After Pete Davidson, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle and the entire world of professional golf sold their souls for some sweet Saudi blood money, South Park, Colorado has finally cashed in.
Over the last few years, the Saudi Royal Family has seemingly grown tired of torturing their own people, executing journalists and running the slave capital of the world, and they’ve decided to focus their efforts on becoming a major player in international entertainment. From the LIV Golf league to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been bankrolling some of the most high-profile events in show business, but he’s also keeping his eye on the smaller fish in the sea, most recently sponsoring the South Park Thanksgiving 5K in tonight’s new South Park episode “Turkey Trot.”
With “Turkey Trot,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone roasted the greedy, self-righteous superstars who lend their celebrity status to the Saudi Royal Family’s reputation-laundering campaign. You know it’s bad when Cartman’s excuse for drooling over Saudi blood money is more coherent than Bill Burr’s.
In “Turkey Trot,” Mayor McDaniels finds herself in a bind when no local businesses can afford to step up and sponsor the town’s annual Thanksgiving 5K race. Thankfully for her, there are some certain overseas patrons with pockets as deep as their oil wells who would love to slap their name on a prime piece of sporting real estate for a small fee – so long as every single South Park resident agrees to never utter a single unkind word about the Saudi Royal Family.
With the economy in shambles, everyone in South Park signs up for the Turkey Trot when they learn that the Saudi Royal Family is offering a $5,000 cash prize to the winner of the event. Naturally, Eric Cartman sets out to game the system using his in-depth knowledge of “race science” – which means that he immediately tries to recruit Tolkien Black for his team.
Seeing as everyone in South Park knows that the Blacks are loaded, Tolkien isn’t quite as desperate to win the blood money, and he quickly bows out of the race, citing ethical issues with its overseas sponsors. Cartman responds to Tolkien’s concerns by framing the town’s attempt at self-enrichment with Saudi money as a humanitarian cause that will bring Saudi Arabia in line with 21st century Western values.
Naturally, every word that comes out of Cartman’s mouth about how taking a payout from the Saudi Royal Family in exchange for some good PR is a noble deed echoes what Burr and the rest of the Saudi-aligned American entertainers have said about their own participation in the Saudi global rebrand. Although, hilariously, Cartman does argue that one of the best reasons to take the Saudi cash is to prevent them from spending it on Hart or Davidson ever again.
Despite bin Salman’s efforts to bring A-list American comedy to Saudi Arabia, it’s unlikely that he allows his subjects to watch South Park, given all the profanity, blasphemy, drug use and free speech that the show touts. Therefore, Parker and Stone probably weren’t sacrificing a payday of their own to roast American entertainers who scored big in Saudi Arabia – but we’d pay an irresponsible amount of money to make Hart, Davidson and Burr watch “Turkey Trot” on a livestream.
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