New York Times Opinion Columnist Michelle Goldberg joins Stephen Richer and Archon Fung to discuss “South Park” and the role political satires play in today's political discourse.
The newest season of “South Park” premiered with a parody of President Donald Trump and in the second episode, a satirical jab at the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since airing, the show’s lampooning of the current administration has drawn ire from the White House and praise from the President’s critics.
This week, Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, joins Stephen Richer and Archon Fung to discuss these recent episodes and the role political satires, such as “South Park,” play in political discourse.
Michelle Goldberg is an opinion columnist at The New York Times, where she writes about politics and culture from a left-leaning, feminist point of view, though she tries to seek out stories that challenge her preconceptions. Goldberg is particularly interested in the rise of authoritarianism in both America and around the world, the state of the progressive movement, and the evolution of gender relations.
Before joining The New York Times, Goldberg was a columnist at Slate, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, and many other publications. Her first book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” was about religious authoritarianism in American politics.
‘South Park’ Skewers a New Kind of Sanctimony
Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/opinion/south-park-trump-conservatives.html
Video Credit: South Park, Season 27, Episode 1: “The Sermon on the Mount” (Paramount)
Archon Fung: You are listening to terms of engagement. I'm Archon Fung, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Stephen Richer: And I'm Steven Richer, the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, and now a Senior practice fellow at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School.
Archon Fung: We're back for our fifth episode of this weekly series of terms of engagement, and we're live, so don't forget to put comments in the chat questions, uh, and feedback. My background here is a little bit different because I'm streaming from the faculty lounge of the Political Science Department at Tulane University in New Orleans, which is Stephen’s alma mater. Over to you, Stephen.
Stephen Richer: Yeah. Uh, and now soon to be your sons as well.
Stephen Richer: Uh, positive undergraduate experience, but today we're gonna be talking about art and television as a form of political commentary, as a form of resistance, potentially. And of course, the subject that teed that up recently was the first episode of the new season of South Park, which is now owned by Paramount, which of course has had a number of dealings with the Trump administration and with the president specifically as of late. And to join us today, we are going to be joined by Michelle Goldberg, who's an opinion columnist at the New York Times. She previously wrote for Slate before moving over to the New York Times. Her opinion piece is one of the ones that I consistently read. And then also of interest to this group and to this viewership. She is the author of the book Kingdom Coming, the Rise of Christian Nationalism, which is available on Amazon. And most importantly, she has, I think, a 12-year-old son who is allowed to watch South Park according to her recent opinion piece on this very topic. So, welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Goldberg: Um, hi. And nobody calls CPS please.
Stephen Richer: It was fair game because you put it into the opinion piece. Yes. Yeah,
Michelle Goldberg: Sure.
Archon Fung: Uh, as always, uh, before we get started, we should note that we are definitely speaking as individuals, and not on behalf of Harvard, Harvard, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Ash Center, or any institutional fragment of the university. Little segment recap here. So, uh, paramount has signed, uh, reportedly a $1.5 billion five year streaming view, uh, deal with South Park. The creators of South Park are gonna produce, uh, 50 more episodes as part of that deal. The last season, which just began, there's been two episodes, uh, so far kicked off with an Unsparing parody of President Trump. And the second episode feature skewering of Kristi Noem and ratings have been high for millions of viewers. We wanna get into a discussion of the show and some of the political response, but first we wanted to share a couple of our favorite clips, uh, from the show. Couple caveats here. First, a spoiler alert, uh, we're gonna be talking a lot about these episodes, so if you haven't seen them yet, uh, stream us later. Hit pause if you don't want the spoilers. And then, uh, second, some of this content and some of, uh, the, our discussion of the comment is definitely not safe for work. So, uh, Sarah, if you could start the 60 minutes clip.
South Park: Uh, oh, God. Uh, the small town of South Park Colorado is protesting against the president. The townspeople claim that the president, who, who is a great man, a,
A great man,
Great, great guy. We know he is probably watching and, uh, we are just reporting on this town in Colorado that's being sued by the president, and they are fighting back.
And just to be clear, we don't agree with him. No, no, no, no.
Archon Fung: Okay. That's number one. And then, uh, the second clip is the Sermon on the Mount clip, which is the title of this episode. Sarah, if you could roll that. Bye.
South Park: Body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. No, just eat the bread and listen, I didn't want to come back and be in the school, but I had to. 'cause it was part of a lawsuit. And the agreement with Paramount
President suing you
The garden he wants now that someone bark down. Okay. Eat the bread. Eat the bread. You guys saw what happened to CBS? Yeah. Well, guess who owns CBS? You really wanna end up like Colbert. You guys gotta stop being stupid.
We can't understand you.
The shit, man. We're going to get canceled. You idiots,
Tom. They're calling it the Sermon on the Mount. Hundreds of South Park faithful are flocking to the area where Jesus Christ continues to speak his words of wisdom.
If someone has the power of the presidency, and also is the power to sue and he can do anything to anyone, it's the fucking president, dude, all of you, shut the fuck up. South Park is over. It's fucking over. Just stop and shut the fuck up.
Stephen Richer: Okay? So, so South Park didn't take the, the proffered wisdom from Jesus Christ in that moment. They did not shut the F up. Um, in fact, they're talking loudly. They talked again in episode two.
Michelle Goldberg: No, they, I mean, they didn't shut up, but they did make a pro-Trump, pro-Trump, PSA, which ends the episode, um, as part of their settlement.
Stephen Richer: Pro-Trump, PSA, so, so I, I am, this was actually the first South Park episode that I've ever watched mm-hmm
Michelle Goldberg: Well, I think both. They, like, they kind of go where the taboos are. And in this moment it's really clear where those taboos are, right? This, this show that loves to take on sacred cows that did these episodes mocking Scientology at a time when Scientology was trying to sue all of its critics into oblivion. And for many years they were sort of seen as more right leaning right. They were really ruthless on with a lot of liberals, Michael Moore, Al Gore, um, Hillary Clinton. And there was even this book called South Park. I'm trying to remember, was it South Park? So South Park Republicans, south Conservatives, south Park, conservative. Well, there was South Park, there was an article called South Park Republicans and a book called South Park Conservatives. And the idea at the time, this was during the George W. Bush administration, and these are kind of tropes that I think we see recurring that liberals are, you know, kind of drab and doer and censorious, and it's now the conservatives who are the party of free speech and transgression and fun.
And, you know, I think we saw that kind of recur with a vengeance during, you know, call, you know, kind of woke during the height of like, wokeness. But if you look at where we are now, the amount of kind of censorship, intimidation, absurd taboos that you see kind of coming down from this autocratic administration. You know, one of my, one of my favorite moments in that first episode, again, I, I watched, I used to watch South Park when it first came out. My kid loves it. I tried to say that he couldn't watch it and then kind of gave up because it just makes him so happy. Um, but so if, if you watch it, you know that there was this kind of long running affair between, um, the devil Satan, who's a character, and Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein was pictured the same way Trump is pictured.
They kind of just used a photo of him and made his mouth move. And so at one point, Saddam in this new episode, now Saddam, now, I'm sorry. Now the devil is having an affair with Trump. At one point in this new episode, the devil says to Trump, like, you remind me of this guy I used to date like a lot. Um, and so, you know, I think that, you know, in some ways what's, what's astonishing is not that South Park is going after this, you know, kind of ridiculous, obscene, grotesque administration, but that, but that they're all, but that more people aren't doing the same thing.
Archon Fung: Right? So that's one of the, uh, striking things about the first episode is I think it's a pretty good primer on the power of authoritarian government. Like everyone has to shut up from the town of South Park, which has to pay, you know, however millions of dollars and has to reduce its police force and make these PSAs mm-hmm
Stephen Richer: Because they have money, but lots of people have money. Um, right. But
Michelle Goldberg: To me, that to me, that's the big mystery. And this is like a psychological mystery that maybe you can answer. One of you can answer for me, because I've never understood, I mean, I guess we can swear because we're talking about South Park. I've never understand, I've never understood why so many people with fuck you money, don't say fuck you. Right? I mean, I feel like they're behaving the way I would expect someone who has $1.5 billion to behave and why the rest of these billionaires, I mean, some of these billionaires like what Trump is doing, but I think some are clearly just kind of bending knee or going along to get along why they don't have the same self-respect as Trey as as, as, um, as South Park's creators. I just, again, tell me, tell me, I mean, maybe you guys understand the political psychology. Yeah.
Archon Fung: What do you think, Stephen? Well, so,
Stephen Richer: So no, so I, no, I don't, I don't have an answer to this, but I was thinking about this very question Yeah, me too. Last night. And I was thinking two things. Uh, one, if you fear for physical violence, then obviously that changes the calculation, and that would make a lot of people more reasonably capitulate. Um, but, and then two, the other excuse I could come up with is if you're running an organization where it's not just your livelihood and it's not your fu money that you can walk away from, but it's everyone within your organization, then you might feel a little more compelled to toe the party line. That being said, there are still plenty of people who are in a position where they can independently walk away from this. And the number of people who have chosen that and have chosen that at the level of these two, I, I mean, we can count on probably two hands. So, so why is, why is it not happening? I think maybe just because, um,
Archon Fung: Yeah. So I was thinking about this also. It's really striking. Uh, one answer might be that, uh, humor in comedians get a little bit of a pass, but Stephen Colbert didn't get a pass, so that's probably not it. And, uh, you know, my second kind of darker thought was they haven't gone after Trey Parker and Matt Stone yet. I mean, would they do the same thing if they were threatened with, uh, personal investigations or threats of antisemitism? I mean, there's plenty of anti-antisemitism in the show. I mean, there, you know, if one were to make that accusation, uh, would they react the same way or not? And part of that puzzle also is that the, when the White House comes back, they don't come back with, we're gonna sue them. We're gonna, you know, deploy the FBI and AG Bondy on them. They say, well, south Park's not culturally relevant. Mm-hmm
Michelle Goldberg: I think, I think that, I mean, south Park has a, a certain, an amount of credibility with parts of Trump's base that, that Stephen Colbert certainly doesn't have, right? There's a lot of comedians who are very clearly liberals, whereas South Park, I mean, you know, Joe Rogan was laughing at the debut South Park episode, right? I think there's a huge overlap
Stephen Richer: Talk about their response. I don't wanna leave the question of why are these two, two of the very few people who have taken this stance, uh, it's, I wanna circle back to that, but the response has been sort of split between the, the White House, which said, this show hasn't been relevant for 20 years, and then nom, uh, the vice president and others have gone so far as to sort of say like, Hey, isn't this neat, I'm gonna make this even my profile picture. Mm-hmm
Michelle Goldberg: No has quite done that. I mean, no, has sort of, you know, said that it's sexist the way they've gone after her for her looks. Um, I mean, JD Vance has embraced it, I think Char or at least pretended to embrace it. You know, I'm, that last I'm not heard. I think this is great. Yeah. Like, you know, Charlie Kirk also, there's an episode in which, Cartman clearly kinda comes to embody Charlie Kirk. But, you know, again, I think that they, this is like one of the few shows that can kind of hit them where it hurts. And so they, I think it's, that's probably the right way to play it, to say like, oh, we're laughing along with them. But it's also why these two episodes have been so potent, because, you know, I feel like there's, there's a sense, I don't know if you guys feel it, like, is everybody else seeing this? You know, what is
Archon Fung: Going? Definitely.
Michelle Goldberg: And that's the relief that this kind of com, that's the relief traditionally that comedy provides. But I think in this heightened environment where everything is both so awful and so surreal, um, their willingness to just say it and to say it on a TV network owned by, you know, to kind of call out their own parent company is, yeah. Well, yeah, it's such a relief. So,
Stephen Richer: So is this more about, was the episode more about Paramount, or was it more about President Trump?
Michelle Goldberg: I think it was more about Trump. I mean, it was partly about Paramount, and that was in there, but it was really about Trump, you know, trying to sue them into submission and, you know, and also their feeling that like, they didn't like wokeness, but this extreme counter reaction has gone too far. Yeah.
Archon Fung: You know, Michelle, for me, part of the glory of the show, it was the glory of the First Amendment and someone taking full advantage of it when, you know, I walk around campus and faculty and students and certainly internationals, they're just afraid to say anything at all. And here's somebody saying it as loud as possible. Literally the emperor has no clothes. Right. That was the PSA, it was great. Right. Um, what has been, um, the reaction of, uh, your colleagues in writing a whole column? When you write a whole column about South Park, like in my different chats and stuff, people kind of think, well, you know, it's funny what they're saying, but I don't know, is that a little bit too over the edge? Is that serious? Should we be like, what should we think of South Park as political commentary?
Michelle Goldberg: Well, I mean, I think what is serious and what is not serious is hard to parse. Especially, I mean, you know, I was looking at social media before we jumped on this conversation, and I'm watching, you know, one of the president's chief advisors and one of the most power call one of the most powerful, um, republican congresswoman, you know, a whore, um, of like, I'm talking about this fight between Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and, you know, they're gilding the White House and planning a UFC cage match. Um, so what is, you know, again, like what is serious and, and what is not, in some ways only something that is extraordinarily over the top can capture a current moment. I mean, I think the, the same thing is true of another movie I wrote about a very, very different kind of project, but the movie Edington by Ari Aster, you know, again, also very, very over the top, but in a way that actually captures, I think, the texture of what it is like to be alive now, um, in a way that few other things have. So
Stephen Richer: Did this take courage from the creators, or is this just sort of like, we, we do this every week a about everyone and, and here my lack of familiarity with the show is perhaps coming through, but how, how much was this a deviation from No,
Michelle Goldberg: No, I think wasn't
Stephen Richer: But, but maybe it's because they've exercised those muscles on, I guess, a weekly basis, whereas maybe a law firm, or some people say Columbia University isn't really used to saying, Hey, our First Amendment rights are being brutalized by the president of the United States.
Michelle Goldberg: I mean, I guess nobody's u nobody is used to their First Amendment rights being brutalized by the president of the United States. But, um, you know, you would think Columbia University or Harvard or law firms that represent, you know, kind of pro bono clients, you know, they may like, obviously they're not exercising their satire muscles, but you would think that they are exercising their, like constitutional law muscles or their political philosophy muscles. So I mean, again, this is, to me, the biggest mystery of the last six months is this just like great institutional capitulation. And I can't tell if people have just decided that like our experiment in liberal democracy is over, and so it's not really worth fighting. Or if they've decided that they're just going to put their heads down and protect themselves, or if they're really telling themselves that they can make some kind of come to some sort of good faith arrangement with an administration that, from my perspective, just wants to crush everything in its way.
Archon Fung: So, um, one of the great things about the South Park episode is that they have been doing exactly what they've been doing for 26 seasons before, but everyone else in society is bending over backwards to behave very differently than they were one year ago. Right.
Michelle Goldberg: That's, I mean, I think like when you see at the beginning of the episode when, um, they go back to school and their principal who in previous episodes
Archon Fung: PC principal
Michelle Goldberg: Was known his PC principal and was like very aggressive in enforcing the rules of wokeness, and now he's kind of turned on a dime, and now he's power Christian principle. Um, and I think it captures their sense of like, what is everyone doing? Like what is going on here? There's the sense of bafflement that I think echoes my bafflement Yeah. With the broader culture.
Archon Fung: Yeah. I think the part of the muscles of satire, and I think adversarial law firms, uh, that litigate more, have a different muscle, but also kind of counter, uh, the establishment or at least powerful organizations in a way that a lot of other organizations do not, you know, large universities, uh, university leaders are very good at getting along with people, and that's the muscle they're quite good at, uh, that, that that they've exercised for a long, long time. And so now, you know, different set of dispositions,
Michelle Goldberg: I think we're seeing that, I mean, obviously we're seeing that it's what I hear from people in universities, um, and I guess it's true, right? These jobs select for a certain sort of person who's very, you know, who's kind of not, um, combative and who's institutionally minded at the same time. I just, I don't understand how you could have kind of grown up in the United States, learned about authoritarianism in history and not thought through what would I do if it happened here? And then I just, and then kind of, and then, or not having any sort of, um, like I just, I don't, again, I don't understand, you know, kind of how people look in the mirror.
Stephen Richer: Maybe we've always been this way and it's just, we were raised on history of the revolution, maybe dystopian fiction in which the hero stands up against the dystopian society. And so we've always envisioned that the American spirit would similarly resist, and it just hadn't been tested to this degree before. Mm-hmm
Michelle Goldberg: And that's what, and that's the, that's the story in dystopian fiction. Right. So it's just that I guess everybody imagines that they're the exception, or I guess imagine, I thought everybody imagined that they're the exception.
Stephen Richer: Yeah. And, and, and, and you know, from my position as an elected Republican, I just felt like I'm playing with house money because great, it's good to be here, but like, my, my livelihood isn't ruined if this just goes away. And I assumed that a lot of people felt like they were playing for house money. But I'll tell you that taking that away, taking the status of being an elected official away from an elected officials was treated like oxygen. And I think that we're finding out that more and more positions in society that, that that defines them entirely. And if you're not the chair of a major international law firm, and if that gets taken away from you, then you've lost your whole identity and your whole being, which in some ways is really sort of sweet that people care about their professions that much, but it makes it that much harder to sort of resist a situation like this. Yeah.
Michelle Goldberg: Yeah. No, I think that that's right. I like, I mean, I look at people in politics and i's like, I have, I had no idea that being in the house was that good of a job that you would literally sell your soul to keep it. I mean, there's some people who aren't selling their soul. There's some people who are just happy to go along and who are all in and maybe more and more of those people. But there's other people who clearly, you know, sort of wish that they were serving under different sort of administration, but are totally willing to make all the compromises. And again, I didn't realize, you know, it seems like the people, it's not like people leave the house and have to go work at McDonald's. Like there are, there's, there's late
Archon Fung: Work in law firm. Yeah. Right, right. So I wanted to, um, take a, a second on a different part of the, uh, south Park episode and ask you about a kind of cultural question. So this is about Cartman's identity crisis, right? So he's the guy who, for the 26 prior seasons has been the anti woke anti PC character that kind of embodies, uh, a certain kind of right-wing young person and fighting the power, right. And fighting the cancel culture. And then in episode one, he has this total identity crisis. 'cause he realizes he's been mainstreamed mm-hmm
Michelle Goldberg: Well, I think there's obviously people on the right who yes, feel like we are winning. This is cultures are, you know, car Kirk and the rest, the whole right. They feel like extremely, they feel extremely triumphant. Um, at the same time, I think there's people whose maybe who've, whose politics are, or whose stance towards society is fundamentally oppositional.
That's, and you know, and that's I think some of these podcast types and also I think that's the creators of South Park. I mean, they've said in the past that Carman basically represents their darkest impulses,
Stephen Richer: I believe, I believe it was Jews and fags since I was new to the show. Right. Well,
Michelle Goldberg: I mean that's, that's, that's his normal thing.
Archon Fung: Others, among others.
Stephen Richer: I'm one of those two, so I
Archon Fung: See it Right. Among others,
Stephen Richer: Will, was will this be, will this have an impact?
Michelle Goldberg: I think, I mean honestly, I hope that like, just if ratings are good enough, I think it should send, I mean obviously you're going to still have some parent companies who sort of don't care that much about, you know, for whom their broader business interests, um, are gonna take precedence over ratings. But I think if the show does well and lots of people are watching, and so far, lots of people have wa been watching, it should just be a message to like the marketplace that there is a hunger for that, a hunger for this. And there's, you know, at a certain point there's like strength in numbers.
Archon Fung: Yeah, yeah. I'm the
Stephen Richer: Numbers bit. I I I was just trying to say, um, to me the most powerful component was giving a permission structure for people who had voted for President Trump multiple times to say that they weren't liking the administration so far. So when they're all sitting in the bar and they're sort of disappointed, that to me was like, oh, maybe some people need, need to see, even from fictional character that it's okay to deviate even if you were previously part of the team.
Michelle Goldberg: Right. I mean, and I think that's kind of the people who are there speaking to, because my guess is, is that there are a lot of South Park viewers who voted for Donald Trump.
Archon Fung: Right. And in, uh, episode two, when they cover ice, uh, you know, the, the satire is amazing. It's the, the school counselor loses his job. And I, they must have made this episode before the big beautiful bill when there's gonna be how many billions of dollars to recruit ice agents.
Michelle Goldberg: So I'm not even positive about that because I know historically they've worked super quickly. Oh, interesting. Um, so I just, so I, I, I don't know the answer to that, but I do think, I mean, the most amazing thing about that episode I thought was the raid on the Dora Explorer Show and then them dragging Dora the Explorer to Mar-a-Lago to make her give kind of epstein style massages. Yes. It just managed to squeeze so much grotesquery into like one quick type storyline.
Archon Fung: Okay. I actually return to that
Archon Fung: Yeah, it's good. The Dora The Explorer is very good. And the counselor, the dark part of that for me is that Cartman deals with this identity crisis by becoming, uh, a hyper bully. Right. So he out Charlie Kirks, Charlie Kirk, right.
Michelle Goldberg: Well that's, I mean, of course like I'd be car, there was never gonna be a redemption arc for car
Archon Fung: He was never gonna be a good guy. A good whatever. 13-year-old. Yeah.
Michelle Goldberg: 8
Archon Fung: To be clear. Eight. Oh, he's eight.
Michelle Goldberg: Yeah, they're eight.
Stephen Richer: I like that. You know, that, um, does it take courage to write something like this at the New York Times? 'cause a lot of people would say, this is what you guys do, this is what the New York Times do. But the New York Times is the, in, in many ways, the pinnacle of writing still, and you don't want to get knocked off of that mountain. And so have you seen people sort of think twice before writing their columns?
Michelle Goldberg: I don't think so. I mean, does it take courage? Like, what's gonna happen to me? I mean, I just, again, I feel like the, the amount of courage it takes is so minuscule compared to like the kind of courage that people have actually had to show in, you know, kind of authoritarian situations. I, I think the people, the, the places where you do see, I think a real chill are, um, people who don't have green, people who don't have citizenship. Yes, absolutely. You know, I think among like, I've, I've heard this from other journalists, um, people who are, who have green cards have to be very, very careful. And I think that that it, it makes the comfort, it makes sense that they are, um, taking a step back while they sort out their protections.
Stephen Richer: Yeah. Okay. So Archon favorite character or favorite episode?
Archon Fung: Uh, favorite, favorite character to me is, is Butters, I guess who's kind of the sidekick of Cartman who has some difficulties but is forced to attempt suicide by Cartman's overreach, uh, by, uh, asphyxiating himself in a car. But it turns out to be an electric car. So it's a little bit of a misguided adventure.
Michelle Goldberg: Oh, I mean, I think that Jesus scene, I think the two, yeah, the Jesus scene you just showed and then the Door, the Explorer at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah.
Archon Fung: Yeah. That was really brilliant. And the, the door that, that scene is like five seconds, the door of the explorer scene at the Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Stephen Richer: Alright, well I'll have to watch episode two, but thank you so much for joining us, Michelle. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Uh, we keep these at 30 minutes. We appreciate people tuning in. As always, let us know if you have any input or suggestions for future topics. Obviously a lot's going on now politically, we'll be back at noon next Tuesday. Archon parting thoughts? Sure.
Archon Fung: Great. The, uh, as always the audio version of this show is on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts. And special thank you to Michelle for joining us. It's a real treat and thanks everyone for tuning in. And thank you two in the backstage, Sarah Grucza, uh, Colette Anton, Courtney Carter DeJesus for organizing and producing the show. Uh, hopefully see you next week.
Michelle Goldberg: Thank you so much.
Archon Fung: Thank you.