Like everyone Kristi Noem’s a comedy writer, so she tells us that South Park’s jokes about her are “lazy.” Knocking a woman for her looks, that old playbook! “It never ends, but it’s so lazy, to make fun of women for how they look,” says our secretary of Homeland Security, much as Kellyanne Conway used to dismiss unwelcome questions as “seck-sist.” As a liberal with a long memory, I think the immigrant-persecuting feminist should reflect on her boss. Back in 2015, Donald Trump had to ride out a flap because a reporter caught his unvarnished remarks about Carly Fiorina, rival contender for the GOP nomination (Trump: “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”). A year later, after sharing a debate stage with Hillary, Trump said he checked out the Democrat’s hindquarters. “I wasn’t impressed,” he reported. I think that may be the only time a presidential nominee said anything about the ass of the other nominee. If not, it’s because Trump repeats himself.
Noem might also reflect that Matt and Trey (I call them that now) were commenting on her vanity and artificiality. The point wasn’t how her face looks; the point was that’s not her face. The South Park Noem has an imitation face stapled on because she’s an imitation, a clown who pretends to lead. Miss Hotty Long Legs—that pseudo-military, pseudo-sexy boob—swaggers in front of the camera as figurehead for a pseudo-moral crusade. Inoffensive people are crushed for moronic reasons, and she’s on hand so we’ll think it’s a rocking occasion. She’s full of shit; ICE is full of shit. All of this is also true of our real-life ICE and real-life Noem, except the stapling part; her plastic surgeons worked more conventionally.
Matt and Trey (really, they’re my buddies) don’t like being told what to say; we always hear that. But they also hate being told things they consider simply and plainly untrue. I think these two impulses are strong on the right—not well directed necessarily, but strong. The first gets more attention, but the second strikes me as just as much a dividing line. The left assumes that the other side will lie, since property can’t rule unless it bamboozles. The left hates those lies, but it does so incidentally; what it really hates is exploitation. The right, on the other hand, sees its enemy as the human tendency to be full of shit. That’s what it hates: the snobbery, the posturing, the holier-than-thou wind and sniffy condescension of weak people who fasten onto silly beliefs so they can look down on honest, clear-minded folk, the kind of folk who don’t believe dishonest nonsense like… Well, the list varies. That a couple of guys could get married, that used to be on there. Or that a black man can get with a white gal and it’s not a big deal; I think that’s still on the list. Or, sitting at the top these days, the twin notions that a man might somehow be a woman, and a woman might be a man.
Matt and Trey have a great deal of trouble with that particular duo, or so I hear. But they have more trouble with the idea that MAGA isn’t a clusterfuck of greedy twats led by a vicious crook. Though the right gets inflamed when thinking about self-deception and fraud, most of its members have trouble recognizing these things. I think that Matt and Trey notice who at this juncture is doing the pushing around and narcissistic lying. Their first anti-Trump episode was meant to embarrass Jeff Shell and demonstrate the boys would say what they pleased no matter what their corporate overlords had at stake (such as a merger needing federal approval). But the point was made and now their follow-up episode’s laying into more MAGA shamefulness.
That kind of thing makes the boys mad, I guess. Matt and Trey (great guys), you’ve got something to say. Yeah, MAGA sucks, and yeah it’s bullshit.