South park it there, you can't get free-er

Say what you will about the US, but there's something that is awesome about its idea of freedom: Trey Parker and Matt Stone's animated sitcom South Park's merciless roast of the American president would be unthinkable in uncle-aunty countries. Even as Trump is seething at depictions of him in bed with Satan and an AI-generated sequence of him getting butt naked in a desert, no one has been tossed into a dungeon. At worst, South Park's parent company Paramount, which signed a $1.5 bn 5-year deal with the creators of the subversive show, will cut its losses after this expensive joke in the form of its new season opener, 'Sermon on the Mount'.

The latest episode didn't just poke the presidential bear - it dressed him as a toddler, and sent him on a parade of absurdity so brutal it made stand-up satire look like polite gossip. And, yet, no censorship, no exile, no mysterious disappearance of Parker and Stone. Just outrage, applause, and thoughts about how fat the silver lining still is even in India-emulating Trumpland. You've got to admire a country where mockery isn't just tolerated, it's monetised. It's a celebration of critique and creative combustion. South Park is America's sweaty, profane love letter to liberty - proof that in a truly democratic society, even the most powerful person is fair game for fart jokes and genital takedowns.