❌ No One is Safe

South Park's Creators Have Been Pissing People Off for 30 Years — Plus, Tesla and Google Report Earnings and More Drama at the Fed

Author

Katie Perry
July 26, 2025

Welcome to Tuesday Thursday Saturday! Here, I share a snapshot of trending stories across business, tech, and culture three times a week, plus some updates from the daily financial news show I host. - KP

The Big Story: Three Decades of Jokes That Knew Too Much

“South Park” is a ridiculous show that was created around the same time as the world seemed to take a turn for the dark. Its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, grew up close to where the Columbine Massacre took place back in 1999. One of them was from the very same small town as one of the shooters.

If you’re a millennial, that name will forever be etched. I was young when it happened, but old enough to be scared. My school had several copycat threats and bomb drills after that. That was the first time I was afraid to go to school, and it never really went away. And then, of course, as a society, we decided that this would be a normal thing we would endure for the next 25+ years. That’s a whole other essay entirely, though.

It’s strange to think of South Park — a wildly offensive show with crude illustrations and insane storylines — in the same context as one of the most sinister events of the 20th century. But as I’ve written here before, tragedy and comedy often coexist and feed off of one another. Parker and Stone had already begun concepting the show years before Columbine, but the tragedy fully pushed them into a place where they would skewer the moral compass of America for the next three decades.

I wanted to write about South Park today because they are in the news for reasons obvious to many, but maybe not all, so I’ll provide a quick recap. The creators just released a controversial (even by their standards) episode in which they “took aim” at the sitting president. “Took aim” is the best euphemism I can come up with because it was, well, graphic.

All of this happened in the backdrop of CBS parent company, Paramount, firing Stephen Colbert for ‘financial reasons’ or perhaps because they wanted their merger with Skydance to go through, which it did. (IMO, the most likely scenario is a combo of the two.) Oh, and Paramount also literally just inked a deal with South Park’s creators for streaming rights valued at $1.5 billion.

So that’s the setup. You can do some Googling if you’re curious what was covered (or, should I say, uncovered) in the episode, because I want to focus on South Park’s history as a cultural staple. In many ways, this stupid animated cartoon has held a mirror up to the millennial generation since 1997.

Every generation has a set of people and things that their parents’ generation simply doesn’t get. For our parents, it was Elvis’ gyrating hips and mini-skirts. For us, it was hip hop music and South Park. Naturally, as a young person, you’re drawn to what you’re NOT supposed to be drawn to, which only intensified our connection to the show.

Correct.

“The Simpsons” walked so that South Park could run. That one had already been on the air for several years before South Park premiered. But man, if you thought Bart Simpson was offensive, you weren’t going to believe the situations that these degenerate third-graders from a fictional town in Colorado get into. 

Comedy serves an important purpose in life, which is to take the uncomfortable, scary, or downright dark aspects of the human experience and call out their absurdity. Before cable TV and the algorithms slowly but methodically shoved us all into clean partisan buckets, comedians went after whomever they damn pleased. George Carlin comes to mind. With Carlin, absolutely no one was safe. 

Like Carlin, South Park’s creators have called themselves “equal opportunity offenders,” which is why some of the headlines I am seeing following this week’s episode have a lot of us who have seen the show scratching our heads. South Park is a lot of things, but it is assuredly NOT “woke.” Parker and Stone are largely lauded as free speech advocates and have stated that they hate both political extremes equally. They even inspired the term “South Park Republicans.”

By the time the two twentysomething college kids started playing around with foul-mouthed, cut-paper characters, the political environment was already getting dicey. But still, back then, you wouldn’t necessarily align comedians or programs with a specific ideology. Parker and Stone simply looked through the headlines and out into American communities and said, “Well, damn, that’s messed up. And so is that. And also that.” It didn’t matter who or where the issues were coming from.

The juxtaposition between the characters’ stupid, crude, sophomoric escapades and the very real, extremely problematic things happening around their small town is what makes the show so genius. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a bunch of loser kids, drawn not well, who talk in weird — arguably grating — voices. They’re dumb, they curse, and they are always getting into trouble.

But as the characters are yelling and yapping at one another, the show almost always has a sharp social commentary beneath the surface-level jokes. Throughout the years, South Park has covered: school shootings, climate change, censorship, opioid addiction, the Catholic Church abuse scandals, and America’s oft-debated response to COVID-19. 

And it’s not just that South Park covered these issues; it’s how they did it. They turned each topic inside out and showed us the ugly contradictions that people don’t like to talk about. 

In the episode “Dead Kids” from Season 22, school shootings become so frequent in South Park Elementary that the adults stop reacting entirely. Parents don’t pull their children out, teachers go on teaching, and Stan’s mom becomes the only character still outraged. 

During the pandemic, South Park released several hour-long specials that skewered government mismanagement, vaccine misinformation, and the psychological toll of lockdown. In the “Post-COVID” special, the characters grow up into a dystopian future where tech has replaced human connection and everyone’s still bitterly divided. It’s dark, poignant, and almost too real.

The show has also tackled police brutality and systemic racism, gender identity and PC culture, and the impact of social media on mental health. The topics are neither red nor blue, and they are often not “funny” on their own, but Parker and Stone somehow find a sliver of humor while also reminding us of how deeply broken so many of our institutions and individual behaviors really are. 

South Park has always been marred by controversy because if you don’t actually watch the show, and just read descriptions about what’s going on or see clips, you’re not going to get the point of it. At all.

It has even become a lightning rod within intellectual circles, with scholars debating its role in shaping millennial cynicism and humor. Some argue that South Park pioneered a new kind of satire that was post-ideological; not left or right, but anti-BS. Media critics credit it with helping millennials develop a reflexive skepticism toward authority, from news media to politicians to Hollywood. It taught people like me how to laugh at the world while also (somewhat) distrusting it.

Today, in our algorithmically curated worlds, South Park feels like one of the last places where no one is safe. Hypocrisy, from any direction, comes under attack with equal ferocity. It’s still offensive. Still stupid. Still graphic. But still one of the most effective cultural mirrors we have.

Whether you never watched it, bailed the moment those cussing kids challenged your worldview, or stuck around since the Clinton years, South Park has shaped the lens through which many of us see the world: afraid, skeptical, and wide-eyed at how absurd it can be, all the while knowing that laughing at it might be the only way through.

(You can watch the Season 27 premiere of South Park on Paramount+, and if you need a login, just hit reply because I — apparently — have one.)

Daily Rip Live Recap: Traders Love Sydney Sweeney, Showdown at the Fed, and More All-Time Highs

Watch us live every Monday through Thursday at 9 AM ET.

Every weekday, my co-host Shay Boloor and I cover the biggest market news and events LIVE on Stocktwits’ morning show, The Daily Rip Live. On Thursday, Evan Medeiros jumped in to co-host, and we discussed a big range of topics.

Here’s what we covered on Thursday’s show:

⇢ 4:40 Tesla earnings: Musk lays out a clear long-term destination, but investors anticipate choppiness in the interim. $TSLA ( ▼ 1.17% )  

⇢ 7:15 Google earnings: Alphabet shows strength in cloud, but adds $85B to its AI capex, which is approximately the GDP of Croatia.

⇢ 10:30 Meme stock mania 2.0 is upon us. Buckle up, everyone.

⇢ 15:02 Evan shares his approach to trading and investing, which he describes as 90% methodology/thesis-driven, and 10% “degen.”

⇢ 31:00 Trump and Powell have an extremely awkward interaction at the Fed. Sources say Powell isn’t backing down and will remain at his post through the end of his term, unless otherwise removed.

⇢ 31:55 American Eagle Outfitters gets memed after dropping a multimillion-dollar ad campaign with Sydney Sweeney, Gen Z’s Marilyn Monroe. $AEO ( ▼ 0.41% )  

⇢ 34:10 Bitcoin on the balance sheet as a strategy - there’s an ETF for that! $OWNB ( ▼ 0.55% )  

We’re live every weekday, Monday-Thursday, at 9 AM ET. Tune in!

Now Here’s a Chart

Via Barchart on X: “85% of Nasdaq 100 stocks are trading above their 100-Day moving average, the most since February 2024.”

The Bulls are back in town!

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Tuesday Thursday Saturday is written by Katie Perry, owner of Ursa Major Media, which provides fractional marketing services and strategy in software, tech, consumer products, professional services, and other industries. She is also the co-host of Stocktwits’ Daily Rip Live show.

Disclaimer: The contents here reflect recaps and summaries of pre-reported or published data, news, and trends. I have cited sources and context for the information provided to the best of my ability. The purpose of the newsletter is to inform and educate on larger trends shaping business and culture — this is NOT investment advice. As an investor, you should always do your own research before making any decisions about your money or your portfolio.