The Deep End of ""South Park

No American television show of the past decade has been vilified as has ""Comedy Central's South Park"". This is the show that has featured, in turn, a nine-year-old boy enmeshed in an affair with Ben Affleck, a maniacal Mel Gibson smearing feces everywhere, and the misadventures of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, a talking, bouncing, singing piece of poop. While it's not always an exercise in good taste, ""South Park"" is a socially significant satire that has also devoted entire episodes to interpretations of ""Great Expectations"", Ken Burns' ""Civil War"", and ""Hamlet"". This volume explores the popularity and cultural relevance of ""South Park"" and its place as an artistically and politically worthy satire. Among the topics explored are the show's parody of the processes of manufacturing political consent; its treatments of Shakespeare's plays; the interrogation of anti-tobacco legislation; and the show's creators' seemingly irreverent and dismissive treatment of environmentalism.