The Lincoln Bedroom at the White House has been the site of great history since its construction, from hosting a long list of famous guests and dignitaries to the recent marble-and-gold renovation of its en suite bathroom that was unveiled with great pride (and shocking insensitivity) during the government shutdown. What I’m fairly certain the walls of the Lincoln Bedroom have never seen before, however, was what was shown on Wednesday night’s episode of South Park: the president of the United States making sweet, sweet love to his own vice president.
Yes, after weeks of headline-grabbing episodes that have skewered President Donald Trump and his administration in delightfully juvenile ways and led to a surge in ratings, this latest installment somehow found new levels of depravity to sink to. As the song “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasts about halfway through the episode, we see Trump and J.D. Vance in bed making out. “Oh, boss. It’s so big,” the minion-esque Vance tells Trump about his micropenis (which, mercifully, isn’t shown for what feels like the first time in weeks). Then, as Vance’s eyes roll back in his head and he grips the sheets in pleasure, we are treated (subjected?) to the president’s O-face, which just so happens to be the same squinty face Trump made when he stared into a solar eclipse that one time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a long walk and try to forget what I’ve seen.
As with all the recent South Park episodes, this latest one, entitled “Sora Not Sorry,” manages to mock the current occupants of the White House while also parodying something prevalent in today’s culture. We’ve seen creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker offer their ludicrous thoughts on everything from Labubus to prediction market apps to Generation Alpha’s incomprehensible 6-7 meme. This time, they’re setting their sights on OpenAI’s Sora and other generative video apps that spit out A.I. slop in myriad ways that violate copyright and ethical standards. But, as in previous weeks, Stone and Parker want to make you think while also making you laugh. As the episode builds to its crescendo, South Park is concerned with who might exploit these apps for their own nefarious purposes and with who might absolve themselves of nefariousness by blaming these apps. Airing the very same day that President Trump called his inclusion in the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails a manufactured “hoax” designed to trick people, the episode feels particularly salient, if also outrageously prurient.
As the episode kicks off, South Park Elementary student Red McArthur is going door to door, seeking signatures for a petition for people to smell her own farts. Soon, Santa Claus shows up and pees all over her. The scene isn’t real, of course, but a piece of revenge porn made by Butters using the Sora app as payback for Red stringing him along to get her hands on a Labubu a few weeks back. He’s made similar videos of her eating dog crap and barfing up tampons, he proudly tells the other boys. Looking to get her own vengeance for the clips spreading around the school, Red soon makes her own A.I. video of Butters having sex with the beloved title character from the 1988 Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro. Soon, the town’s hapless detectives are investigating—not because they’re concerned about this epidemic of revenge porn, but because they genuinely believe the students are being molested by animated characters. “I want to know where you met Totoro and I want a description of his penis,” Detective Harris tells Butters. A later scene shows them with a pinboard full of suspects that include Bluey, Betty Boop, Yogi Bear, Garfield, and the Pink Panther, all of whom have apparently been featured in A.I. videos doing bad things with South Park students. (Bluey eventually takes the boys to court for making her “go to the bathroom in a very, very bad place.”) The adults’ obvious confusion about A.I. and their susceptibility to these videos at first feels funny until you think about the average age of members of Congress who are tasked with regulating this booming industry.
When Studio Ghibli’s team shows up to angrily denounce the boys for violating their copyright and issue a cease and desist, the police confuse them for Totoro’s lawyers. “It takes hundreds of artists three years to make Totoro and in two minutes you spit out your shit and fuck Totoro,” one Japanese animator tells the children. “Studio Ghibli made Totoro with patience and paint, not by typing shit in some stupid Sora app.” These proclamations of artistic integrity from South Park are righteous, but also somewhat ironic, given that the show is capable of turning around timely episodes with shocking speed, and the fact that they used A.I. in the season premiere to create a realistic video of Trump walking naked in the desert.
It’s not just the South Park Elementary students using A.I., however. Peter Thiel is also employing Sora to make videos of Cartman assuring his mother he’s safe and sound, despite actually being kidnapped by the tech billionaire as part of Vance’s seasonlong quest to abort the “butt baby” that Trump and his lover Satan are soon to have. (What a sentence!) Vance’s scheme came to light in an episode that aired on Halloween, however, so Trump is now forced to confront his vice president over the plot. “I would do anything for you,” Vance tells him. “You are the greatest boss I’ve ever had and I just want you to be happy.” Trump admits he doesn’t actually want the baby to be born, but can’t get out of the situation because everyone is so excited. Soon, the pair are bonding further in a spa bath as Vance assures the president that nobody feels for Trump the same way as him. I’ll admit here that, as they smiled suggestively at one another amid the soapy bubbles in a way indicative of more to come, I thought to myself, Surely not. This was obviously an error on my part, as with South Park the answer is always yes.
Ellin Stein
There’s One President in American History Who Absolutely Did Not Want the Job. A New Show Reveals Why He Was Right to Be Worried.
Read More
-
The Psychiatrist Who Studied Nazi Officials After the War Found Something Shocking. It Didn’t Earn Him Any Fans.
-
The Best Dating Show on TV Has Gone Way Downhill. I Have a Wild Idea to Fix It.
-
Why Would One of Our Greatest Action Filmmakers Remake One of the 1980s’ Silliest Movies? It’s Clear Now.
-
This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only
South Park’s New Episode Is Audacious, Even for South Park
When the police eventually bust Thiel and rescue Cartman, they discover security footage on his laptop from the Lincoln Bedroom that captures the sweaty presidential sex that followed that bath. “When Fox News sees this, they are not going to be happy,” one officer astutely observes. Soon enough, the reporters at Fox are indeed glumly delivering the news about Trump being caught having “relations” with Vance. They’re clearly distraught, but not because of the graphic gay sex that they’re broadcasting, censored only by a Fox News logo. They’re disappointed in the president for cheating on the pregnant Prince of Darkness. Luckily, Trump is swift to call in to Fox & Friends and assure them the video is the work of Sora and “all fake.” This assurance, despite being obvious Trumpian bullshit, is apparently good enough for Fox and for Satan, and Ol’ Donny Trump is able to easily wriggle out of another jam. As he excuses himself from bed with Satan for a snack, Trump meets with Vance, and they plot to rescue Thiel from the South Park police and stop the town from meddling with their plans. Then, of course, they kiss.
There are still two episodes remaining in this latest run of South Park, but you can safely bet that Trump and the townspeople are going to collide in even more shocking ways. Knowing what this show has subjected us to over these last few months, the White House should also steel themselves for even more scandal and salaciousness. After all, as Thiel tells Cartman about the A.I. videos, “It’s the world you live in, kid. Anyone can make you do anything they want.”
