‘Charlie Kirk Show’ Producer Defends ‘South Park,’ Says Kirk Would Want People to Keep Watching His Parody
According to those closest to him, the last thing that Charlie Kirk would want after his tragic death would be for Eric Cartman to stop masterdebating.
On September 10th, a gunman at Utah Valley University murdered Kirk while he was debating attendees on the topic of gun violence at one of his usual campus events. Almost immediately after graphic videos of the slaying went viral, many of Kirk’s far-right supporters accused South Park and its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone of inspiring the shocking attack through their parody of Kirk in the South Park episode “Got a Nut” a month prior. Comedy Central quickly pulled all reruns of “Got a Nut” from the upcoming cable schedule, and, yesterday, with the eyes of the right-wing world upon them, Parker and Stone suddenly postponed the planned new episode of South Park until next week.
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Lost in all the noise and finger-pointing is the fact that Kirk, himself, publicly praised “Got a Nut” and Cartman’s impression of him, even proudly changing his Twitter profile picture to the image of Cartman debating college kids. Now, as some of Kirk’s followers continue to call for the government to hold Parker and Stone accountable for his murder, Charlie Kirk Show executive producer Andrew Kolvet is urging Kirk’s mourners to follow the late right-wing activist’s lead and simply laugh it off.
When Kirk first learned that he would become South Park’s latest parody target in the week leading up to “Got a Nut,” he immediately and publicly leaned into the joke, both by changing his profile picture and by speaking to Fox News about how he was proud to be satirized by the show as a longtime South Park fan. Kirk called the series an “equal opportunity offender,” saying that the episode “kind of goes to show the cultural impact and the resonance that our movement has been able to achieve. I look at this as a badge of honor.”
Then, after “Got a Nut” aired, Kirk live-streamed himself watching the episode and reacting to the scenes in which Cartman, styled with Kirk’s signature haircut, debates left-leaning female college students on subjects like abortion. Kirk specifically praised how South Park writers clearly did their due diligence on his masterdebate style, as Cartman repeated many of Kirk’s actual talking points on the issue of abortion word-for-word.
Now, as South Park fans fear that the government crackdown on comedians who defy the right-wing narrative about Kirk’s murder will spell doom for the series, even Kirk’s colleagues are urging Paramount to let Matt and Trey cook.
