Letters

"Disgraceful!" "I'll boycott!" "Vote or bite me!" Salon readers respond -- and how -- to Heather Havrilesky's interview with "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Oct 13, 2004 | [Read "Puppet Masters," by Heather Havrilesky]

I was made a little less optimistic about the world by your interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, particularly as they are clearly talented and clever people and I have no doubt that "Team America: World Police" will be a joy to watch.

Unfortunately the philosophical argument that Parker and Stone feel is advanced by TA:WP (dicks and assholes) is at radical variance with the current state of the world. Powerful and ignorant dicks (let's say the current U.S. administration and its foreign lapdogs) have done and may (shudder) continue to do more harm to the world than assholes (Osama and buddies, Saddam, Kim Il Sung) ever have done or could ever do.

It is not "vote or die" for comfortably off U.S. citizens, but it certainly is "vote or the towelheads and the polar bears get it in the shorts again, just for kicks."

-- Micheal Lunny, Dublin, Ireland

Wow! I never knew those "South Park" guys were such idiots, not to mention pussies! Why do they think they're any different than the self-righteous artists they're targeting?

They reminded me of Vanilla Ice in their reference to their lower-middle-class upbringing. As if the vast majority of the people in this country hadn't grown up in worse. Get out of your bubble, boys.

To me, a Gulf War I veteran, they're nothing but a couple more chicken hawks who support an unjustified use of power for their amusement.

They preach how the ignorant and uninformed should abstain from voting. Well, I believe they could do something more damaging than vote. They could make a movie their equally ignorant followers could base opinions upon.

-- Dan Critchley

Four pages dedicated to Trey and Matt's inanity! References to dicks and assholes aside, hearing them talk makes you scratch your head and wonder how these two could possibly be responsible for all of that great satire that is "South Park."

-- Matt Cardwell

Cute. Hollywood celebrities make a movie that complains about Hollywood celebrities. And they say irony is dead ...

-- Christopher Smith

Have these wankers ever actually traveled outside of the U.S.? And I don't mean one of those summer backpacking tours through Europe on the college gradution-present Euro-pass, where you stay at youth hostels with other young, spoiled Americans and "do" each city in a day or two.

Not only is America living in a bubble of optimism, it's looking more and more like "The Matrix": Society's fuel is consumerism and keeping the populace ignorant encourages them to spend, spend, spend.

Irresponsible ignoramouses like these two jackasses help to ensure that the hoi polloi remain contendedly plugged in.

Disgraceful!

Let's hope Kerry wins this election and brings some diplomacy and dignity back to the U.S. And thanks to socially responsible citizens like Sean Penn who dare to use their wealth and connections to effect change, even when it's not "politically correct."

-- Keira Holland

Your interview with the masterminds behind "Team America" was most illuminating. I've noticed that every historical epoch gets the pop-cultural art form it deserves: The Reagan years got "Rambo" and "Top Gun" (lavish special effects, testosterone in lieu of character development), and apparently Bush II now has "Team America" and two creative artists who are capable of articulating the world situation in terms of assholes and dicks. If I understand the intricacies of their argument, the latter are good, pretty much, and the former are bad.

Actually, their own imagery, which conjures up images of the world as a scene of ongoing prison rape, is probably the best summation of America's place in the world during the W years that we're likely to get. What's still more fitting is Parker's and Stone's command of the English language. I'm reminded of the passage in "1984" where Winston is rebuked because although his prose is perfectly correct Newspeak, it's clear that he's still translating from English, rather than really thinking in Newspeak. Well, these guys obviously speak and think in the dialect that is appropriate for the bright, sunshiny new world that unfolds before us as we contemplate the possibility of a second term of George W.

As they put it in your interview, "It's like, you know what? Our lives are pretty fucking great. And a lot of the lives we see around us are pretty fucking great, and everything's gonna be OK. That's just our basic philosophy." In other words, when the words for "karma" and "hubris" don't spring to mind readily enough to influence the political discourse of the day, things look pretty fucking great. What were we just discussing?

In the end, it's not puppet sex or profanity that offend in the present instance. It's the fact that they have displaced actual thought, actual wit, actual appreciation of the horrific absurdity of America's place in the world today, and the Americans who, through their focus on bread and circuses to the exclusion of anything else, have enabled the absurdity. Sorry I just don't get it, guys, but I'm, you know, a dick. Or an asshole? So many choices!

-- Jeff Perry

Next Page: "What a load of too-cool-for-you hooey!"

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