• by Joe Mandese , Yesterday

Relax, guys -- and gals -- satire has always been a part of politics, especially in free societies. Less so in not-so-free ones. Is that the direction we're heading in?

I mean, it's one thing to sue, threaten regulatory oversight or withhold regulatory approval of media companies when it's about fact-based news content, because -- even if that's wrong -- it's fair game, because that's what journalists have signed up for. But to silence comedians for poking fun at political leaders -- especially a president -- is downright un-American, if you ask me.

But that's where we are just 14% into Trump 2.0, but as the first comedic canary in Trump's cold mind put it, it's time to take the gloves off. And if the season opener of "South Park" is any indication, it will take off other garments too, as part of the depantsing of a presidential emperor with no clothes.

And while I wouldn't characterize it the way my "TVBlog" colleague Adam Buckman did in his breakdown of Colbert's preexisting bare-knuckled takedowns of Trump, I would argue that it has not been disproportionate relative to Trump's own over-the-top antics, which have begged for that magnitude of satirical response.

I mean, political satire is as old as politics itself, and as they say, if you can't take a joke go (expletive deleted) yourself.

Or as this week's "South Park" episode put it, "Relax, Guy."

Anyway, just for shit-and-giggles, I prompted a couple of AI chatbots to see if they could actually calculate the quantitatively index Colbert's satire of Trump vs. Obama, Biden and Trump 1.0, and they said while they didn't have the data to quantify it, the could at least qualitatively rank them.

And according to at least one -- ChatGPT's assessment -- Adam Buckman was correct in saying that Colbert took his gloves off a long time ago vis a vis Trump. 

To which I would say, "Only because Trump asked for it."