We haven’t heard this much talk about the presidential anatomy since the other guy in the Jeffrey Epstein files was in the Oval.
President Donald Trump, a master at minimising others, is now being literally minimised on South Park by the crass and fearless creators of the cartoon.
I could have told Trump that it’s best not to provoke brilliant satirists. I learned that lesson the hard way 20 years ago.
When I wrote Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, about the tangled father and son saga that led to the invasion of Iraq, I wanted Pat Oliphant, a lacerating political cartoonist, to do the book’s cover.
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I wheedled until that acerbic Aussie finally agreed. When the drawing came back, it was dazzling: a tiny, jangly-eyed George W Bush under a big cowboy hat, his hands braced at the guns on his holster. He was walking down the driveway of an overgrown haunted version of the White House with a gargoyle hanging from the trees.
Oliphant had given the president the body of a bug. Even though the book was harshly critical of W Bush and his scheming advisers, I was worried that the sketch might be a bit too disrespectful to the president.
The cartoonist was a firm believer in “stirring up the beast”, as he called it, taking a torch to the lies and hypocrisy of the powerful. So, naturally, he was contemptuous when I suggested that we make W Bush less buglike. But, faced with more wheedling, he reluctantly agreed to take another crack at it.
I waited nervously. When the new illustration came in, W Bush no longer looked like a bug. Oliphant had made the president look more like a monkey. And he was even smaller.
It was a valuable lesson. Don’t mess with satirists. They’ll always have the last say, and it will be blistering.
Even though jesters had more leeway in ancient courts to speak truth to monarchs, rulers could order up an axe or a noose if the truth cut too close to the bone.
As the Fool says to Lear: “I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”
Drew Lichtenberg, the dramaturge at Washington’s Shakespeare Theater Company, told me: “Queen Elizabeth I passed a series of ‘Vagabond Acts’ making it illegal to be a travelling player, unless you had an aristocratic patron. Freelance actors were regarded as homeless people unless they wore the livery of a lord. It was the 16th-century version of yanking Stephen Colbert off the air, censoring the broadcast of views that the ruler didn’t want performed without their say-so.”
Recently, Colbert scorched Paramount, CBS’ parent company, for caving to Trump with a $16 million (€13.6 million) settlement over his 60 Minutes lawsuit, hoping to get the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to favour its merger with Skydance.
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles,” the comedian said. “It’s big, fat bribe.”
A few days later, news broke that CBS, which has cratered from the Tiffany network to the Trump-fealty network, had cancelled the top-rated broadcast show for financial reasons. But who can believe that’s the whole story? If it were just about money, there were a lot of better ways to handle Colbert, a big talent and valuable brand. CBS could have cut costs, or it could have transitioned him over the next five years into some combination of streaming or podcasting within the Paramount family.
Announcing that he was being dumped right after he criticised CBS reeked of censorship. Certainly, King Trump celebrated, crowing on Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired.” He even added: “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, said that The View – airing on ABC, which also caved to Trump, paying a whopping $15 million for George Stephanopoulos’ misspeaking – might be in the administration’s crosshairs.
“Once President Trump has exposed these media gatekeepers and smashed this facade, there’s a lot of consequences,” Carr said, ominously.
CBS is, as Colbert said, “morally bankrupt”. It’s sickening to see media outlets, universities, law firms and tech companies bending the knee. (Hang tough, Rupert!)
Satirists are left to hold people accountable, and they are more than ready. Colbert’s fellow humorists jumped in to back him up, most brazenly the South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, fresh off a Paramount deal worth more than $1.25 billion. (South Park, popular with conservatives, does not defend liberals; it loves jeering at both sides and woke overreach.)
Its 27th season premiere – “Sermon on the ’Mount,” as in Paramount – featured Trump with a “teeny-tiny” you-know-what. It depicted the president cuddling with Satan and romancing a sheep. It ripped the Paramount deal, the CBS settlement, the Colbert firing, Trump’s “power to sue and take bribes” and the president’s manic attempt to divert attention from ties to Epstein, as the paedophile’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, no doubt angles for a pardon by spilling some information.
It also showed a deepfake of Trump, rotund and naked, walking in the desert, Christ-like, “for America”. As Puck’s Matthew Belloni said: “The AI deepfake Trump was particularly brilliant, given that the same day the episode aired, the president announced White House AI policy positions favouring lacklustre protections against exactly this kind of dangerous technology.”
The White House sniffed that “no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak”.
At Comic-Con on Thursday, the South Park creators were deadpan about their rebellious reaction to Trump’s attempt to stifle critics and wreak revenge.
“We’re terribly sorry,” Parker said, making it clear they were anything but.
The tiger picnics last. – This article was first published in the New York Times
