This week’s South Park was a fairly big disappointment, save for a few small segments where Cartman eats and craps fake treasure. There has been some talk about the show’s right-wing tilt, but the past few weeks have shown it up pretty starkly. In the recent two-parter about showing Muhammad, the show skewered everyone, from terrorists to people afraid of terrorism, network executives, The Simpsons, Family Guy, reporters, car chases–hell, they criticized Comedy Central for not allowing them to show a cartoon of Muhammad, and even ripped on themselves for being too preachy at times. But in the hour-long episode which made fun of just about anything and everything, only one character with more than a few lines was kept reasonable: George Bush. What the hell? Probably the easiest person to make fun of, and they make him the only sane, stable, and unfunny character in the show. (Were they trying to be ironic?) Well, actually, they also didn’t make fun of manatees, but then, who could?

Now contrast to the show two weeks later, where Al Gore is shown as some lame, bizarre, psycho loser warning everyone of “Man-Bear-Pig,” and acting like some deranged kid who thinks he’s a superhero but is really screwing up. I kept waiting for the whole thing to have a point, a punch line, or a funny line, but it never did. If Man-Bear-Pig showed up when everyone thought it was imaginary and it was a take on global warming, I could see that. Or something, even if it totally trashed Gore, to make there be a reason for it, even if that reason was just to be funny. I can laugh at liberals as much as the next guy, but this was not witty or comical, even in a stupid way; it was just… weird. Like they put that in there not because they had something to laugh at, but instead just because they hated Gore’s guts. It was less like a regular South Park episode, and more like they got drunk and started to rant, thinking they were being funny when everybody just stares uncomfortably.

The show (and Parker and Stone’s movies) take on liberal celebrities often, as well as liberal causes, sometimes with a vicious slant. And usually, it’s done in a funny way. And while they do take on some conservative elements (big businesses, rednecks, right-to-lifers), they have rarely, if ever, skewered a right-wing politician or celebrity. The closest I can think of is Mel Gibson, who’s not so much political as religious (he’s never identified himself politically, and though he does have some conservative views, he also opposed the Iraq War and even praised Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11).

Apparently Trey Parker is a Libertarian, and Stone is the one who steers the show against the left; he has said, “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” It shows. Strangely, Parker categorizes both of them as centrists, “pretty middle-ground guys,” and Stone claims they take on “both sides.”

Don’t take me wrong–I love the show, no less when they rip on liberals, and you can’t take it seriously politically, or any other way, for that matter. The show where the people with butts where their faces should be turned out to be Ben Affleck’s parents, that was hilarious. But what I presume to be Stone’s utter contempt for liberalism does more than just tilt the show right, it sometimes comes out just bizarrely hateful without much to be funny about.