“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made a living being equal opportunity offenders since their brazen and outspoken animated series premiered more than 16 years ago.
Their latest target?
The Obama administration and its botched rollout of Obamacare.
In Wednesday night’s episode, South Park Elementary School counselor Mr. Mackey has installed in the school a new “simple, integrated portal” known as Intellilink, which is supposed to streamline communications.But every time Mackey or a student uses the program, various problems occur, such as window shades falling down, fire suppression sprinklers accidentally going off or songs like Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” suddenly blaring in the background.
When forced to speak in front of his colleagues, Mackey is told by Principal Victoria the Intellilink system has cost the school $22,000, and so far it’s been “an unmitigated disaster.”
The problem is not everybody has signed onto it yet, Mackey claims.
The reason they haven’t signed onto it is because every time they try, they make the sprinklers go off, shop class teacher Richard Adler responds.
Mackey concedes Intellilink has had some “hiccups,” but he has hired a new faculty member whose sole responsibility will be overseeing the system to make sure it runs smoothly.
And wouldn’t you know it?
A clone of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius walks in, and barely after she can say hello, Mackey scolds her for not taking responsibility in failing to find the problem.
“Do you know how much money we’ve wasted on this thing?” Mackey asks shortly before he fires the woman, whose name for some reason is Pat Connors.
As soon as she leaves the room, Mackey says the school has no choice but to spend an additional $10,000 to upgrade the program to clean up Pat’s mistakes.
But a gym teacher points out to Mackey that Intellilink was his idea, and he should just admit it’s a bad one and stop being so defensive.
Mackey doesn’t budge.
“Intellilink is a great idea and we just need the (expletive) gold package,” he says. “We are doubling down!”
Sound familiar?
In a different segment, the Canadian minister of health discovers that some patients are getting the wrong medication because his country also uses Intellilink.
He later acknowledges that anyone who thinks streamlining health care into an integrated computer system would go smoothly deservers a fate that is too gross and vulgar to be mentioned here.
The episode, which is titled “Taming Strange,” can be viewed in its entirety at www.southparkstudios.com
Although “South Park” held nothing back on the issue last night, it isn’t the first – and it probably won’t be the last – television show to take aim at the Obama administration for its handling of the Obamacare sign-up site.
“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart recently lampooned the president for his lack of awareness about Obamacare’s technological problems, and even “Saturday Night Live” has joined in on the fun with two different sketches, which can found here and here.
Contact Adam Tobias at atobias@watchdog.org or follow him on Twitter at @Scoop_Tobias
3 comments:
I'll give it a miss. For a no. of years I had skipped SP. Just recently I gave their Zimmerman ep a try. What pathetic drivel it was. SP is done for me.
What does it say about a society when a cartoon performs a service the public apparently doesn't have the courage to perform?
Hmmm...I think we could stick a fork in us...we are quite done.
Unfortunately, I am with Mr. Starr. SP getting the Zimmerman story 180° wrong is way more important than lampooning this political debacle. The day will come when self defense matters way more than socialist pipe dreams.
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