PS the people replying to my comment on the most recent South Park episode can't actually be this stupid, right? They can't EARNESTLY think my point about the show's decades-long problem of appearancism is that I think people shouldn't be mean to Kristi Noem. Not my very obvious actual point that by the time professional comedians Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in their fucking fifties, you'd think they'd have a more clever insult up their sleeve for a woman who is A LITERAL FUCKING NAZI than "lol face is stapled to her head".
If I squint, I can see the logic that Republicans attack people's appearances all the time, so technically it's not raw pettiness because it's calling out a hypocrisy, and I'll admit I'm not above laughing at a cheap shot every once in a while. But attacking a bad person for being fat, or trans, or having a small penis, or having plastic surgery - it hurts more than just that one bad person. We know this; it's not rocket science! Responding to a baldfaced eugenicist and ableist movement by calling its proponents ugly isn't exactly being the change you want to see in the world. "End of Obesity" even satirized how the show has used attacking people's looks as a crutch, and how completely ill-equipped insult comedy is when it encounters a terrible person who is outwardly "normal". But it's always been two-steps-forward-one-step-back with this show, and it's fucking pathetic.
Also South Park ABSOLUTELY makes fun of female celebrities for being ugly more frequently than it does male ones. The melting face thing is a commentary on the fragile artifice of ICE's recruitment tactics; I get that. But it does so in a way that implies the situation wouldn't be quite as absurd if Noem was "authentically" pretty, and that's sexist. Don't play dumb! When you come across a turd in gold-leaf wrapper, why waste any time proving the wrapper is fool's gold?
