CARTMAN’S 9/11 SHOCKER

SOUTH PARK TAKES ON THE TRUTH MOVEMENT
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
November 2006 (re-posted January 1 2007)

The crush of news on 9/11 truth wing nuts could not forever escape their due lampooning by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and the crass kids of South Park, who took the movement on in an episode aired October 11 2006. Bitingly satirical as always, the Truth Movement thus far seen was embodied by the portly, obnoxious, and borderline evil Eric Cartman. His initial crusade, dismissed by his friends as retarded, blamed Bush and the Jew-run corporations for the attack. But after closer investigation, Cartman presented for show and tell a “shocking powerpoint report on the truth… behind the 9/11 attacks,” pointing the finger squarely at his friend Kyle “who stood the most to gain from 9/11 […] who was nowhere to be found the morning the towers fell […] who dropped a deuce in the urinal.”

Screenshot: Cartman delving into the Pentagon honeypot for his “shocking powerpoint report”

Cartman was able to succinctly sum up the Frustrating Fraud: “we were told the Pentagon was hit by a hijacked plane as well. But now look at this photo of the Pentagon. The hole is not nearly big enough. And if a plane hit it, where’s the rest of the plane?” To make it funny enough for South Park, they had to change not one bit of the ridiculous charges, just boil them down and have Cartman say them.

The final conclusion of the episode revealed that the Bush administration itself was pushing the conspiracy theory to keep the world scared of them and to seem in control of the situation, which of course they weren’t. Investigator Mr. Hardly, summing up the case cracked by his nitwit sons, said “all the 9/11 conspiracy websites are run by the government. The 9/11 conspiracy is a government conspiracy.” Indeed, a play-acted activist with 9/11 Truth.org explained the whole “false flag” operation to Stan and Kyle before all three were arrested and taken to the Oval Office. With his whole cabinet standing behind him, Bush insisted on taking the blame, and to keep their role in 9/11 secret, “killed” the Truther in front of the kids (“just one more leak to fix”). Bush then bragged of the plot by his “all knowing and all powerful” cabal, summing up their reasons with evil genius zest: control of "the American sheeple" to get more war, oil, and money. To convince the kids, the President elaborated on the mechanics of the attack:

“Quite simple to pull off really. All I had to do was have explosives planted in the base of the towers, then on 9/11 we pretended like four planes were being hijacked when really we just re-routed them to Pennsylvania then flew two military jets into the World Trade Center filled with more explosives and then shot down all the witnesses on Flight 93 with and F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a cruise missile. It was only the world’s most intricate and flawlessly executed plan ever… ever.”

The episode’s allegation, while meant as satire to deflate the sense of purpose driving the Truthers, may be nearer the truth than Parker and Stone realize. Whatever its intentions, the episode proved that the movement had somehow been devolved to the point that elementary school kids made of a few bits of digitized construction paper could tear it to shreds with satire – entwined no less with the mystery of the urinal turd. Not a promising omen for our long-term prospects.

When finally the jig was up, the cartoon Bush admitted to Stan and Kyle he didn’t carry out the attack, but “one fourth of the population is retarded. If they want to believe we control everything with intricate plans, why not let them?” It’s a good point; what kind of government hatches such convoluted plans to achieve their objectives? That would be silly. In this case it may be that they hatched a deceptively simple plan to get those planes flown in as close to the official story as possible – and encouraged the raising of row upon row of intricate straw men to conceal the real deal. The red herrings distractions and honeypot traps planted after and, more tellingly, before the attack, are themselves evidence that the truth is being covered up; the alleged (and possibly real) government conspiracy to create the cartoonish 9/11 conspiracy is one of concealment and misdirection, which in turn is evidence of the government’s heavy-as-lead original 9/11 conspiracy – it was at best allowed and at worst staged.

And to avoid any troubles with Comedy Central, let me take this opportunity to state that this episode is hilarious and should be purchased for top dollar from the website or whatever. I've never seen toilet humor come across so well as via Mr. Mackey over the PA. And I'd also like to note the possible relevance a turd in the urinal conspiracy theme that keeps coming up as a distraction in the episode. Some have taken this as an allegory for the crap conspiracy theories put in the space reserved for... piss ones? Anyway, the janitor tasked with cleaning up the mess is a "Mr. Venezuela," which is funny considering Jimmy Walter's ill-advised sojourn to Venezuela to urge Hugo Chavez to open a 9/11 International Inquiry to prove, among other things, Walter's belief in the Frustrating Fraud. It's not clear what happened down there in Spring '06, but I haven't heard of any such urinal scrubbing.