An Ode to South Park, May It Never Grow Up

A few crazed (read: famous) fans offer their congratulations

Kevin Peralta

In 1995, Jesus rose. And lo, He beat the living shit out of Santa Claus in a video Christmas card created by two former University of Colorado Boulder students named Matt Stone and Trey Parker. It went viral—which in those days meant peoplemade copies of the tape and physically passed them around—and led to a deal with Comedy Central. Thus was South Park born.

In the two decades since, it has gone after all the major religions, plus a few minor ones (Mormonism, Scientology), politicians from both parties (Giant Douche, Turd Sandwich), countless celebrities (Russell Crowe, Mecha-Streisand), the menace of political correctness, and the steady creep of the Towel Industrial Complex. Here, a few crazed fans offer their congratulations.

NORMAN LEAR, TV producer, creator of All in the Family

"The greatest praise Archie Bunker ever received was when Trey Parker and Matt Stone said that Archie was the inspiration for their brilliant character Eric Cartman."

SIMON RICH, writer, creator of Man Seeking Woman

"I remember going over to my friend Zach's house after school one day in seventh grade. His mom didn't get home from work until six, so we had about two hours to look for pornography on his new Dell. But first, Zach showed us this thing called The Spirit of Christmas. It was so extremely hilarious that we watched it over and over again for the entire two hours—and never took a break to search for porn."


"I remember exactly the episode that did it [for me]: The head of the Boy Scouts says, 'It has come to our attention, Big Gay Al, that you might be gay.' And Big Gay Al says, 'Did you figure that out all by yourselves, silly buns?' and then gives this fantastic speech standing up for the right of the Boy Scouts to determine who could be a scout or a scoutmaster. I was like, Wow, they're making fun of gay people, they're obviously also defending gay people, and at the same time they're upholding the right of free association. That's what I wanna see!"

JIMMY KIMMEL, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

"The idea that a talking piece of shit would think everybody else smells like flowers is hilarious. That's it—my favorite moment. Mr. Hankey: number one. Might be my all-time-favorite television moment."

BILL HADER, actor, comedian

"I met Matt probably in the summer of 2007, and the following year he invited me to their writers' retreat in Seattle. Matt will come in angry about something, in politics or in the culture, and he will just rail against it for an hour. And Trey will pick up on that and go, 'Oh, maybe the boys would …' He's really good at figuring out how this or that thing pertains to South Park. These meetings last around three hours, and the next day we go in and everything we talked about is animated. Then we'll all watch it and go, 'That works; that doesn't work.'

I was at the retreat before last season, and nothing really came out of it. And then literally in the last five minutes, Trey started doing PC Principal. Everyone breathed a big sigh of relief, like, 'Well, that will end up in the show.' "

MIKE JUDGE, TV producer, cocreator of Silicon Valley

"The word brave gets thrown around way too much in Hollywood, but I think [the Scientology episode] actually did change things. You couldn't really talk negatively about Scientology before that without getting a lot of threatening letters.

As long as the world keeps being ridiculous, which it seems to keep being, the show could probably go on indefinitely."

JERROD CARMICHAEL, comedian, cocreator of The Carmichael Show

"Anybody else in their position would be on their ninth or tenth show by now, but they just continue to perfect South Park. I'm pretty sure Comedy Central's not complaining."

BRUCE VILANCH, comedian, former head writer for the Oscars

"I don't know what Tom Cruise was bellyaching about. A shout-out from them lasts longer than an Emmy. Oh, maybe that's what he was bellyaching about.

P. S. I am the Coon!"

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