“Why aren’t you guys in a gulag somewhere, shackled down in a basement?”
That’s the question Jimmy Kimmel posed to the co-creators of “South Park,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday evening. The late-night host was, of course, alluding to the animated series’ relentless mockery of President Trump, including repeatedly depicting him in the nude with a micropenis.
“We hide behind cartoons,” cracked Parker.
Kimmel has some skin in the game, having been the target of the Trump’s — and the Trump-aligned FCC’s — censorship on a number of occasions, from his weeks off the air after the MAGA crowd twisted and distorted one of his jokes about the right-wing reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk, to the recent uproar by Trump and Co. after they again deliberately reinterpreted a joke he’d made about Trump dozing off in meetings to be about something far more grim, with both Trump and Melania publicly calling for Kimmel’s firing.
The embattled host seemed particularly interested in how Parker and Stone have chosen to depict Vice President JD Vance on “South Park,” transforming him into a confused version of the character Tattoo from “Fantasy Island,” played by the late Hervé Villechaize.
