Paris Hilton says South Park‘s 2004 parody made her sick
In her new book Paris: A Memoir, Paris Hilton shares what she really thought of South Park's parody and P!nk's "Stupid Girls"
Aux News South Park
Paris Hilton was an easy pop culture punching bag in the early aughts. She became the poster child for shallow socialites, an icon of the excesses of wealth, and a case study (however unwillingly) for the sex-tape-to-mega-fame pipeline. She was also often at the center of a deeply misogynistic tabloid culture Whatever one might think of her, her persona, or her politics (or lack thereof), she was the subject of a lot of cruelty in that era, as she details in her new book Paris: The Memoir (via The Hollywood Reporter).
One recollection in the book details the 2004 South Park parody about her, “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset.” She writes, “I’m the title character, but they also apply that epithet to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Tara Reid, and all the little girls who were fans, which upset me more than anything ugly they could say about me. It also upset me that the episode graphically portrays [my dog] Tinkerbell being shot and killed. The thought of that made me sick. I’ve been involved in some pretty edgy media, but I don’t even know where something like that comes from.”
Hilton claimed not to have seen the episode at an event, which apparently bothered Matt Stone (whom she had met prior to the episode airing alongside South Park co-creator Trey Parker at a party, where she “found them cool and interesting”). “When a journalist told Matt about my muted red-carpet response, he said, ‘That shows how fucked up she is,’” Hilton recalls. “My not wanting to watch his cartoon about my dog being shot and me coughing up ejaculate—that’s evidence of how fucked up I am.”
South Park was far from the only Paris parody in those days. Hilton also wrote about P!nk’s 2006 track “Stupid Girls,” which referenced the Simple Life star in its video. Hilton praises the “brilliant” artist, but lamented, “When everyone was buzzing about a sex tape of a certain teenage girl from a soon-to-be-hit TV show—a girl who said emphatically over and over that she did not want the tape out there—the takeaway was ‘Stupid Girl.’ The whole video is a not-at-all-subtle send-up of ‘porno paparazzi girls’ in general and, specifically, me, in a parody of my infamous sex tape.”
Hilton felt violated by the release of the tape, which was “made when I was not legally old enough to be served a rum and coke in a bar,” and “was released and monetized against my will.” Yet “when that thing hit the internet, the full weight of public outrage, scorn, and disgust came down on me instead of on the massive crowd of people who bought and sold it,” she writes.
Elsewhere, she reflects (via InTouch), “The release of that private footage devastated me, personally and professionally. It followed me into every audition and business meeting for years. Even now, in a corporate world dominated by men, I look around a conference table knowing that most of the people sitting there have seen me naked in the most degrading way imaginable. … It’s out there waiting for my children, who will be confronted with it someday.”
186 Comments
Matt & Trey can cool it. Paris Hilton once met a ficus plant at a party and found it both “cool and interesting”.
Compared to Nicole Ritchie, maybe it was.
“Throughout the noughties, Paris became an example for girls who were as unapologetically privileged and as spoilt as her; girls who shared the belief that everyone should “stop being jealous”. Girls who centered their carefree lives around shopping, sunbathing and partying with their miniscule accessory-dogs. For everyone else, she was a bit of an eejit. To this day Paris Hilton continues to represent the epitome of naff; she’s still striking the same poses, wearing the same glitzy gowns, faffing over her dogs as ferociously as ever…” – Geraldine Carton of Image magazine in 2018.But yeah, sure, let’s talk about a cartoon.
Two things can be true. Paris Hilton can be a shallow, vapid person whose fame was a net negative for the culture and the South Park takedown of her can be unnecessarily cruel and hurtful. They’re not mutually exclusive. And I say that as someone who’s seen every episode of South Park.
This whole message board is a weird universe where it really seems like Paris Fucking Hilton is more reasonable than the people who have spent years hating her, seemingly out of habit.
It did kinda become a habit after a few years, didn’t it?
“the people who have spent years hating her, seemingly out of habit.”FILED TO: Hey, *You* Wanted To Be A “Brand”I don’t hate her, FWIW. Was annoying when she was ubiquitous for being a “celebutante” (which I blame more on us wanting to lavish attention on people for the worst possible reasons), but she seemed to fade back and enjoy her massive net worth.She popped up again, and thus people are talking about her again. ::checks math:: Yep, that’ll happen!
You don’t blow the brains out of a cartoon version of a chihuahua because you think it’s good. You do it because you know it’s bad, and the audacity of it creates the humor. So it was precisely as cruel as needed to be funny, which by definition would be “cruel beyond the norms of regular conversation”. Only under the rubric of comedy itself being unnecessary (which can quite reasonably be argued from a philosophical perspective) can you argue that it was unnecessarily cruel.
And sure, “it’s just a joke” is not an excuse for bullying. But she was a billionaire who at least played the character of someone who could not care about or understand the reasonable critiques against her public persona, all while wielding immense social capital as a terrible person. It ain’t South Park’s fault she acted like a female Donald Trump, and that it was in her financial best interest to pretend that that there was nothing else to her as part of her brand management. That part was, at her youngest, all on her parents and managers, and past 25 or so all on her. She at least pretended for years that there was nothing beneath her horrible surface, and at worst, South Park merely took her at her word.
As well, most of the critique the show makes is about a culture that would put Hilton on a pedestal and not about her in particular. Mr. Slave is not upset with Hilton, but that so many children are imitating her. The show is saying that tolerating the selling of a gleefully vapid and sexualized personality to little girls is wrong, and it puts that message into (almost literally) the most perverted man in South Park to indicate that perversion in itself isn’t wrong. Ho it up adultly and responsibly for yourself and you’re fine. Do it to sell shitty purses and your terrible TV show to middle schoolers, and welcome to being shoved up a cartoon man’s ass for laughs.
It’s fine to be hurt by comedy at your expense. I acknowledge her humanity. But it helps to not play a joke for a living if avoiding jokes at your expense is your goal.
I like how people have to internally manufacture my point to make a response for it.Big fan of assumptive falsities. 👍
You block quoted someone else, then added your own sentence that included no actual opinion, and now you’re dragging people for misinterpreting the uninterpretable, or for assuming you meant to communicate something when you set out to communicate nothing. It’s fascinating. And by “fascinating,” I mean “dumb.”
I mean, you can criticise the sort of shallow, consumption based lifestyle that Hilton exemplifies and also acknowledge that some of the pop culture that responded to her was mean-spirited and misogynistic. People can manage both those things.
The SSW playset joke was exceptionally prescient.
I don’t know that I’m ready for a cultural reappraisal of Paris Hilton.
It *seems* like she sees what is happening to Lewinsky and Spears – popular figures from the late 90s/00s who were mercilessly picked on and years later society largely recognized the unfair treatment – and wants to get in on getting an apology. Jez seems to be arguing that Pam Anderson is deserving of the same treatment, but I disagree. I also disagree that Hilton should be getting a similar re-evaluation. The sex tape was a terrible invasion of privacy, but it is not what made her famous. And yeah, the South Park episode was in poor taste. But she happily portrayed her image of a vapid, I-have-it-all-fuck-you socialite and profited off that. I don’t see why she feels entitled to an apology for people viewing her as the image she willfully projected for profit.
This is largely my take, too. The sex tape was a horrible invasion. I had no idea that South Park episode ever existed, but yeah it was probably in poor taste. But then again South Park’s stock and trade is poor taste a lot of the time. But as for a wholesale reappraisal, that’s a harder sell for exactly the reason you mention: Much of the attention that she got she actively sought for years. She honed that vacuous socialite living the high life image for years, and now she’s talking about how exploitative that was? The article mentions that she was hounded by the tabloids but c’mon. She used to tell the tabloids where she would be. You can’t have it both ways.
“The sex tape was a terrible invasion of privacy, but it is not what made her famous.”
Sure it wasn’t.
Because we ALL knew her name before 2003, when the tape came out.
“The sex tape was a terrible invasion of privacy”
Can you spot me a couple million? There’s this bridge I want to buy…
“The sex tape was a terrible invasion of privacy, but it is not what made her famous”I do not know that she would have had a TV career without that tape. She would likely have remained Page 6 fodder for at least another few years.
She had already filmed The Simple Life when the sex tape was released. One could argue about whether it would have been as successful without the publicity of the tape, but it’s impossible to know, and the fact is she already had a show without it.
Pam is a delight, if you can’t see that, you got some very moralist goggles on henny
She literally married the guy who made and sold the Paris sex tape. He did the same thing to Hilton that had happened to Pam, and she married him.
She continues to take virtually no responsibility for the life and persona she willingly created for herself.
It’s 2023. Can’t we just leave Paris Hilton in the early aughts where she belongs?
Along with the Valley Girl Vocal Fry she foisted upon us that is still going strong today.
This whole trend recently of “Hate the game, not the player” is understandable – who doesn’t love a redemption arc, after all? – and to be fair there are no winners on any side in the kind of vapid, self-aggrandizing, vicious world in which the Paris Hiltons, Courtney Stoddens, and, indeed, Donald Trumps of this Earth cavort.That said, as viciously as Paris Hilton has been treated, it doesn’t change the fact that she wholeheartedly and unrepentantly pursued this lifestyle, and – at the risk of a terrible pun – she is the poster child for fucking around and finding out. I always feel sorry for kids when they get burned by a hot stove, but at some point my empathy wavers when they repeatedly sit on the burners and wiggle.
“I carefully and methodically cultivated a persona as a vapid child of privilege, and I am outraged that people view me as a vapid child of privilege!”
Still doesn’t make it ok that she didn’t consent to a sex tape that was widely distributed.
What? No my understanding is that that sex tape belongs to both me and the world?
That tape doesn’t see the light of day without her consent…. There is no way the Hilton empire lets that get professionally released unless she signs a release for it to be distributed.There is also the rumor that has been out there for years that half the tape was too poorly shot to be commercially released on it’s own and they (including her) filmed a second half with better light and proper camera angles.I’m not saying she wasn’t exploited on some level, but the idea that she had nothing to do with it doesn’t seem to pass a basic premise that Hilton Hotels could have sued everyone involved into oblivion at that time.
lol she did sue, it was released without her consent and she sued and was awarded money and donated that money. the case happened at a time when there wasn’t much precedent around this kind of thing, and she did all she could to remedy in court because it was alreaddyyyy released.
You’re so brave.
Yeah no consent but yet no one has ever been sued over it and she made most of the money. clown, it was the thing to do back then. Oh no oh no my porn came out omg guys don’t buy or watch my porn that show how just came out. It was a home video that’s why we was acting so much in it.
She consented to it being made. Despite not retaining possession of it. When you participate in making something which you then let another person have, you lose control over it. The fault here lies with her.
Courtney Stoddens was a child whose parents allowed her to be assaulted in public by a much older man. Every adult in her life failed her, and a massive audience happily made that her problem. Cleaving to the idea that she was an adult, just because the people abusing her said so, is embarrassing.
“assaulted in public”?
That said, as viciously as Paris Hilton has been treated, it doesn’t change the fact that she wholeheartedly and unrepentantly pursued this lifestyle, and – at the risk of a terrible pun – she is the poster child for fucking around and finding out. I always feel sorry for kids when they get burned by a hot stove, but at some point my empathy wavers when they repeatedly sit on the burners and wiggle.And exactly how are you defining ‘this lifestyle’? She pursued celebrity, not her private life being monetized without her consent.
You’re SOOOO Brave
There seems to be a weird tone surrounding Paris and Pam Anderson in regards to this stuff. When I mentioned Pamela Anderson to my Mom she was like “she asked for all of it” so based on that I assume there was an underlying jealousy from women and then men didn’t take them seriously. People just do not view these women like people at all.
I think people find unconvincing belated efforts by Anderson and Hilton to claim that their sex tapes (the dissemination of which was truly unfair) is the reason they were viewed by the public a certain way. But Anderson’s sex tape is not the thing that made the public think of her as a horny bombshell — Anderson herself cultivated that image, including through a very public relationship with Tommy Lee. And Hilton’s sex tape isn’t the reason she was not taken seriously in auditions and business meetings. Instead, it’s because she cultivated (and profited from) an image of herself as a socialite ditz. It’s not like either one was on the path to becoming Meryl Streep, until it tragically went awry.
I think people are mad at her for being hot? There’s this whole vibe of like “fuck her she asked for this” from a lot of people and it’s lol whoa calm down. She’s a human.
I think people are mad at her for being hot? There’s this whole vibe of like “fuck her she asked for this” from a lot of people and it’s lol whoa calm down. She’s a human.
Yes, a man who also used the N word and blamed it on the fucked up school she went to. Stop capping for a woman who is not accountable for things she said.
I do think it’s complicated when one attains celebrity directly as product of their private life. It was definitely not okay to release that tape without her consent but there’s no way around that she ushered in an era where a lot of the treatment she received is in a gray area compared to people who became famous for X, Y, Z profession and then had their private lives adversely affected. She would’ve been rich but not famous without going to certain clubs, dating certain people, etc.
with the express purpose of being photographed and filmed for public
consumption. Her profession was basically monetizing her private life (or at least behavior that was once considered private).
same thing
She pursued celebrity, not her private life being monetized without her consent.Your life being monetized “without your consent” is one of the costs of being a celebrity. It’s a package deal. You don’t get the rewards without the costs. Don’t want to pay the freight of being a celebrity? Then don’t devote your entire fricking life to being a celebrity.
You’re so brave
“She pursued celebrity, not her private life being monetized without her consent.”Nah she monetized her own life to become a celebrity. She had no talent to make her a celebrity and she didn’t even need the money
And who did her unrepentantly pursuing whatever lifestyle harm exactly? There’s a fundamental difference to me between attacking someone who has done some harm to others and attacking someone who’s just annoying or uninteresting.
And who did her unrepentantly pursuing whatever lifestyle harm exactly?Hilton’s argument seems to be: mainly herself. And she now wants to turn a mirror on society and blame everyone else that isn’t her for the harm she suffered. No one deserves to have a private sex tape released against their will. That said, there’s a ton of reports that she was a very publicly awful person at the time. It was her brand, the thing she used the celebrity from the sex video to sell. She wasn’t just a random person who had a video released of her and everybody made fun of her, there were other reasons that people had an axe to grind against her, and they’re not all someone else’s fault.
She was also known as from being a bully, a racist and super entitled. So while I think she didn’t deserve anything that happened to her, she also can’t as if she was putting any good into the world. Multiple people who worked with her describe her as awful, we know she bullied Lindsey Lohan, we know she said racist things…Can we agree that yes she was a victim but she doesn’t deserve to be put on a pedestal as some underdog of the early aughts?
Ah I see, so she deserved to be treated like complete garbage because she was annoying to you
I appreciate your solid example of the “strawman” logical fallacy. Very instructive for everyone! #lifelonglearning
Whatever helps you sleep at night asshole.
Remember the time a cop found coke in her handbag and she claimed the handbag couldn’t be hers because it was too cheap?
No, but it sounds perfectly in character.
I remember reading that when those people broke into her house supposedly she just had a huge pile of blow on her counter. Which is pretty awesome.
Man, you’d think she could afford a cocaine caddy.
At the same time I don’t want to condone people being mean to her, and certainly not to her dog. And yet I don’t want to talk about her, or think about her undeserved fame & how much she represents the worst elements of celebrity culture. We are in a weird place when she is emerging as some kind of celebrity elder statesman
Yeah, and it doesn’t seem like she’s turned over any leaves to become some paragon of virtue and humanity. We can only hope she’s a reasonably good mother.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be in a big ‘ol’ hurry to watch something that portrayed me as a total asshole and murdered my cats.
What leaf did she need to turn over? Did you know her? It’s really annoying to see people so jaded that she had it easy. People are pretty shitty to her for being hot and supposedly lazy.
Read it again
Were you an adult 25 years ago? Look, I’ll be the first to say that anyone who expends energy stating how much they dislike her are just jealous that she was born into wealth and is famous for no reason other than being famous. However, I also do not see a problem with SP and P!nk satirizing the image she publicly cultivated. That’s ignoring the various racist and classist statements she made at the time.
She’s definitely racist. Caught dropping hard R n-bombs in several videos. There’s a leaf to turn over.
You’re pretty fucked up, then.
Thanks, Matt.
“and certainly not to her dog.”
They. Didn’t. Do. Anything. To. Her. Dog.
South Park is an animated series, they did not have access to and did not kill her dog for real.
“I don’t walk to talk about Paris Hilton.”- Guy forced to post on the internet about Paris Hilton. As a middle aged man, I find myself perversely drawn to my contemporaries who have spent more than a decade talking about how they don’t want to talk about the people they’re taking about, seemingly because they have nothing else they want to talk about.
I don’t want to talk about you.
Then shut up for 5 minutes.
It’s just too bad when I see people being mad that somebody is hot. I imagine they’re closely related to people who hate others for being happy. So don’t worry, I think we’re better off anyway.
Great – no one asked you and no one cares.
That’s a fun strawman you’ve constructed.
Sometimes I wonder about the greyed-out responses with three words that the person copied and pasted over and over – are they the detritus of an internet posting system, are they the glue that holds it together, or are they the actual content that we’re struggling desperately not to engage with?
“Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” – Robert Towne
I think Paris is kind of an interesting celebrity in that she obviously had massive impacts on the culture by inviting people into her world (she ushered in a whole new era, and I think it’s silly to blame her for people grabbing onto her), but she also isn’t a beloved figure like Pam Anderson or Lohan or Spears. Maybe it’s because those women came from normal backgrounds so the way they were treated felt worse or at least they seemed more trapped. I’m sure there’s a think piece somewhere on it.
I mean Lindsey Lohan was a really talented young actress who really just fell to what a lot of people in that situation fall into, especially ones with messed up parents like she had. The same came be said for Spears, who while she wasn’t the greatest singer, sure was an entertainer. Meanwhile, Pam Anderson was always lovable and fun. And her doc proved she’s also really smart and introspective. Paris was basically known for being a rich, entitled, mean girl. I don’t think you can compare the three to her.
It’s hard for Paris Hilton to argue both that she didn’t get a fair shake as a person (outside of the leaked sex video, which was gross but something she did capitalize on) and that “Paris Hilton” was a public persona that wasn’t really her. If the ditz was a put on, it getting savaged isn’t exactly indicative of people’s feelings about her, because nobody actually knows her.
Tina Fey once declared her the worst host she ever had to work with on SNL, saying she was “the biggest piece of shit. She’s so dumb and so proud of how dumb she is.”I stand with Fey.
That interview is kind of a scorched earth situation – Fey really sounds like an asshole.
I’ve heard she’s known for being great to work with.
She might’ve been venting after an exceptionally hectic workweek; but yeah, maybe just go open a bottle of wine and chill.
when a noted asshole calls you the worst person they ever worked with, they may be correct.
No she doesn’t.
Wait…you’re defending an interview where Fey used a transphobic slur to insult Hilton? For the record, I don’t hate Fey or Hilton, just worried that someone’s hacked your account.
Do you assume Tina’s account of Paris’s behavior is inaccurate?
I don’t need to doubt it. Fey herself admitted she went too far. I don’t doubt at all that Hilton was a crappy SNL host.
This is “Recoegnitions” – note the extra “e” – a troll account that comes here to post edgelord takes about “woke shit”. I don’t think I’ve seen the original recognitions here for a while.
TRANSPHOBIC? Get off my planet, idiot.
FYI – the original recognitions passed away from an obesity related stroke. And I don’t care if someone used a naughty word because once because i’m not 12.
you do.
Right.
oh and you’re so brave.
Thank you
Sorry – you must have accidentally dismissed my earlier comment. I said “Right”.I get it though – you have a reputation to uphold here. You can’t allow just anyone to respond to your comments – that would make you look pathetic right?
Yeah she does.
I guarantee you’re fat.
Weak and unoriginal, as usual.
Unoriginal in the sense that you’ve been hearing that your entire life?
Womp womp. Try again.
Nah.
Like Scooby Doobie Doo
On the other hand some “celebrities” just are really like that. Steven Seagal was like that too — Dana Carvey describes having to work with Seagal and he sounds very much like Fey with Hilton — dealing with guests that are just too stupid to understand how comedy works (even the often rather low-brow comedy that SNL deals in) must be exasperating for professional comedians.
I’d be surprised if Dana Carvey said Stephen Seagal looked like a “tranny” and made fun of the size of his hands, though. Again, Tina Fey comes across like kind of an asshole.
all the little girls who were fans, which upset me more than anything ugly they could say about me.I take it she still refuses to take any responsibility for being the shittiest role model in the world for those girls?
The South Park guys also wrote the era’s most sympathetic portrayal of Britney Spears in a prescient and disturbing episode around this same time. It’s fine to culturally reappraise someone down the line, but not everyone can be painted with the same brush. Two things are true about Hilton: she was unfairly demonized for a sex tape she made by someone who broke her trust; and she embraced pretty much the worst elements of the public socialite persona, the airhead heiress, if you will. This culminated in “The Simple Life,” which she was not forced into, which thought it was funny to show how awful two born-rich kids were at interacting with regular people in regular life. She made a shitton of money selling this persona to young girls, and paved the way for the Kardashianization of entertainment. I have sympathy for the sex tape stuff, but everything else is still crap.
Quite literally on the Kardashian front. Kim used to be Paris’ stylist and personal assistant.
This is the best take I’ve seen.
“ selling this persona to young girls” . . . what? I’m pretty sure this ‘persona’ only gets sold to heterosexual dudes so they can bust a nut, and then get online in the afterglow and call her a whore.
Huh? She’s not a porn star. The only thing heterosexual men gave a shit about regarding her was the sex tape, and she didn’t see anything from that. She made money off her lifestyle brands which mostly appealed to women wanting to be like her.
So is it ‘women’ or is it ‘young girls’?
It’s both. I’m not saying 6 year olds but anyone from like 13+.
I dunno man, I grew up right at the height of her fame and the absolute only people I -ever- heard talk about her were other dudes bashing her or trading a burnt CD of “one night in paris” back and forth. I’ve never met a Paris Hilton stan. I’ve never even met a Paris Hilton fan. Her celebrity seemed entirely centered around dudes finally finding ~the one~ – the mythical woman that everyone in the world simultaneously agreed it was okay to be hugely misogynist to.
I was in high school and in addition to “That’s hot” running rampant, there was a pretty hefty subset of girls who styled themselves like mini Hiltons, complete with either fake (or sometimes real) designer handbags (I think IIRC Paris had her own line of handbags among other fashion accessories); you know, the whole shabang. I was in Jersey in an upper middle neighborhood so possible it was different there than other places. But her image was made to make money off of any young woman like 13-30. Hell she even had that pop track that was somehow kind of a hit, and that certainly wasn’t geared towards men. The only thing I can think of where her image was used to appeal directly to heterosexual men was in the stupid Carl’s Jr. ad. Everything else was just her being a proto-influencer appealing to girls and young women.
Oh so your experience is universal then?
FWIW Paris Hilton’s perfume range(s) alone have brought in $2.5 billion. I’m pretty sure it’s not solely misogynistic heterosexual men buying it.
they buy it mostly to mock her
Always love the “I didn’t know anyone who liked her, therefore she wasn’t popular” argument. I was in private jr high & high school during those years and saw plenty of girls emulating her. My siblings were in college & shortly post college during that time and Paris is who the basic sorority girls were emulating. She didn’t get a multibillion-dollar brand because dude’s thought she was hot. Hetero guys aren’t the ones buying her cosmetics, perfume & clothes & your friends aren’t the ones using her PR/media company. She was Kim and Kim’s mom in one before Instagram, with both the awful actions & ability to market them.
0% chance you aren’t fat and ugly.
Dont forget her hit single…uhh what was it called?
You don’t have to be a porn star for people to be jacking it to you.
Sure but I’m saying that doesn’t translate to money for her businesses. The dudes jacking it to her weren’t also buying handbags and fragrances and making her company into a multi-billion dollar venture.
yes, its mostly heterosexual dudes busting a nut who bought her line of fragrances, track suits and dog accessories
the simple life is pretty fucking funny. idk what people think this paved the “way for”, but the road was already there, it was just Paris and Nicole who took it first.
which thought it was funny to show how awful two born-rich kids were at interacting with regular people in regular life
Why is that not funny? How is that offensive in any way? They were essentially making fun of themselves. And it’s obvious in retrospect that the show was largely staged – to repeat a point other people have already made, Hilton pretended in the show multiple times that she didn’t know how to do basic chores, but she had spent years doing those exact kinds of chores at the “troubled teen” institutions she’d been forced into.
Awwwwww, poor stupid spoiled whore.
Jesus, the people who comment here are harsh. Paris Hilton says she was bullied and humiliated. The comments section piles on. Chris Rock bullies Jada Pinkett, gets hit by Will, then does a comedy special where he bullies both of them. Comments section here says that they deserve it.I get that public figures have different standards for criticism, but they are still people.
It also upset me that the episode graphically portrays [my dog] Tinkerbell being shot and killed. The thought of that made me sick.
I can see why it made her sick. In that scene, the dog shoots itself because it can’t stand being with her.
She’s only come on my radar lately because I collect Rainbow High dolls and they did a doll of her. She plays herself in the animated show. I get the feeling they asked Kim Kardashian first but she either turned it down because they didn’t offer enough money or didn’t want to do it.
She could donate her wealth to charity and retire from public life, if the attention is unwelcome.
I just realized there’s similarities between Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson. This is a bit enlightening.
Absolutely. A bunch of mini dick men get off on slagging them.
Wow, it’s almost like South Park is toxic and stupid.
Paris Hilton minus sex tape = Ivanka, i.e., you were not going to be taken seriously the instant that you started speaking.
Paris Hilton was tacky and awful and privileged and represented the bottom of the barrel of reality TV culture, but the discourse surrounding her at the time was…disproportionately fucked up. We (male comedians in particular) projected a lot of weird shit onto her that in hindsight I think was best directed elsewhere. Like, I remember thinking this Patton Oswalt bit was hilarious:I know c. 2007 was peak edgelord shock humor, but wishing for a “biker” to “fuck [cancer of the AIDS of the leukemia of the eyes] into her skull” seems, umm, borderline mentally ill from the vantage point of 2023.
‘Borderline mentally ill’ is how I’d describe a -lot- of the discourse around female celebrities at that time. And also now, probably.
It’s really, really hard to take Paris Hilton and the cultural response to her (yeah, I get it, she’s unduly famous and wealthy through no merit of her own) and separate it from what the culture surrounding women and girls was at the time. Like . . . holy shit, just as a starting place we were eagerly and voracious consuming tabloid shit about literal children, celebrating their pain and accusing them of seeking out abuse. Like, there was such a profound soul-poisoning during that period, such abject and virulent cruelty, that I can’t help but sympathize with Hilton – the notion of receiving that much wild, -personal- hate from millions of strangers can’t have been good for anyone involved’s mental health.
I’d argue that the fucking South Park guys have done infinitely more damage to society than Hilton ever did – they’re the ones who re-popularized mainstream antisemitism, provided ample rhetorical ammunition to climate change deniers for years, and taught a generation of (mostly) teenage boys that being a petty, cruel, apathetic cunt is the mark of someone thoughtful and intelligent.
As a teenage boy at the time I can assure you that we were being ironically racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Big difference. Somehow. I think. Well I definitely wasn’t a tedious little asshole. I think.
💯
Seems bad taste to blame Matt Stone for bringing back anti semitism instead of the Nazis on our doorstep. But people hate Jews enough to even blame them for their own strife apparently.
Since approximately twelve thousand people have posted the same thing, let me be clear: I didn’t say that they are antisemites. I said that they repopularized mainstream antisemitism. The difference being intent. Did they intend to do so? Almost certainly not! But they still made their wacky merchandisable mascot character a virulent antisemite who is tolerated by all the other characters.
You don’t have to look very hard to find a bunch of pieces written in the nineties which are like “hey, it’s weird that all of these elementary school kids are calling each other ‘fucking jews’ now, right?” That didn’t come from nowhere. And if you think there is absolutely no pipeline from South Park “ironic” antisemitism shock humor -> Newgrounds/4chan “ironic” bigotry shock humor -> genuine white supremacist spaces then I have a bridge to sell you.
That’s the thing about ‘ironic’ bigotry – even if you are in on the joke, you can’t possibly assume that your audience (consisting of a huge number of literal children) are on the same page and not taking it at face value.
>they still made their wacky merchandisable mascot character a virulent antisemite who is tolerated by all the other characters. Mr Hankey isnt antisemitic.
and no i dont think jokes on a show are what caused the rize of antisemitism. if you do, enjoy.
So did Paris get her anti-Semitic bigotry from South Park?It’s funny how you refuse to address and answer my point that she was pretty terrible in that regard in her own right. That in your self-righteous black and white binary thinking of South Park=bad, Paris Hilton=good, you don’t want to see how it’s more complicated than that.
Lol, I ignored you because it’s stupid petulant whataboutism. Did I say Paris Hilton good? No, no I did not. In fact, I said the exact opposite.
But did any of my Jewish friends get called a slur by someone doing a stupid bad Paris Hilton impression? No, no they did not. Can’t say the same for Cartman.
No, you literally said: “that I can’t help but sympathize with Hilton” So you’re “sympathizing” with antisemitic Hilton and painting her as some kind of victim while condemning antisemitic South Park? lol! Love it!The point that you’re missing in your petulant, self-righteous, black and white binary thinking that we’re all lol’ing at you for, is that it’s incredibly stupid to blame all antisemitism in that time and era on South Park as you seem to be doing. That it’s a lot more complicated than that and that’s where Paris comes in. She was pretty antisemitic in her own right and didn’t come from watching Cartman. For that reason and how she’s been pretty insincere and unapologetic about all of the far worse things she said than South Park when it came down to it, it’s wild to me that you’re suddenly feeling sorry for her.But go on and continue to toe the AVClub’s moronic line that South Park is the root of all evil. I was wondering who they cater to when they make dumb arguments like that and now, I see it.
Wow, your level of literacy is pretty lacking, huh? Considering your best takeaway from this is that I’m saying “South Park=Bad, Paris Hilton=Good” maybe I’m not the one with a binary thinking problem.
You literally said: “I’d argue that the fucking South Park guys have done infinitely more damage to society than Hilton ever did – they’re the ones who re-popularized mainstream antisemitism,”and: “But did any of my Jewish friends get called a slur by someone doing a stupid bad Paris Hilton impression? No, no they did not. Can’t say the same for Cartman.”That is you blaming antisemitism in society on South Park and Cartman. That is you saying South Park=Bad Paris Hilton=Good.So in addition to being stupid, you’re terrible dishonest as well and really bad at deflecting.
Me: “I think mosquitos are worse than wasps.”
You: “CAN’T BELIEVE THAT THIS GUY IS A WASP STAN. THIS GUY LOVES WASPS. WASPS GOOD MOSQUITOS BAD.”
Haha, I love that you think “these guys are ultimately worse” is the same thing as “she’s good.” And I love that you have to willfully misinterpret the point as “they’re single-handedly responsible for antisemitism”, the absolute dumbest read of the statement that you could make, in order to fit your argument.
You’re a sub-high school level debater, you’re fundamentally lacking in literacy, thoughtfulness, or insight, and worst of all – you’re powerfully smug about it. A true South Park fan. Not worth engaging with any longer.
No, again, you literally said word for word: “I’d argue that the fucking South Park guys have done infinitely more damage to society than Hilton ever did – they’re the ones who re-popularized mainstream antisemitism,”“that I can’t help but sympathize with Hilton”I love that you deep down realize you said something incredibly stupid and wrong and are now trying to backtrack when I and others called you out on it that resorts to attacks and insults like a sub-high school level debater. Now i’m “a South Park fan” because I don’t auto agree with you that it is the root of all antisemitism in the world? LOOOOOOL indeed! So are you trying to say that today’s Neo Nazis got their antisemitism from South Park?!? Are you fucking serious?Who would want to engage with your childish dumbass? You just demonstrated just how and why this site has become so stupid now. It’s because childish idiots like you that eat up all its shallow arguments and clickbait nonsense.
I can say as Jewish guy, South Park did a lot for helping people understand anti semitism, a thing gentiles are delighted to ignore. Their Mel Gibson episode, their Christmas special, and showing through Cartman that it does not die. The people who use their slurs were always going to do it.
Also – sorry to double post, but I can promise anti-semitism existed before South Park. I can actually speak very very directly to the fact that it existed before South Park lol.
That’s an interesting viewpoint, for sure. I can’t speak to your experiences, obviously – but in my circle of the world, in a pretty small town in flyover country, I can definitely say that South Park was pushing antisemitic talking points into the heads of kids who woudn’t even meet a Jewish person until college. People who, probably yeah, would have been inclined towards hatefulness anyway – but South Park presented them a whole other target that they wouldn’t have even considered. But that’s just -my- experience, and one I’ve heard from the Jewish folks in my circles over the years. If you feel like the presence of it also did some good in raising awareness and promoting conversation, I can’t say you’re wrong – just that I haven’t seen as much of that. (As I’d like to, certainly.)And yeah, obviously, South Park didn’t invent anti-semitism. But I do think it was an important stepping stone in the white nationalist pipeline for a lot of folks – mostly boys who were teens in the 2000s.
It’s unbelievable how unintelligent you are.
That’s something stupid people say so it makes sense for you.
Nothing you’ve ever said or thought matters.
Why are you so obsessed with me?
Responding to three dumb comments you made definitely counts as “obsessed”. Like I said, 0% chance you aren’t fat as hell.
Glad you agree😘
That you’re fat?
Shoop shoop a-doobie
Matt Stone is Jewish.
“re-popularized mainstream antisemitism”Antisemitic crimes and attitudes becoming more popular doesn’t even correlate with SPs debut or peak popularity. Shitty racist kids were shitty racist kids before during and after the show peaked.
But what if Paris Hilton was the hateful antisemite herself?https://www.newsweek.com/paris-hilton-racist-homophobic-antisemitic-comments-twitter-1778267
I think your replies are full of people who like South Park and don’t want to feel like they are part of the problem. Many of the adults running the insane 4chan (et all) sites and recruiting current teens to them are the guys who grew up on SP. They just never aged out of being a 14 year old mimicking Cartman and instead became an ultra right wing adult embodying him. South Park has the same issue every edgy show does. The majority of people recognize the satire and laugh at the absurd, but don’t recognize it could be normalizing racism & misogyny. Then there is a small group that takes it as gospel and uses it to justify their lived bias, but they get ignored as just being that weird SP fan until they become a 40 year old manager harassing teen employees or running some Qanon-esque account.
I’d argue that the fucking South Park guys have done infinitely more damage to society than Hilton ever did
Fucking amen. It’s bizarre to read all these comments about how “that’s just what South Park does!” while excoriating Hilton. It’s not that she’s good, it’s that the standards are wildly inconsistent.
Well it made me sick to see her ugly ass get fuked in a p0rn when her family was well off and she never had to do any of that but here we are talking about stuff from 2004 no one cares about. Poor her trying to keep her name in something.
I picked up her CD at the dollar store about 15 years ago. A dollar well spent, it’s not bad.
Man, that was (and still is) such a great episode!
I can’t side with a hotel heiress over two self made animators. I’m sorry, but we still have to be critical of the culture actually put out there. The Simple Life and her brand were bad, and South Park is good, even if they can make the bad cultural elements they make fun of feel bad in turn.People like that should feel bad! She’s Donald Trump without the power! What are we doing here! How can AV Club, this place that used to spotlight brilliant creators, side with Paris Hilton because she got her feelings hurt!
It’s worth pointing out that in her book, she talks about having been groomed and eventually molested by a teacher when she was in the 8th grade. The guy isolated her from her friends, told her the other girls were jealous of her, praised her for being “mature” and “special.” And eventually molested her in his car outside of her parents’ home when they were out of the house. The parents came back, saw what was happening and the guy placed all the blame on her, saying “why did you make me do this?” And she was under the delusion that she had consented, and it took her years to understand he was 100% in the wrong and fully to blame for his own actions.Being sexualized at such a young age can really wreck a person’s development. I understand she’s said and done some pretty unsavory, classist things but I think some of her antics can be chalked up to that and the fact that her parents also shipped her off to one of those awful “reform school boarding schools” (I’m not sure what the generic term for them is) where the staff is supposed to clean up the teenager’s behavior and which never have any oversight so of course the staff is comprised of bullies who know no one can stop them. I think Paris has spoken out about these schools and even lobbied about them in some states. (My friend went to one of these schools back in 2002-3.)
All I can say is, welcome to life buckeroo. We are all doing it, just not as lavishly as you.
Nicky Hilton Nicole Richie was very funny on Great News, so I’m willing to give Paris the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe I just don’t care.
If you’re trying to get anyone old enough to remember Paris Hilton’s fifteen minutes of fame to feel sorry for her, good fucking luck.
You can not feel bad for her and still think the SP guys are dicks.
No one cares what you think.
Write a new song for fucks sake.
Why in the fuck would anyone give a shit about Paris Hilton?
lol
Why do we have to like everybody. Here is someone who deserves to not be liked. Vanish.
It’s ok to ignore pop culture site hot takes and think for yourself sometimes.
Paris Hilton? I thought Kim Kardashian had her killed.
All these years later and she’s still a stupid spoiled whore.
Tina Fey discussed Paris Hilton’s guest appearance on SNL with Howard Stern years ago. “She’s so dumb. And she is so PROUD of being dumb.” Paris cultivated this image intentionally. She also pushed the writers to do a sketch about “how Jessica Simpson is fat now.” She was loathsome.
The celebrity media was exploitative and out of control, but what we’re actually talking about here isn’t that millennium era tabloid culture that so richly deserved criticism, it’s artists criticizing Paris Hilton, and they had good reason to. Do I think all the criticism was warranted, or that some of it wasn’t sexist? Nope, the South Park episode is gross and the eating disorder joke in Stupid Girls is a bit much from today’s perspective, but there is a reason Pink released that song and filmed that video, and I remember feeling relieved to see it, like: oh, somebody famous actually gets it. Someone knows that this is a problem. This was an age where feminism was a dirty word and thongs were being sold to 13 years olds. We want to talk about how sexist the Victoria’s Secret Angels were, how bad the advertising was, but we can’t criticize someone as central to this culture as Paris Hilton? She fed off it, created it, in many ways helped to invent it, and was sometimes mistreated by it. But she benefited more than most. Someone in the comments linked to an article outlining how openly bigoted she was during this period, throwing slurs around like punctuation and saying she wouldn’t date a man who was 1% Black. It’s really messed up how that aspect of her character has been buried during this current comeback tour. It’s also interesting to see how little “redemption” there actually is in the redemption of Paris Hilton. She doesn’t apologize for anything, she just says poor me poor me and everyone swallows it. She’s still just as good at playing the media like a fiddle. I’ll give her that. As someone who was a young woman during this time and who was also an outsider to this culture of extreme conformity, I remember very clearly how brutal it was to be marginalized in this time, to be poor or fat (or just not emaciated) or brown or queer. Where are the retrospectives on how badly any of those people were treated? It has been very strange to watch a narrative form about how the true victims of the early 2000s were the people who fit in the most and actually met the insane standards being handed out. Very strange indeed.
Nope. I’m not buying a ticket to the Paris Hilton pity train. She might have had some bad things happen to her, but she is also a super-wealthy toxic narcissist bully who has contributed almost nothing good or positive to modern popular culture and has in many ways actively helped make it worse.
This repellent wastrel made a film called “The Hottie & the Nottie.”She can shut up forever.
This does not show the whole quotes between Paris and Matt’s response. She said “I haven’t seen it, but when people copy you, that’s like the most flattering thing, so whatever people can say, I just laugh about it. It doesn’t matter to me.” To this, South Park co-creator Matt Stone reacted, “That shows just how fucked up she is. That’s terrible that she’s flattered by it.” Do better and not purposely leave out details that shape the story the way you want it to go. Its gross.