i just watched again and kyle says verbatim "because anyone who thinks 911 was a conspiracy is a retard" well it was, a group of terrorist conspired it. so while i agree there are nutty conspiracy theories out there, one cant imply that they all are. and when they say "anyone who thinks 911 was a conspiracy is a retard" they seem a bit daft to me. 

Yearh, I gotta agree with Phooney. You are just splitting words here. Splitting words is a pretty weak objection to anything. Words only mean something in context, and clearly, the episode is dealing with the "The American Government did it"-conspiracy.

It's like if I said: "I feel like it's my right to say what I want"

and you said:

"I agree that you deserve free speech, we are completely on the same page, but you are very daft in saying: you feel it is your right. Clearly you can't apply your sense of touch to your right to free speech. It's daft to say that you can"

Splitting words get's you nowhere. Context mate, it's what language is made of.

South Park should not be educational material for anyone.  If your daughter is learning things from that show, I'm a little alarmed.

Because that's what "Conspiracy Theory" means: it is a derogatory term that describes a theory based on no good evidence, but rather on paranoia, and delusions of grandour on the part of the person proposing the theory. And so, it should be discredited.

It doesn't matter that the two words "conspiracy" and "theory" doesn't have any derogatory connotations, this is just what the expression "Conspiracy Theory" have come to mean in modern English.

I don't think you'll find many people who believe a spacecraft landed at Roswell, that describe their own beliefs as a "Conspiracy Theory", because they know, like all other speakers of modern English, what the negative connotations of that expression is. They may call it a rational and reasonable theory, that deals with conspiracy, but not a "Conspiracy Theory"

It's like the word "Homophobia". Homophobia means a dislike of homosexual people, even though the suffix "Phobia" actually means fear, not dislike, and homo means "same". But the word has entered the English language meaning "dislike of gays", not "fear of sameness", and everyone knows what a person means when they refer to "homophobia".

Did you know that the historical origin of the words "Lord" and "Lady" comes from old English words that means: "He who bakes the bread", and "She who shapes the dough into bread"?

This is because way back in bronze-age or iron age times, the owner of a farmstead was responsible for baking the bread (or being in charge of the people who did if it was a large farm), and his wife was in charge of preparing the dough for baking (or being in charge of the ones who did).

As farmsteads grew larger and larger, into estates and even counties, the "Lord" and the "Lady" no longer actually did any of the hands-on work, but they were still the people in charge, so the titles remained the same (Or rather, the words have been warped over time, but they come from rootwords that meant "Baker" and "bread-shaper" )

Interestingly, since bread meant the difference between life and death in early agricultural societies, meat, while ofcourse a more prestigious thing to eat, was still secondary in importance to bread, so the Lord's right hand man was in charge of tending to the meat, not the lord himself. And so...

The word Steward, a title of immense importance in medieval times, basically the Minister of Finance, the person that was in charge of the King's treasury, "actually" means, "The boy who tends to the pig sty (the Sty Warden)".

or rather, it would have meant that, if the meaning of words was written in stone. But they are not. If you said "The King's Steward" to someone in medieval England, they would think of one of the few people in the world who never had to go near a pig, and also one of the few who actually got to eat one from time to time.

So words mean what society agrees that they mean. Words are given meaning by the way they are heard and understood, not by how they are said. So... Context.

And since you said that you understood what the South Park boys meant in the context of the episode, I can't understand your objection. They communicated exactly what they wanted.

P.S: Sorry, I'm a huge geek for linguistics. It's my favorite subject. That's why I write so much for such a short point.

... hey thats no fair, i totally didnt know what a quiff was until i watched south park

come on man no shit... it obvious i knew what the main joke was.. i think the delivery of the "conspiracy definition joke"was ambiguous as did 3 other friends when we watched. its OK, Matt and trey are not perfect. They have even defended big tobacco. So they can be downright stupid sometimes. none of us are always right. even South Park.

are you trying to be an asshole here? i mean Kenny, the floppy separated heads of the Canadians and Mr. Garrison are pretty bad analogies when compared to the word "conspiracy" which is used in the wrong way almost every single day on conservative talk radio in real life. 

As i said in my previous post i believe that the misrepresentation is satire. It sure didn't come across that way as clearly as it should have IMO.

So yes i made the mistake and took the satire wrong. i assumed that the characters (Stan and Kyle) were being presented as completely knowledgeable as they sometimes are. This time they were not. 

 Radio too.

Some of them have their brain separated from their fingers too - ie Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin. I suspect they write their articles/books in crayon with lots of mispellings before they are typed.