Eleven years ago, a small show named South Park, featuring construction paper cutouts, fart jokes and more curse words in ten seconds than a full-length rap album, found its way onto primetime television. Three weeks ago, South Park began its 12th season and still manages to be fresh, intelligent and right on target.

So how has South Park survived so long?

I can still remember my parents barring me from watching shows like South Park and The Simpsons when I was a kid. Honestly, I don’t blame them. Satire can sometimes be exaggerated to vulgar extremes, and even as a teenager I only vaguely understood the allusions to current world events. Kids don’t understand satire. They want to sit in front of the television for the vulgarity. Parents have every right to keep their children from watching South Park.

What’s funny is that we are the first generation of youthful South Park viewers. We should be knowledgeable enough about the world to critically examine the mediums placed before us. The irony is that this critical analysis is South Park‘s very anthem.

Fresh satire is what has fueled South Park for so long, and it continues to do so. It has yet to resort to the weekly cameos that have plagued The Simpsons and Scooby Doo. It relies on the stranger-than-fiction antics of pop culture. I remember hearing an interview with the creators of South Park where they stated that as long as people do stupid things, they’ll have material for shows.

Here they are a decade later, still as bold as ever. The show has dealt with race, war, religion, politics and the melodrama of celebrities. The spectrum of topics defies every other show on television. Should we be scratching our heads that the most sentient show televised is a cartoon?

Last week’s episode targeted pop culture media and its constant frenzy of defining newsworthy gossip. In the episode, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Butters hear on the news that Britney Spears has escaped to their hometown of South Park to avoid the paparazzi.

When a local photographer makes $100,000 for a racy photograph, the boys gather their cameras to cash in themselves. The rest of the episode is something you have to watch for yourself. The ferociousness of the media, the pure ignorance of simple humanity, is hilarious in satire — but only because it’s all so true.

Give South Park a shot if you’ve been avoiding it for the same reasons I, until just recently, had. Sometimes we need a bit of a prod to wake us up from our nine-to-fives so we can take a look at the world around us. South Park keeps us thinking. When we stop thinking, we might find ourselves in the crosshairs of South Park‘s writers.

South Park‘s new season airs every Wednesday evening at 10 p.m. All episodes can also be legally viewed for free at www.southparkstudios.com.