‘South Park’ Fans Surprised At How Comedy Central Has Been Letting the F-Bombs Slide

In retrospect, it was silly that any cable TV channel that aired TV-MA comedy shows ever censored the bad words that nearly everybody uses and hears nearly every day. After all, what’s the big deal? It doesn’t hurt anybody!

Today’s younger generation of South Park fans have no idea that, long before every child received a smartphone and a tablet before they graduated from elementary school, the show was once the focal point of a pro-censorship, anti-obscenity “won’t somebody please think of the children?” crusade waged by the parents’ groups whose cultural power peaked and quickly waned in the 1990s. Back during the first few years of South Park, concerned conservatives quaintly declared that crass, cuss-filled cartoons would be the downfall of decency and morality in American culture, only for those same parents to vote for Donald “Saddam Hussein” Trump in three consecutive presidential elections years later.

But for those of us who remember a time when cell phones had antennas and the threat of Christian moms’ moral indignation struck fear into the hearts of every network executive, it feels strange to turn on the TV, switch to Comedy Central and hear Cartman, Randy, Stan and Trump all dropping uncensored f-bombs like they’re Bill Clinton in a B-52 over Yugoslavia. In a recent Reddit thread, one South Park fan asked whether Comedy Central made a mistake in airing the most recent episode in Season 27, “Wok Is Dead,” with all the four-letter words left un-bleeped.

As it turns out, shows airing on cable don’t have to censor their swear words — and there’s nothing Mothers Against Canada can do to change that.

In their ironically titled post, “Did Someone at Comedy Central Fu*k Up Last Night?” user Garpocalypse wrote, “Just want to preface this by saying that unless there’s a new season i dont usually watch south park on comedy central anymore. I pretty much stick to south park studios for the uncensored versions of all but the earliest episodes.”

“Which is why i was REALLY surprised last night that the 10:00pm episode had nonstop uncensored F bombs. All without the courtesy of a counter in the lower part of the screen too,” they continued. “Did i fall asleep for the last 20 years? When did cable tv change?” Then, for the sake of clarity, Garpocalypse closed with, “'F Bomb' means fuck by the way.”

Predictably, the South Park subreddit mostly declined to actually answer Garpocalypse’s question about whether or not the airing of uncensored new episodes was a massive mistake made by Comedy Central, or if the rules changed since the days when groups like the Parents Television Council would try to get South Park get taken off the air, even in its censored version.

But the truth is, under federal laws and FCC regulations, for late-night comedy shows airing on cable, it’s actually never been illegal to say the “F Bomb” on television during South Park’s run — at least, not in certain circumstances. The FCC differentiates objectionable broadcast material into three categories: obscene content, indecent content and profane content, and the use of an uncensored “fuck” could be considered either obscene or profane given the context of the curse word.

If South Park were to use the word “fuck” when describing a sex act, that would be considered obscene and it would be illegal to broadcast uncensored at any hour of the day. However, if the “fuck” isn't sexual, then it’s simply profane, and it’s perfectly legal and permissible to use on cable — in fact, you can even drop a “fuck” on broadcast TV, so long as it’s not between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Nevertheless, during the 1990s and early 2000s, networks that aired mature content with four-letter words usually censored every f-bomb anyways, given the political power that the pearl-clutching parents’ groups still held at the time and the risk of losing advertisers due to public outcry. But now that we have an entire generation of kids who have been watching violent, sexual and profanity-laden content on the internet uncensored and unsupervised since they learned how to unlock an iPad, the P.T.C. and the M.A.C. have lost their will to go after every single swear on TV, and, once the lights go out, it’s open season on curse words.

So Kyle’s mom was a bitch for nothing.