Yeah, I get what you mean. Free speech used to be a leftist issue because the people trying to censor everyone were Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy. Now that the left has full control over the media it's become a right one.
It's still worth noting though the the extreme progressive stack was pushing language police shit long before the early 2000s. Stuff like mail carrier as opposed to mailman and fire fighter as opposed to fireman. Free speech has always been getting squeezed from both sides, the power balance has just flipped.
Maybe it is a bit of the leftist in me, but I honestly do not see an issue with changing fireman to fighter or mailman to mail carrier. Maybe it is because I was born after that time, but I guess if the occupations are going to have women having a general term as the all encompassing does not strike me as bad.
I get what you mean though. The Left has always had the people that push and go overboard, it is just more apparent nowadays.
South Park was never left wing. They mercilessly mocked Al Gore in the early series.
Also if you seriously think the BLM riots this year were because of cartoons, I really don't know what to say. The left going crazy is caused by the behaviour of the news media and politicians, not fan communities.
In my original argument I was responding to the idea that there is more general pseudo-intellectualism nowadays. I believed that South Park could have been a cause to it as many took South Park as the gospel and for intelligent individuals.
South Park is one of those shows that people historically have misunderstood and tried to make into something it is not. South Park is known for attack individuals or both sides, but many see it as their justification for holding a position. Take something like the Whale Watchers episode, where the two made fun of whale hunters and activists, then were gifted by activists for fighting for their cause? South Park is the ultimate pseudo-intellectual show as many take messages out of it that are not there. I think a huge amount of hatred is being thrown at it nowadays from the left simply because it does not reaffirm them anymore. Now that the duo came out as Republican and make more not leftist episodes, much of the left that onced praised it are starting to realize that it never was the leftist show it had been portrayed as by news articles. They also want it to take a position like it did with Scientology, but it will not tell them Dumpf bad like they are expecting. They hate that it does not have a stance like they thought it did.
I believe much of South Park’s culture also contributed to the pseudo-intellectual vids you see on YouTube as people are taking on the goal of finding the deeper meaning in works that are not there. The media analysis people likely take a lot from the articles of old that tried to say South Park is the smartest show ever. And with this new culture, people like Anita built audiences of its back as she technically was an analysis channel
South Park is by no means responsible for anything, but part of me does wonder if the years of praise did work its way into culture. I think more than we know do legitimately take their politics from a cartoon and many use it as a reaffirmer, even today with people like No Bullshit getting hard for it. The show does not have many deep messages, but much of the media culture thinks it does, and that sort of unsettles me to a degree.
