Thank you, Seth.

Hey man, I understand what your saying, But who gave to word such an awful meaning in the first place? Ignorant people, and to stop using the word is to keep their ignorance ongoing. This episode was to dilute the negativity and show people that WE give the word meaning, it did not give meaning to itself. We have to destroy the ignorance and use this word the way it was meant to be used. Fag's are also cigarettes. Gay is to be happy, but through ignorance we have forgotten the meaning of these words and stopped using them inorder to be politically correct, when in fact we should continue using these words and not let ignorance rule us.

Screw you abromovich. Go back to Israel and shoot little kids for throwing rocks at tanks.

Get over it you overly-sensitive Faggot.

Hey fag. I think it was hilarious! Get a job queer

Wow....If you even think this 'blog' entry will get anywhere...it wont. You get on South Park for using the word 'fag' yet you deep fat fry your own entry with 'bad' words everywhere? You sound more like a 13 year old boy having a hormone fit than a journalist.

I agree that the F word is like the N word. And like the N word, I hate it when people spew crap about "reclaiming" such words. You can embrace a word with negative connotations all you want and try to imbue it with positive qualities or whatever, but at the end of the day, when some bigot calls you said word, it hurts just the same.

Your use of a photo of grieving US soldiers to make your whiney little point is much more disgusting than what South Park did.

Those soldiers have nothing to do w/ South Park and you use them to emphasize your point.
The Day after Veterans day Seth Abromovitch decides it's OK to use the troops.

SICK SICK SICK!

South Park has always been known to take every little thing one step ahead, but honestly I saw nothing wrong with this episode.

The whole "faggot" thing being the equivalent of the n-word is flat out wrong. For one thing, as stated on the episode itself, the word fag used to mean cigarettes, and other definitions there after. Saying that the word is meant only to insult homosexuals is silly, after all the word "Gay" didn't use to mean homosexual.. Remember the Flintstones theme song? They weren't talking about homosexuals.

Though Matt and Trey like to have their laughs "It's always for the Lulz", they did have a point in this episode. It's fact that many people use the word fag to describe people who irritate or bother them. I know of a few homosexual friends who use the word fag to describe people who annoy them.

Aside from all of that, let them have their fun. No one was seriously offended by this episode, people just like to have things to complain about. Eventually they'll grow up too.

P.S: You spelled "assholes" wrong on the URL.

seth, you dont seem to understand that language is specific to regions, one thing might mean something in this area but totally different in another, same thing with body gestures, faggot has a bad cognition in our culture as it has been connected with homosexuals but faggot in the past has been applied to different individuals or situations previously, you are a little b*tch by taking offense to this and support all of south parks work when they make an eposiode someone who gets offended by it obviously is not open minded and is a little b*tch, if you would have paid attention to the whole show instead of being offended they went through the history of the definitions of the word faggot and outlined the different meanings, in our culture it means "x" but else where it is something totally different, i hope to meet you someday just to laugh at you becuase you make up the worst and i mean worst population of america, you conservative minded ( not politically just in reference to not being open to anythin ) little B*TCH

Tried to watch SP, hate it. I don't support stuff that isn't funny, regardless of the orientation of the idiots making it. There is not many things easier in a capitalist society than not supporting a TV show in order to get it replaced. Unfortunately, there are too many that apparently like what the show spits out, so the creators will keep making the cow pies and continue to throw them in your face until you can't eat any more. Meanwhile, I laugh at you. You choose to watch a stupid show, which continues to somehow improve your life. Wow. It must have started out REALLY exciting.

Don't try to make you're lack off sense of humor, look like something deep.

Barely literate South Park fans, prove that you missed the point!

On Glee last night the father of the gay kid received an anonymous phone-call calling his kid a "fag." But it's totally cool now because of South Park.

All of these comments are ironic, right? My meter is off today, and I think maybe my thinking there are a bunch of unexplained comment mouthbreathers might be me just not getting the joke.

Right?

Please note: each post that supports the usage of "faggot" contains at least one spelling, grammar or punctuation error.

Waah, a TV show offended my delicate sensibilities. It's a word, anyone can use it. The point of the show (other than being funny and entertaining, of course) was that the word "faggot" has been around a long time before someone decided to use it as a gay slur. But if you want to base which words you use around what assholes and homophobes and bigots say, that's fine. Just know that if you stop using every word an asshole misuses, you're not going to have many words left.

It's a fucking word, get over it.

Wow, these comments are shocking. Just so you know, I'm with you Seth. I didn't enjoy last week's episode in the least, and don't agree with it's message. Although 'look at me' Harley riders are annoying, and that was funny.

No matter how a word is used in the past(or in the future for that matter) or in different regions, words have their meaning in their current time and place, and people's language carries weight. Most people versed in a certain language know how they're using it...or at the very least should be aware of how they're using it.

For instance, if you went over to England and held up two fingers in someone's face, you'd be giving them the equivalent of the US middle finger, and might find yourself in a fight. You wouldn't run around insisting that it doesn't mean shit because you're from America. You would stop doing that. The same thing goes for the word in question.

I'm less offended by the word, and more offended by being told to get over it.

Was that some sort of profound point of discussion that this word at one time meant something else, and may years from now change yet again? WOW. Point being is that the way it's being used at this moment is typically as slander. The N-word may be reclaimed, but if someone is yelling it while they're kicking someone to the ground, they probably don't mean "we tight".

You can use any words you want, but don't tell me it's because gays have no reason to complain, that we have all the same rights and should start reclaiming anything.

No, the point is, it's not about the word, it's about context. PC idiots go around thinking they can cure every problem through nomenclature. It doesn't work that way. There are much more important battles to be fought, and it's important to choose them wisely.

wowzers! Looks like they just got the interwebs down in the deep fat fried south, and they've already learned how to post comments!

But how do these "special" commenters find Movie Line in the first place? Teh Google? The South Park message boards? A dog whistle?

I agree with Seth. Using "fag" is just as objectionable as using the "N" word. The commenters who disagree seem to be flustered that all of their insults are being taken away from them. Is this what you small-minded folk mean by having your rights taken away from you? Guess what, guys, homophobic speech is not protected and they're not just words.

the last time i had that word thrown at me was a few months ago.

standing outside a house i was bidding on (here in the real estate twilight zone), trying to buy the first house, in the neighbourhood i've lived in for 8 years, some guy walks by and starts screaming at us that this is a portuguese neighbourhood, and too many gays have already moved here, you guys are trying to take over, it's got to stop, don't buy this house faggot, get the fuck out of our area.

the only time i can think of it being used in comedy and it being funny was scott thompson and kids in the hall.

g*d forbid we should end up having a hate-on for this word.

I TOLE you that no one worthwhile watches SP or FG anymore.

Thanks Seth, and thanks to anyone who can be funny without having to rely on making minorities and beleaguered people feel any more unwelcome than they already do.

Words hurt people, and so does the homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and fear that creates those words.

Dude, you're a faggot! Get a sense of humor. The world is sick of little, white, middle-class, vegan, pussies like you that cry whenever they hear the words nigger, faggot, kike, or bitch.

"Cracker, chink, and WOP are okay to use, but don't start taking shots at blacks, gays, Jews, and women! Only then it's wrong!"

Your sensitivity feeds ignorance you cunt. Having a sense of humor about ourselves brings people closer together.

I would just like to point out that the episode also directly suggested that folks go out and call bikers fags to their faces. Which would very clearly result in the swift and violent beatings of those using the word in the recommended encounter, if those bikers have the identities that they claim. Are you really feeling so reactionary that you can not see the complications they are, admittedly mostly unsuccessfully, trying to introduce into their satirical argument?

One of the better satirical observations made in the episode is the absurdity of calling an individual or group hateful names for the pre-supposed content of their private interests that have no practical effect on another person (like their private erotic lives) versus a group that actually is LITERALLY PUBLICLY OBNOXIOUS TO ALL OTHER INDIVIDUAL'S PURSUITS while pursuing their private interests, who are, instead of being called hateful names, commonly admired as a breed of impressive renegades.

And then a sub-comment on how what, if any, real counter-culturally heroic attributes "The Biker" may have had are now obsolete because only yuppies trying to inhabit the cultural status of the once authentic identity are found posing as bikers to begin with. Butters as a Biker. The laughably repressed and conscientious Butters having the private curiosity towards an identity that just-doesn't-give-a-fuck. It's a fantasy pursuit now. No danger. De-caf. A costume.

A secondary theme being that what generally puts a person in the situation of being called "whatever" is simply inauthenticity, an overt concern with how they are being seen and what approval they are being granted or denied. And while people who have no concern for how other people's self-esteem is affected by their expressions are assholes, people who must control entirely how other's express themselves and who can not tolerate the free expressions of other's because of how it reveals other's disapproval of them personally- are (if we are using this kind of blunt lexicon) faggots.

Here's where I most likely lose anyone who might have read this post sympathetically:

That's the real reason why you get called a faggot as a kid. Not because you have erotic interest in members of the same sex (boys are using this word to shame one another far before any desire-based erection has poked its way in to further complicate the issue,) but because you show a tendency to be emotionally weak and you try to control other people's approval of you because you can't stand to not be approved of- "you're not allowed to call me that" is the ultimate threat from individuals with no self-esteem.
And the tears and exaggerations of anguish are the emotional tools that they have used to manipulate the primary figure in their early childhoods with success. Once they are taught by experience that they can't gain approval by simply showing how much it hurts them to be disapproved of (in other words, wanting to control how others express themselves instead of submitting to the social expectations and striving to behave in a way that will gain approval) they have a choice to make:

Adjust to expectation or stop caring what others think and define yourself by your deliberate actions-- stop letting your desire for the approval of the other dominate your emotional response. Finally, you "man up," meaning that you are able to swallow and hide the panic and fear you feel when threatened with disapproval, and seemingly paradoxically the disapproval stops coming your way. Nature abhors a vacuum. You grow an authentic, unapologetic self, and the identities of others stop trying to flow violently into you.
You "man up" and the boys stop calling you a faggot. You can sleep with whoever you want. But some individuals, instead, spend a lifetime trying to get the source of disapproval to be controlled-- to, in effect, design what the world outside his head will be able to openly express until anything that could endanger his non-self-esteem with confrontation is blunted and it is safe for his untempered child ego to wander around without fear of being tested. Of course this is impossible, since the true source of the feeling of disapproval is an internal lack and all the words crossed out in the world just decoys. If he did accomplish his unevolved child-ego dream, it would unfortunately mean the loss of all opportunity to grow an authentic human self- an identity that stands with time and in spite of potential rejection; instead he would have to remain mired in the doomed obsession with trying to control how others perceive him or how they react to what they perceive. And sadly, the only battle a whole community of this type may win is just the battle over just exactly what others can say "openly" in "polite society" - a set of unspoken rules that reflect nothing of the authentic struggle and inner lives of human beings, and never have.

But, yeah, there are real victims who in no way create the situation that tortures them, and no one should be dragged behind a truck. And of course, the realization that sex has nothing to do with the typical use of the f-word, both f-words come to think of it, but that an obvious disquiet in human nature is deeply wormed into our erotic core causing the association… So, it's too complicated for me or anyone to have tried to write about here in a really nuanced way, obviously.

And that is the problem with the South Park episodes. Just as a comment line on a blog will not a container for human truth make, so does not a vicious half-hour satirical cartoon. But I can't blame them for trying to confront as much as they can in the time allotted. And certainly the very last thing this episode would have accomplished is to have actually increased the use of the word faggot as an attack word against homosexuals in real life situations (remember, most uses of this word are in symbolic depictions, which should be beyond policing.)

And as for your end point about the hostage-taking-and-murder depicted in the opening scenes of this week's episode-- I believe the idea is to point out that the characters in the episode are completely oblivious to and unengaged by the very real and very horrific violence they are hearing over the hum-drum intercom (an excellent small metaphor for what happens when all real experiences are mediated to an audience) while petty topics such as imaginary political squabbles engineered by self-aggrandizing, irresponsible psychopaths and passed off for entertainment in the form of pseudo-news captures the hearts and minds of the characters very effectively, causing them to take sides and fervently support the false icons created-for-the-purpose-of and then depicted in the pseudo-news program. No better metaphor did I see on television this week for the total unengagement of the narcissistic, life-style-accessory-obsessed american citizen with the real atrocity and human tragedy done to lay the foundation in the blood for the capitalistic mechanisms that allow them to sit back and elevate petty symbolic arguments. We don't care about suffering in life, only the entertainingly dramatized depictions of suffering in mediated forms.

This is further expressed by the Avatar-tie-in-- that some kind of fan-boy overwhelming anticipation and scrutiny of an upcoming film-product on the part of much of the show's (South Park's) audience is a skewering testament to just how petty and insular our priorities are in this society.

So, yeah. South Park is calling you an asshole with the most recent episode (all of us, including themselves, really.) And you are calling them an asshole for doing so. And beyond you having degraded your position by an act of counter-bullying (it isn't like this idealogical bandwagon you are on isn't a cushy ride) you have done something truly despicable:

Your photo-creation equating the transgressions of real-life tragedy and a middling satirical cartoon. This type of equation is exactly why you are criticizing South Park. Only they did it in the form of a satire attempting to function as a condemnation of just such an equation.

Just why did you do it?

I am so disappointed in you, Seth. I have been reading you since Defamer, and I just can't believe someone capable of such insight and wit has written this reactionary drivel.

Oh, well, I guess media icons are what they are. Tragic exaggerations of the rest of us-- all sound and fury… and you know the rest.

Come back to your strength and penetrating insight soon.

wow, the crazies really came out for this thread, didn't they?

Good post, Seth

Another note: It's actually far less insensitive in light of Fort Hood as in light of a former student taking a principal hostage the day before. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world/former-student-of-stissing-mountain-high-school-arrested-for-taking-the-principal-hostage_100273312.html

Great post.

I keep trying to feel like there is a meta-commentary on society within South Park, to validate it, but when it comes down to it...very few people get that, anyway. It's no "All In the Family", in other words.

The most useless, shock value "points" of each episode end up basically becoming ammo for otherwise powerless male twerps (10+ years of age, up to 40-something really), and the girls that love them, who want to feel smart and snarky. About everything.

It's stupid and unproductive and it is getting to be time for the show and its followers to grow the fuck up and join the living in making something of our society again, instead of sitting on a couch/computer and pissing on what's left of it.

Gross.