation is taught to laugh at child molestation and shrug off genocide, how many future generations will there be?

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