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Good question, though a more precise inquiry might be: Does everyone get it? Are some of the "South Park" fans simply laughing at Jew jokes or goofy Chinese accents or gay stereotypes, without the layers of irony that exist at the point of creation? Probably. As with all comedy that dares to articulate the things that people don't for fear of sounding mean or hateful, there's always a chance that it might be dangerously misinterpreted -- or misused. Or, as they say, What about the children? Stone, who is Jewish, says that people do get it, especially children -- who technically aren't supposed to be watching. (The show comes on at 10 P.M.) He cites, for example, a child who wrote to him that when he and his classmates reenacted the Rosa Parks story in school, they imagined the bus driver to be Cartman, the character on the show who says the most horrible things. Point: Kids know that Cartman is not be emulated, even though repeating Cartman's offensive lines for laughs in school the next day has become an adolescent pastime. In some ways, it's like the Howard Stern debate of a few years back: if Howard Stern is a good guy -- not the racist, sexist homophobe his radio character so often is -- isn't it O.K. for him to pretend that he's a terrible person? Just for laughs? The difference, Parker and Stone would argue, is that their jokes have context, where Stern's don't. "It comes back to telling a story," says Stone. "The combination of sweetness and real emotion and this totally bizarre post-politically correct kind of brutality. Without one, you can't have the other. That's how you suck people in -- with character and story and emotion. We take a totally weird idea and try to mold it into an afterschool-special kind of story." He mentions a scene that takes place at a football game. "We had the announcer say, 'Oh, I haven't seen a Jew run like that since 1938.' Just a horrible thing to say. But there's a history of sports announcers getting busted for things like that. The other announcer says: 'Dude! You can't say that! That's not cool!' If you did that in the wrong way it would be very offensive. But I think it's obvious when you watch 'South Park' that we're saying we know this is a stereotype and we're messing with that. When you don't wink at the audience you really are guilty of perpetrating something." One reason it is hard to be offended by the Parker-Stone sensibility is that they are so earnest. "As bizarre as it is," says Parker of the show, "there's this overlying sweetness to it all. Like: 'Hey, you know what? The world's all right.' And I think that's because Matt and I are really very happy and optimistic. It wouldn't work if we were really dark, coffee-drinking, leather-jacket-wearing guys. It would just be us making all these crass remarks about the world and it would get old." Because "Baseketball" is the first Parker-Stone enterprise to hit the street since "South Park," there is intense excitement among the show's legion of fans. "I haven't laughed that hard (intentionally) during a movie since I saw 'Airplane!' for the first time," wrote one young critic on the Internet who saw an early test screening in California. "The movie was not [expletive] P.C.!!!!!! ... This movie is incredibly offensive. Many will hate it and will want it banned." Part of what appeals about Parker and Stone is their spirit of youthful rebellion, their desire, as Stone puts it, "to flip off the Man." Doug Herzog, the president and C.E.O. of Comedy Central and the person responsible for putting the show on the air, has given this a lot of thought. "One of my late-night theories," he says, "is that Matt and Trey grew up on MTV, David Letterman -- they're cool. But they've been programmed to be cool. What they've never really had, because their coolness is sort of marketed to them, is something to rebel against. They don't get it in their rock music. I think you could probably make the argument that 'South Park' is rebellious. It's something that your parents might not understand."