Certainly in this country at least it is not a term that is often used or understood by young people as it has already partially fallen out of use.

South Park have given it a further boot in the right direction.

I think some of the commnents on here only serve to reflect how out of touch some people are with the lives of young people.

Its the much championed victim culture rearing its ugly head again

This is certainly not the first time South Park has lampooned the use of the word “fag” – and contrary to some of the opinions here, they have also satirised the use of racist language, including “nigger” and “coon”. So this is hardly new territory for Stone & Parker.

The problem I have is the argument that “some people won’t get it”. So because some people are not intelligent enough to understand what satire is, that means it should be censored? There has been a lot said about the right to freedom of speech lately and I think it is abhorrent that when someone attempts to use comedy or satire to point out the idiocy of prejudice, they get lambasted for it because some people might not get the joke.

South Park is extremely popular with younger people and I think it is a discredit to their intelligence if people assume they do not understand satire – if that were the case, they wouldn’t understand the show in its entirety.

This is pretty much what I assumed it would be. Parker and Stone seem like nice guys, and I do find South Park very entertaining, but their soap-boxing is terrible and full of cliched, moronic arguments. Past “gems” have been “it’s OK to make insensitive jokes about AIDS now because it’s been around long enough” and “hate crimes: a savage hypocrisy”.

Do us a favour, boys: stick to the funny and leave the serious to competent writers.

Win, win.

the single nugget of truth in the whole thing is that very young children – who don’t yet know what homosexuality even is – will still use the word in their ignorance (and that’s supposed to be a good thing?) but sooner or later they all still learn what it really means. they come to associate homosexuality with this word they have long held as one of the ultimate insults, and therefore reach the conclusion that being gay is inherently wrong.

parker and stone may or may not have had good intentions (perhaps they genuinely believe they’re on “our side”, or perhaps they’re just trying to legitimise their own use of the word because they find it “fun to say”, as one character put it) – and, either way, i don’t think they’re homophobes – but they missed the point by a country mile.

Why has it taken them until now to speak out?

http://www.afterelton.com/blog/edkennedy/south-park-f-word

I thought it was a good episode