Thank you!

Interesting perspective. And you think that South Park is the way to teach these illiberal, self-righteous liberals self-awareness? Would you say that liberals are likely to be convinced by South Park's over-the-top, one-sided portrayals of events? Would you say that South Park actually models self-awareness and makes…

Thank you for your incredibly thoughtful comment. I don't want to write too long, so try to keep it short (hard for me). Sorry I didn't address it all - but I loved reading it!

Yeah, for sure! Reply when and if you feel like it - curious for your thoughts, but yes, it's a lot to mull over (for me at least).

thanks for your thoughts. i guess we'll see! i hope you're right, with whatever they do with the rest of the episodes. so far, though, it has seemed pretty clearly polarized to me, and to this right winger, who is thrilled about it: http://www.nationalreview.c…

Ok - end of discussion then? I brought it to your attention because I directly think it applies to your point.
Speaking directly to what you said, though: I'm curious what actually is useful in South Park's style of taking a particular line of thinking "too far" to see "potential pitfalls" Keeping in mind, Trey and…

Hello there, and thanks for your thoughts. And Big Gay Al! Yes I remember that episode/lesson fondly. You're right that sometimes they inject rationality and tolerance - this was one of the cases of that. But notice that this was not a parody-of-excesses-episode - this was them openly staking a claim for something…

I hear you! Tough stuff. Thank you for reading and engaging with this. In case it's interesting or helpful, here's another perspective to mull over, by another philosophical heavyweight:

Interesting! I'm curious what you think after reading this article, where a conservative/reactionary pundit is jumping for joy at how SP is "dismantling the social-justice society piece by piece, week by week." Thus we should "Fall in line, and let them guide us."

Thanks for reading my posts, but I'm not sure you understand what I was trying to say. For starters - my feelings are fine, thank you. :) What I was saying here and in my comments to you, is that South Park is not just a show that makes people laugh. When they do that - like in season 1, episode 1 - Cartman's got an…

Hm, interesting. While I agree with you that the ninja/ISIS thing was pretty silly, and I wish they had spent more time on the gentrification/homeless issue, I have to disagree on SP being "on point" in their take, either about the causes of homelessness or about how people (in this case, uppity liberals) deal with it.

Right. Cause insulting people is usually a great way to get them on board with you. Cool.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. […] We should therefore claim,…

Great point and I probably should have been more clear about what I meant by "making fun of it." I wrote that part quickly. I just added this line above:

I was directly responding to the comment above: "There may be SOME trade-off, but I'd like to minimize them both. Racism is obviously far worse, but the stridency of anti-racists can be self-defeating at times. Sometimes these two goals are in harmony."

Right, but does the discourse of South Park help either way?

Huh. You want to start that line of argumentation? You want to compare suicides/attempted suicides/rapes/outright murders of people who are shamed because of their bordering-on-bigoted comments vs people who have been shamed and killed/raped/drawn to suicide for centuries because of their sexuality, gender, or race?…