You shouldn't watch the news too often -- the news can be depressing. But you really shouldn't watch the news if you live in 'South Park' (Wed., 10PM ET on Comedy Central). The cartoon series takes on real life events, then turns the volume up to "11." Though it's supposedly just a bunch of crude drawings about foul-mouthed little kids, the show actually confronts the hypocrisy that we see around us every day.

The new episode tackles the British Petroleum oil spill. (With the acronym "BP" being changed to "DP.") Like the rest of us, the kids must watch the news passively, as disaster unfolds around them.

First, "DP" causes a massive drilling accident on the moon. Then, the company unleashes a thousand-foot demon of eternal darkness during another oil spill. (So, it's not that much worse than the horror inflicted on the Gulf Coast in real life ... ahem.)

When the mealy-mouthed "DP" chairman shows up in a commercial and avoids taking responsibility, the kids can't take it anymore. So Kyle, Stan, Cartman and the rest blindly plunge into action. Which is the part where the South Park kids have an advantage over us. In real life, we can't dress up in costumes and fly off to do battle with an oil company. But they can.

And sure, the kids' plan might fail or backfire. On they other hand, they can't do anything worse than BP -- sorry, "DP" -- has done already.