It's very long, and seems to be stuffed with a copy of wikipedia, I ain't reading all that. What's that clause? Like Lucas had with Star Wars, they kept the monetization rights for some (at the time) dumb looking stuff, and they struck gold with it?
Looks to be (1269 words into the article according to wc):
> [Parker and Stone]’s lawyer, Kevin Morris, insisted that any South Park revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel would go into the pot for calculating the men’s share of back-end profits.
Though that might be a precursor to enabling this (400 words later):
> With negotiating leverage, Parker and Stone agreed to a 4-year $75 million deal and, separately, a 50/50 cut of advertising revenue for any digital property…in perpetuity.
They would get profit sharing for any income that didn’t come from airing on Comedy Central. This was in 1997 before online streaming was really a thing
it is disappointing and almost surprising that this is not the default. not doing this is how creators are get taken advantage of.
more futuristic, i think any profit that is not reinvested into the business, that is, any profit that the owners decide to keep for themselves should be shared in some form with all employees, like a tax.
I'm tied and bored, and read the whole thing. The sponsor is an AI service provider - did I get that right? So, is the article AI generated? It certainly has all the hall marks.
“A cut of revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel” went from “meaningless” to “huge significance” to “boner-inducing” arguably the greatest clause ever in TV contract history…at a minimum, it’s one of the most improbable all things considered.
South park is one of my favourite shows. I think that matt and trey aren't the usual billionaires but it would still be cool if they actually donate some of that money since they feel like the guys who don't need a billion dollars and feel humble imo.
One of the downsides of people knowing you have money is everyone on earth will judge you for what you do with it. I say let them enjoy it. If you must pressure someone to donate, pressure one of the "usual billionaires" who's funding their torment nexus with it.
There is no human alive who can ethically enjoy a billion dollars. Give them each a hundred million and say, you've hit your cap, everything else goes towards the public good.
A hundred million dollars buys you a life of comfort and luxury. Anyone with a billion has too much influence, imo.
The South Park owners don't have a billion dollars in liquid wealth each. They have ownership of south park, which is worth billions.
If you make them cut their assets down to $100 million each then they don't own South Park. And someone else gets to tell them what to write. Or they retire.
The capital gains tax could be 90%+ on any gains over $10m (and 99% over $100m), so they can still sell out, but it would cap liquid wealth at $100m dollars. However, they would still have a billion dollars of ownership, and the societal power that comes with being a billionaire, as they can leverage those assets to great effect without selling them. (As Elon Musk didn't actually pay $44b for Twitter.)
So I wonder if the government could levy a stock tax, in which every public stock was diluted by 1% per year, with non-voting stock going into a sovereign wealth fund. This would make for a gradual transition of companies from capitalist-owned to public-owned.
Yeah, the things is, ownership isn't a natural concept. It's just a social construct. Without that, you own what's in your stomach, what you can hold in your hands and what you can sit on, until the moment you walk away.
I believe that the best amount of processes for revoking ownership not zero. Revoking not as in "we take n money from you because...", but as in "we stop respecting any of your accumulated ownership rights, but you are free to accumulate new ones". A reset like the one called bankruptcy, just for positives.
Currently, in countries that do have the death sentence, ownership is even more untouchable than life. A (hypothetical..) rich person on death row you could still write their will and it would be respected. People will argue "don't punish the children!", but where's the difference really, between "don't gamble it all away, for the sake of your children" and "don't end up on death row, for the sake of your children"? Apparently, ownership is more sacred than life itself and I find that quite hard to stomach.
Note that I'm not advocating for a world where it's common for rich persons to get stripped whenever the masses get a little envious, or whenever redistribution seems convenient. Just for ac world where there is some last resort process defined and accepted that's less bloody than an all-out revolution. Ancient Rome had certain forms of exilation that went with complete property forfeitment as punishment (in reality: as the price for losing a power struggle I guess)
hardly, but there's a cut off point somewhere where additional earnings do so very little but would be life changing if fragmented into the hands of many.
Sure you can. I have no problem with billionaires as long as they are enjoying their money without hurting people in the process. Having the money doesn’t mean you actively abuse your influence.
But once you have that kind of fuck off money and insist on abusing your power, or kowtowing to other people to get more power, and other BS, then you are an evil asshole. There’s a good reason why Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk etc rub people the wrong way. It’s not their wealth.
As much I loved this show growing up, an interesting thing about South Park is that they essentially defined the alt right (in the sense of a disenfranchised young man, often lashing out at marginalized groups and political correctness etc). Am I wrong or did there use to be an article called “South Park conservative” that basically described what eventually became “alt-right”?
You aren’t wrong that there is/was a group of people that consider themselves South Park Conservative but the creators reject the notion that South Park is specifically liberal or conservative, because their intent is to parody any people they can. The creators dislike political correctness but they also dislike the forceful nature of conservatives applying their beliefs on other people. Read the South Park wikipedia page, it explains it pretty well.
Insinuating that South Park conservatives evolved into the alt-right is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Trey and Matt didn’t invent disliking political correctness.
I concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it.
For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.
I consider myself liberal on most issues - strong social safety, universal healthcare , pro vax, strong separation between church and state, and hate the demonization of other.
I as a Black guy was also put off by the forced indoctrination that BigTech did post 2020 (when I worked there) with all of the “ally ship”, “DEI” crap I had to endure. I just wanted to do my job, get my money, get my RSUs and bounce after 4 years.
I too believe in universal healthcare and welfare social nets to catch people who fall, but think we've focussed too much on "feelings" over facts or people wanting to score "social justice" points that don't do anything to fix the ills of society.
Here's another example of political correctness going too far, this time related to tech.
If the legal language mandates an equal split between men and women, where could that possibly leave non-binary people, other than without representation, right?
I’m curious especially as a black guy, why this wouldn’t land for you. Imagine a legal body obligated to be composed of equal representation, racially, that explicitly requires white, brown, red, and yellow members - but doesn’t mention black.
That hardly sounds fair, does it? So why deride efforts to institutionalize inclusivity, integration, and equal representation as ‘crazy?’
It was a “policy” decision that had nothing to do with the law.
I would think it was just as crazy if the committee had language around they must have an equal number of Black and White members and if one person was a biracial …
If they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?
What happens in the case where they want equal representation if my mom had a Black father and White mother and my dad had an Hispanic father and Japanese mother?
But from a real politick angle, this was dumb and cringy knowing the mood of the majority of Americans. The job is to win elections. Bill Clinton invented the “Sister Souljah” moment and Obama followed suit by distancing himself from the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson wing of the party.
A lot of moderate Democrats and Republicans who have no issue respecting anyone for whatever life they decide to live, find that the left has gone too far.
As much as I distrust the police and the entire justice system for instance, I thought the phrase “defund the police” went too far and I understood the point they were making underneath.
It’s the same with enforced (he/him) labels on everyone and having to be really sure you aren’t accused of being some type of “ist” because you only speak in “heteronormative terms”.
If (hypothetical) you want to call out your preferred pronouns, go for it and I’ll respect them.
“This has gone too far” is the war cry of people enforcing that they refuse to educate themselves on the real meaning of the phrases and come to the table for discussion. It is a cop out and you will look back and think “why was I so unreasonable they weren’t asking for much”.
It is a sign that you aren’t really resistant to the ideas but looking for a way to resist because it’s change.
> if they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?
This is the entire problem with the “this has gone too far” crowd. You’re making up hypotheticals and claiming them as active truths. In your situation it’s pretty clear humans are capable of forming committee's relevant to the topic. You don’t have to over apply policy to make it fair. Furthermore, most of these types of committees are probably and have been historically staffed by white men. Why do they get a double standard?
Was anyone actually negatively affected by DEI policies? No. You just had a bunch of handwringing from “this is too far people” and executive leadership teams. No one has actually any proof of these so called negatives though. So much so they have black people saying “let the white man handle it again”.
The primary job of a politician and political committee is to win elections and accept facts on the ground. Yes the indoctrination went too far that I found at BigTech when they had “allies” and making sure that I wouldn’t be offended by “micro aggressions”.
> In your situation it’s pretty clear humans are capable of forming committee's relevant to the topic
You mean the same humans who are fighting to allow biological men in women’s sports?
The midsize company in the same vertical I work for now (cloud consulting) focuses almost purely on how much money we made, this is how it affects your bonus and this is what you can do to increase our profits - no ally ship, no “celebrating diversity” (for people who haven’t been keeping up, I’m black), no “you must label your profile with your preferred pronouns” nonsense. I go to work to collect a check. It’s not a social mission. I don’t go to talk about systemic racism, police brutality, etc.
But they do have Juneteenth as a company holiday, offer classes and reimbursements for our LatAm employees to become better English speakers because it’s a requirement to be promoted to the higher level positions that are customer facing and offer English speakers the chance to take Spanish classes (I’m currently around an A2 proficiency).
DEI is harming people because of the silly “right speech” like not saying “pow wow” or “war room” turns people off and has them voting for politicians that don’t serve your interest and actively harm you.
How the heck did Democrats go so far that even Hispanics Americans are increasingly voting Republican?
I really don’t give a shit if women are in mens sports or if men are in women sports.
That issue affects less than 1% of people. And was used by to rile you up to make you think an entire nation cared about very few incidents across the Us. Can you name one trans-athlete case that affected your athletic ability and career?
DEI didn’t negatively affect you. You just wanted to jump on the anti-woke train. How about you have life so good that you have nothing better to do than get angry at passive policies that were barely enforced and didn’t even affect you.
I am still waiting for the evidence of the crimes committed against people through DEI policies. Where are the victims? There are none because you drink the kool-aid rather than getting informed.
People are going to still correct your speech. That was happening before DEI policies. In fact I think you’re conflating DEI with political correctness.
Again DEI policies weren’t implemented to the extreme you are claiming to have experienced. They were barely implemented before being rolled back.
> no ally ship, no “celebrating diversity” (for people who haven’t been keeping up, I’m black), no “you must label your profile with your preferred pronouns” nonsense.
None of those things you listed are either DEI policies or negatives either. They are corporate programs, none specified in the frameworks of DEI. At worst they are perhaps a little annoying.
It wasn’t just hispanics that threw the election it was hispanics and blacks. Again you’re uninformed and looking to blame some other group of people. Classic American.
> That issue affects less than 1% of people. And was used by to rile you up to make you think an entire nation cared about very few incidents across the Us.
Well, if you really want to go down the road of not caring about issues that only affect 1% of the people in the US, the percentage of people who identify as trans or non binary is around 2%. That’s not a road I’m willing to go down.
> Can you name one trans-athlete case that affected your athletic ability and career?
On the same note, if I should only care about issues that affect me as a decently high earning individual, who is 50 and whose wife is also 50 with grown kids, that means I shouldn’t care about reproductive rights, universal healthcare, a social safety net, affordable higher education…
As much as people threaten to leave the US if things go south, I actually have an exit plan. We are going to start spending a few months in Costa Rica every year starting next year and have looked at becoming permanent residence. My Spanish is around A2 proficiency now.
We’ve done the digital nomad thing domestically for a year before. We aren’t new to it. It’s kid about me.
> DEI didn’t negatively affect you. You just wanted to jump on the anti-woke train. How about you have life so good that you have nothing better to do than get angry at passive policies that were barely enforced and didn’t even affect you.
No matter how good my life is (and it is very good), I worried all of the time about my 6 foot 2 step son getting harassed by the police because he didn’t look like he belong in the suburbs we lived in (where I by myself made over twice the median household because I was working remotely for BigTech) that was a famous sun down town as recently as the mid 80s.
Yeah I lived here until 2 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0). We never had an issue. But let’s just say when I walked into the high school to pick my son up, they knew exactly who he was because he was only one of three black guys in the entire school.
> I am still waiting for the evidence of the crimes committed against people through DEI policies. Where are the victims? There are none because you drink the kool-aid rather than getting informed.
The victims right now are the entire country because moderate Americans were so turned off they voted before Trump.
> People are going to still correct your speech. That was happening before DEI policies. In fact I think you’re conflating DEI with political correctness.
It was the corporate enforced DEI mandates that got you chastised if you said “you guys” to a mixed group of people (even though women used the term too) and said that you had to put your preferred pronouns on your profile.
Like I said, at my current company the entire focus of the quarterly all hands is the business and how they make money and how it affects my money. That’s all I have ever cared about when I have gone to work for 10 jobs over 30 years.
> It wasn’t just hispanics that threw the election it was hispanics and blacks. Again you’re uninformed and looking to blame some other group of people. Classic American.
I’m not blaming Hispanics, I’m blaming policies and speech by Democrats who have made the democratic brand toxic.
LOL the only people that made DEI toxic was people like you who over apply and make up hypotheticals about the sky falling.
You have no hard data on this toxicity or victims of DEI because it’s coming from the side criticizing it. The pendulum will soon swing the other way soon.
Being against DEI policies because you don’t like all non-occurring hypotheticals and random social causes you can tie to it is the exact thing you’re complaining about “governing by feelings” not policies. These policies hurt your feelings.
The fact that you’re not willing to say “okay this was fair about the intent of DEI however we should work to improve these parts” is proof your understanding is shallow and uneducated on the topic.
You think DEI is dead but we will keep pushing for it and implementing it in other ways, other policies. Renamed, a new beast. It’s not going to stop because a large group of people can act like toddlers about it.
> It was the corporate enforced DEI mandates that got you chastised if you said “you guys” to a mixed group of people
This wasn’t the federal policy though. That is political correctness. So you’re wrong in saying it is Democrats fault. They didn’t design a policy that said “police speech” in the office. There may be extremists in Democrats and Republicans that take things to far, none of them were the people at the federal level or at the DNC. To blame the entire group of people for that is again looking to place blame on emotionally.
Which makes sense, most people haven’t read the constitution why would they read the actual text in the DEI effort.
You keep missing the point and it’s the reason that liberals are out in the wilderness.
Look up Clinton and Sister Soulja and what happened. He was a good enough politician to know that he had to distance himself from policies that the middle found offensive to win elections.
The first job is to get elected. We see the same now with what’s happening in California. Texas is gerrymandering the hell out of Texas. But Newsome is getting push back when he is trying to do the same. Republicans know how to win elections. Democrats are high on “ideals”.
Texas gerrymandering won’t even help them in the long run. Again you are missing the point. The pendulum will just swing back twice as hard. Whether Republicans gerrymander an already deeply red state or not. Newsom is getting push back as is Hochul, so what? Doesn’t seem to be actually stopping anything.
I think you’re smoking something if you think Democrats are high on ideals. There is no democracy if you gerrymander out your opponent. That’s why maps are redrawn every 10 years. So Republicans aren’t winning elections for democracy or to shove it Democrats. They’re gerrymandering to remove your right to even have a choice or a democracy. You’re stuck knee deep in a culture war designed to keep you too preoccupied to see this.
Keep kicking and screaming about social posturing issues that go no where.
Texas has been going blue now any day now for 30 years. A deeply red state still had blue districts that could turn the house blue. Are you suggesting that we just turn the other cheek?
Gerrymandering is easy for Republicans since Democrats cluster in cities while Republicans are in rural areas and the burbs.
Democrats and leftists are high on ideals not understanding that this country has never cared about ethics or ideals. Despite what Michelle Obama says, this exactly who we are. It’s who we have been since slavery, Jim Crow laws that my still living parents grew up in, the Willie Horton ads, and the “Hatishs are eating your pets”.
Social postering hasn’t gone anywhere. In 2025, my 6 foot 2 son is still going to be looked at with suspicion by the police for living in a neighborhood “he doesn’t belong”. Even though he’s lived in the upper class burbs all of his life.
It’s Democrats focus on ideals that keeps them in the wilderness. They lost every single swing state last year. Your solution is just to do more of the same.
I never suggested doing more of the same. Democrats lost swing states not because of your “they only govern on vibes” bs you keep trying to push. They lost them because low information voters make up most of those states.
People just vote which ever way the economic wind blows. Trump was able to lie to a lot of people and they ate it up. That will cause the pendulum to swing back. Your suggestions about some Democrat legacy of not getting it right when they’ve mostly kept power in the last 40 years is a romanticization of these times and how you think the rest of the country operates.
It’s Republican focus on taking advantage of the lower classes that keep them in the wilderness. That’s why they’ve lost elections in previous years. Your suggestion is to just do more of the same.
Your insistence that Democrats need to just do the things Republicans means that there would be no difference between political parties.
Perhaps one is nicer than the other, but it doesn’t mean that people want meaner people governing over them. My mother votes Red every time because she’s a low information voter and believes in the Republican party because thats how she’s lived her whole life. It has nothing to do with Republicans being “clever” and willing to say “retard”.
And once again, you aren’t focused on dealing with the facts on the ground as they exist. You can blame low information voters or anything else. But you don’t win elections by turning a blind eye to reality.
Conservatives love the fact that Democrats won’t fight dirty and are letting states like Florida and Texas run roughshod over them and still think they are in the 60s where MLK told people if they let the police beat them long enough and march “peacefully” it will change hearts and minds. What did BLM change? What did “going high while they go low” change?
But the DNC is focused on having equal representation of males and females and making sure the right pronouns are on a committee
> But the DNC is focused on having equal representation of males and females and making sure the right pronouns are on a committee
No they did not. DEI was one policy out of many that went through with Dems during the last admin if you think that’s all Democrats are focusing on you have drunk the Trump-brand-koolaid and have no good faith arguments here.
As for BLM it changed a A LOT. Again you are demonstrating lack of evidence and understanding of those events. I’m sure you stayed inside and criticized the people protesting. I marched during that time in Nyc. And we accomplished the following:
- Repeal 50A - a law that protected police officers at the state level from taking any legal repercussions for their actions
- Forced NYPD to stop using stop and frisk plain clothes units
- made police choking and strangleholds illegal
- force Nypd to stop using kettle tactics
- Removed the NYPD from school security duty
- spread awareness and helped change the narrative about violent police corruption
BLM was such a big deal that people like you scramble to list any benefits. This is your lack of knowledge and understanding of people that keeps you pushing for more violence. The type of cognitive dissonance that makes you say “BLM was nothing, I hated it” when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
And since your entire argument is based around some generalization and inability to separate Potus admin from a political party. And political party from voters, I do not see any reason to continue this discussion based on false bad faith generalized premises.
> While comparatively fewer stops occurred during the de Blasio administration – nearly 135,000 – enormous racial disparities have persisted every year. In 2022, the first year of the Adams administration, the NYPD made over 15,000 stops, reversing the downward trend of stops occurring during the de Blasio years. In 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, the NYPD made over 25,000 stops, a fifty percent increase from 2023 and the largest number of stops since 2014
A comedy show is just a comedy show. We're all responsible for who we become. If some purposefully terrible animated pixels inspire me to be a disgusting person, that's on me. If I play a shooting game and end up hurting someone, that's on me too (or my parents, if I'm young!). And if I spend too much time on HN, thinking AI is garbage, and then lose my job because I fell behind, that's also on me! (As well as starting to write my own comedy here on HN, knowing exactly what I'm getting into!)
> If something in the water makes a million people into disgusting mass shooters, we should look into it
You're using a completely made-up extreme example to make your point, but we're surrounded by real-world examples of free speech being heavily impacted. We don't need to invent scenarios.
The “alt-right” have always been part of America or have you never heard of Jim Crow and segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”?
> They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.
Eh, I wouldn't say that. Nor would I say they were really taking a stand on climate change in the first place. They just thought it would be funny to have Al Gore tilting at windmills (and indeed it was), and then thought it would be funny to have him proven right (and indeed it was). One of the things I appreciate about Trey and Matt is that they do what they think is funny first and foremost, rather than try to make the show a mouthpiece for their beliefs as many creators do.
