For comics who define themselves as rattling status quo cages the rapid reversal of social liberalism presents some challenges

~ Rob Ray ~

For many years, Bill Burr has been one of the most recognisable and well-liked performers on the US comedy circuit, specialising in “Bostonian common sense” observational humour with a confrontational (and thus often controversialist) theme. 

In recent years this was, generally, more enjoyed by the right, who lapped up what had been an expanding cloud of garrulous anti-woke takes culminating in the soullessly inert film outing of Old Dadsin 2023. Having a genuinely successful everyman-brand comic poking at their favourite loose-tooth topic was considered an industry win on par with Dave Chappelle’s embrace of transphobia back in 2021.

But this year has seen a switchback. While he’ll almost certainly keep banging away at tired anti-feminist tropes, as has been his wont for many years, Burr has also completely outraged the right by expressing a baseline of class consciousness. 

When this most recent turn began is easy to pinpoint. In the wake of December’s Luigi Moment, he made it very clear whose side he was on across multiple platforms and interviewers, to hilarious effect as his hosts visibly cringed. 

“Free Luigi” he bellows at Jimmy Kimmel, and as the host tries to bat it away you can see the cogs turning. This is a line that doesn’t just draw a laugh, it completely wrongfoots Establishment media types, causing those moments of chaotic scrambling that he has thrived on (content warning for that Philly gig) throughout his career.

Since that lightbulb moment we’ve seen him start throwing down on billionaires and the right in a way that, to be fair, does reflect some of his persona from back in the day but which has, like South Park (which I’ll get to) been shocking to what was once a “Bill tells it how it is and libs can’t cope” right-wing crowd.

Burr himself has spoken about the level of backlash and how the trad media, in particular, reacted to his new direction, noting of CNN’s coverage: 

“How fucking gross was that? Those fucking assholes on CNN sat around acting like they actually were confused or surprised by the reaction that people don’t like CEOs and then them sitting there like they were gonna get down to the bottom of it. 

“It’s like, these CEOs are behaving the way they are because guys like you are not doing your job because you’re not journalists. Not CNN, or Fox. You’re sucking the corporate cock, and you’re looking the other way, and then when an athlete says something or a soap opera star Tweets something, or some guy is hoarding hand sanitiser in their fucking garage you act like that’s the reason the country’s going to shit.” 

Not a bad take there sweary Chomsky, you only missed out that they very much are journalists of the mainstream variety – systemically so. It may not be in any written job description that they’re there to frame and protect the status quo, whatever it may be, but as Noam himself once told Andrew Marr: “If you believed in something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

In recent days, Burr has expressed surprise at how the Republican faithful have been behaving since he started openly including class content in his work, with prominent talking head Ben Shapiro (an unwittingly funny man on occasion) having declared him woke, and MAGA diehards mailing racist pictures to him and his wife. 

While continuing to be disparaging about left opportunism (and whilst I’m with him on that, it’s notable that he hasn’t stopped being a dick about women or performing for Saudi royals), Burr has quite clearly decided to lean in on “fuck the lot of them.” There’s an element in this of a fellow, used to the relatively tame denunciations of lefties, finally learning “the difference” when it comes to repressive tactics used by an empowered right.

Which brings us to South Park.

Parker’s pen is sharp, but not that sharp

At the time of writing there have been three episodes of the new Series 27 – and what a political uproar they’ve caused, presenting a startling volte face on the show’s positioning during the Biden era. 

Episode one has an almost self-critiquing feel in the form of Cartman’s existential crisis, as he nominally gets everything he’s been asking for, taking away his position as the school’s resident edgelord. When everyone is expected to be an obnoxious bigot cynically using Jesus as cover for their behaviour how can he maintain his uniqueness? 

A big deal was made about their portrayal of Trump in this episode, framed as an insultingly phoned-in cut and paste of their Saddam Hussein character, and the switch by PC Principal from politically correct to power Christian is suitably on the nose about people falling into line with a new status quo. The follow-up episodes however are in many ways more interesting.

South Park’s portrayals of non-whites have always felt like their most “have your cake and eat it” setup, offering a knowing wink for liberals (the black child is called Token Tolkein, haa) and racism played for surrealism in ways that aim to satisfy both subtext and text-only audiences.

But writer-director Trey Parker’s sense of unease about the treatment of Latin Americans in ‘Got A Nut’ is made clear (along with his specific disdain for Kristi Noem) in ICE’s portrayal as a completely brainless entity, recruiting the lowest of the low to charge around picking up anyone who’s the wrong shade of brown regardless of how angelic they might be. 

For a man whose longtime political position has been a sort of wishy-washy libertarian-inflected centre-rightism (personified in Season 7s ‘I’m A Little Bit Country’ where he suggests America needs left to say one thing while right does the necessary) it pitches as a call for more discernment.

This has always been the weakening element of Parker and Stone’s contrarian streak, which they have leaned on for decades now as their ticket to immunity from criticism. It’s likely responsible for taking a bit of the sting (thus far, with the exception of Noem) out of their parodying of the Republicans even while they remain far more viscerally brutal than most liberal critics (who would not, for example, be likely to present JD Vance as a sort of boggle-eyed Igor parody of Tattoo from Fantasy Island). While their fans may harp on about them going after everyone equally it’s not really true  – they aren’t solely contrarian. Nor could they be. Nothing is completely apolitical, let alone South Park. 

They were clearly happier and more inventive going after the demon woke than they are going after Trump and co, similar to Burr when presenting himself as “beyond” left and right these days (when in reality he just has a not uncommon mishmash of ideas from both). In each case their satire ultimately roots itself in a Blunt Blue-Collar Bloke identity politics that is, broadly, more comfortable with the right’s social traditionalism than the perceived strangeness of progressivism.  

But contrarianism has its demands, one being that the dominant force in society is always the ultimate target. So the likes of Parker and Burr are having to deal with a rapid polarity change taking them out of their usual comfort zones which will, for perhaps the first time, actively and even dangerously challenge their willingness to commit to the bit.

It’s not just about funnymen

Burr and South Park are perhaps the most prominent comic presences in this position, but they are reflections of a far larger question mark for both their industry and society more generally. 

For the last 30 or so years in the US (and UK) the status quo has tended towards progressive values, meaning the idea of rebellion from the right had currency, which made the whole tweedy, miserable business seem a bit more sexy. And it was actually relatively easy to be a contrarian against liberal pressure – perhaps you didn’t get invited to all the parties. The far-right, from Trump himself to Farage now, have capitalised on that notion.

But with Trump, and indeed Starmer’s Reform-chasing Labour, rightist repression is now back in the mainstream, from Jenrick to Cooper, and attacking people’s hard-won freedoms. As predicted by the anarchists and our fellow travellers, the beneficiaries of this social shift are quite willing to be far more aggressive than our “intolerance of intolerance.” They are just intolerant, violently so.

But the good news, I suspect, is that while red-faced John Bulls and yeehaw plastic-cowboy Texans are still talking about themselves as rebels they’re already behind the cultural times. They’re in power. The politicians, the media, and most of the money revolves around their ideals. 

You can’t be a rebel when you have all that.