On December 6, 2000, South Park parodied Howard Stern in the Season 4 episode “Fat Camp.” The legendary shock jock is briefly shown interviewing Tom Green, Johnny Knoxville, and Kenny, who’s been earning a reputation for himself by performing Jackass-style stunts. In an attempt to prove that the trio aren’t whores who just do disgusting things for money, Stern offers them each $50,000 to perform oral sex on him.
Kenny agrees to do it for the lowest price and ends up getting arrested for prostitution:
You’d think Stern, of all people, would’ve gotten a kick out of the joke, but he seemed more confused by it than anything else when the subject came up afterward. “I’m the guy asking for oral sex from guys. Like those two guys who created it don’t look like they’re getting oral sex from guys,” Stern said in a resurfaced audio clip uploaded by Reddit user cormano. “It seems like an insult to me,” he continued. “I’m asking little children for oral sex? I’m a pedophile?”
Howard Stern Was Offended by a ‘South Park’ Joke, and His Response Was Brutal
The following year, South Park creator Trey Parker shared some not-so-positive thoughts on Stern while speaking with the New York Daily News, saying that the radio host “gets his laughs by being mean to people.” Parker went on to say, “I don’t like that stuff. I just don’t identify with it. I don’t think it’s funny to be mean to people.” As you probably could’ve guessed, Stern wasn’t too happy with this assessment.
“Well, you better find something to be funny about. Maybe you oughtta [be mean to people],” Stern fired back on his show, adding that he felt everything Parker had done up to that point—including South Park—sucked. Stern also revealed that Parker had previously trashed him while promoting Orgazmo and wrote him a letter of apology, which he ignored. During a later broadcast, Stern called Parker and Matt Stone “the two most unfunny guys in show business.”
Stern eventually ran into one of the South Park guys at a club in New York, but it sounded as though he mistook Stone for Parker. The conversation doesn’t appear to have led to any kind of resolution, either, and Stern apparently didn’t spend much time talking to whichever of them was in attendance.
But the fact that the feud got to that stage in the first place is strange because Parker had done a funny bit for the documentary Howard Stern: Shut Up and Listen back in 1997:
Clearly, his opinion of Stern changed over the years, for whatever reason.
The post Why Howard Stern Once Called the ‘South Park’ Creators the ‘Two Most Unfunny Guys in Show Business’ appeared first on VICE.
