You can say a lot of things about South Park -- it's crude, it's offensive, it's predictable -- but you can't accuse creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone of being clueless about pop culture.

Given the topics that the show covers, the duo are obviously big news junkies. And thanks to South Park's insanely fast production schedule, Parker and Stone can turn headlines into plot lines in just six days

Which makes us wonder: why the bejeebus did it take them so long to crank out a Tesla joke?

Seriously, they lampooned the Toyota Prius (and the entire city of San Francisco) way back in 2006 in an episode called "Smug Alert". Teslas have been roaming the roads for years now, so why they're just becoming the butt of a joke in 2013 seems a little weird.

But whatever, the shoe has finally dropped, so we can all stop waiting for it. As you might expect, the joke comes via Eric Cartman in an episode called "World War Zimmerman". Given Cartman's right-leaning tendencies and his fiery disdain for anything that reeks of political correctness, it's probably appropriate. 

In the episode, a Tesla Model S nearly runs over Cartman as he's trying to escape "the end of the world" (i.e. the riots brought on by the George Zimmerman verdict). In a panic that falls halfway between Sigourney Weaver in Aliens and Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cartman yanks open the door, holds a gun to the startled driver's head, and tells her to step on it:

"We've got about ten minutes before this entire country is up in flames! If you wanna live, you'd better step on the gas! Oh wait, is this a Tesla? Sh*t! Well press on the prissy pedal! We're gonna die!"  

If we didn't have the script in front of us, we'd have assumed he said something other than "prissy". 

So, how do Parker and Stone feel about Tesla? We can't say for sure, but since they gave the jab to Cartman, and since Cartman is South Park's biggest buffoon, we're guessing they're fans of Elon Musk & Co.

If you want to watch the clip for yourself, it's featured in a promo spot embedded above. Unfortunately, it's in Russian. (Sorry, Comedy Central is pretty aggressive when it comes to having things removed from YouTube.) If you don't mind clicking over to South Park's Facebook page, though, the English version has been uploaded there.


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