"We Have A Turd In The Punch Bowl"

One of the many things that I missed out on while I was working graveyard shifts was getting a chance to see new episodes of South Park.  Last week, I got the chance to catch a season premiere.  Admittedly, I was more interested about catching the series premiere of Ugly Americans, but catching the premiere of South Park after missing the last few seasons of it was a pleasant little bonus.  It didn't fail to disappoint.  After all these years, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have kept their satirical edge wickedly sharp, and they pulled no punches to kick the season off.  I suppose it wouldn't be a South Park episode if it didn't offend somebody.  However, the offended party in this case is not who you would initially expect.

The premiere centered around Tiger Woods and his recent sex scandal.  Hilarity ensued as Kyle, Kenny, and Butters were all diagnosed as future sex addicts and were stuck in a therapy group with other luminaries as Charlie Sheen, Bill Clinton, David Letterman, and Woods.  As usual, the message was pretty straightforward: "Don't screw around!  Be honest with your spouse!  Take responsibility for your actions!"  It never fails to amuse me that, as much howling and screaming as some people make about how offensive South Park is, the show consistently holds up the fundamental message that we need to be decent human beings to each other.  However, the controversy concerning the premiere has nothing to do with the unflattering parody of Tiger Woods or his wife, or even the general cycle of "deny, confess, apologize" that has reached the level of cliche in the public consciousness.  It appears that EA Sports has announced plans to sue Stone and Parker (or at least their studio), most likely making an argument for infringing on EA's copyright of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11.

According to a post on Daily Informer, a source inside EA Sports has said that shortly after the episode aired, the suits at EA sat down, discussed the episode, and apparently proceeded to discuss how best to proceed with a lawsuit.  At the time of this writing, there does not appear to be any official word from Stone & Parker about getting sued.  My prediction: there's not a hope in hell this suit will succeed, though it doubtlessly net the legal departments involved a tidy little bundle of billable hours between the time the first papers are filed and the moment the judge's gavel comes down after the words, "Case dismissed!" finish echoing in the courtroom.  Come on, if Scientology can't squash these guys, EA Sports doesn't stand a chance.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?  EA Sports' only possible angle is a flimsy argument that South Park somehow infringed upon Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, a fictitious version of which was used as a narrative device for the episode.  Somehow, EA's lawyers would have to convince a judge and or jury that the scenes in the episode were representative of the actual game.  Unless the developers are willing to create the kind of DLC needed to turn a high end golf simulator into a Street Fighter-esque fighting game with "Pre-Nup Power-ups" and scenes involving marital violence, Vicodin abuse, and press conferences, not even the most jaded or pop culture deprived jurist could avoid seeing quite clearly that the depiction of the game and the actual game have absolutely nothing in common.  When a show regularly disclaims at the start of every episode that the presentation viewers are about to see is quite obviously a parody, and proceeds to demonstrate quite thoroughly that it is a parody, no amount of pettifogging legalistic sleight-of-hand is going to come even close to making the case reach trial.  EA Sports would have no standing to bring a suit because of the depiction of Tiger Woods in the episode.  Nor would they have any standing to bring a suit because of the licensed use of Tiger Woods' name or the mention of the Professional Golf Association in the title of the game.  Even the mention of the title falls under the parody exceptions.

When South Park put World of WarCraft in it's crosshairs, the guys at Blizzard not only got the joke, but incorporated the title of the episode into the game as an achievement.  Nintendo didn't summon the lawyers when South Park made fun of the wait involved for the first Wii systems.  There wasn't a hue and a cry when Guitar Hero was spoofed.  This is quite obviously the stupidest example of filing suit for no other reason than "the honor of the flag" that EA or its subsidiaries has come up with in recent memory.  Somewhere, there has got to be somebody, hopefully in the legal department of EA or EA Sports, that will sit down with the suits and make it painfully clear to them that they're wasting a lot of time, money, and resources that don't need to be wasted.  The only person who might possibly be offended enough to try a lawsuit would be Tiger Woods himself, and chances are his own legal advisers have made it clear to him that he's got no shot.  The only thing this lawsuit will accomplish will be to add another notch, and a very high profile notch, on the belt of a show which has faced down bigger and meaner opponents than EA and won without breaking a sweat.