LOS ANGELES (TNA) – Who could have dreamed, the creators of “South Park” often marvel, that blatantly bad behavior would bring so much acclaim and adoration?

“South Park” – the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning cartoon series in which kids curse, celebs are skewered and taboos get broken – is in its 11th season on Comedy Central.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker just began their 11th season of 'South Park'—10 more than they originally expected.

Which is 10 years more than Matt Stone and Trey Parker ever anticipated.

“When we started,” Stone recalls, “we thought we’d have this dumb little cult show that would run for six or 10 episodes and then get canceled.”

“We had no doubt that it was going to fail,” Parker adds. “That’s why the sixth episode of ‘South Park’ was called ‘Death.’ We figured at the time – this was before any of the shows had been on – that it would be our last.”

But more than 150 episodes later, “South Park” is still going strong, still mixing gross-out humor with social commentary, and still creating television that, while wallowing in the lowest form of bathroom humor, makes viewers think.

By putting salty tongues on four sweet-looking “Peanuts”-type tykes (Stan, Parker’s cartoon alter-ego; Kyle, Stone’s doppelganger; Cartman, the “big-boned” kid who’s the nastiest of the nasty; and the oft-killed Kenny), Stone and Parker created a pop-culture phenomenon of “Mecha-Streisand” proportions.

“This is one of those shows where either we hear people telling us how much they love it or we hear how much they want us dead,” Stone says. “There is no middle ground.”

Only in South Park, Colo., would Satan and Jesus face off in a WWE-style showdown. Only in South Park would the yuletide season bring a somewhat disturbing visit from Mr. Hankey, “the Christmas Poo.” Only on “South Park” would an 8-year-old join NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, so he can make “older” friends. Only on “South Park” would a statue of the Virgin Mary miraculously begin to bleed ... from the ass!

Mind you, there also are times when Parker and Stone’s only agenda seems to be doing something nasty purely to be doing something nasty. But one could argue that even then, they’re striking back against political correctness and censorship.

So what kind of warped minds cook this stuff up?

“Matt and I are like really boring people,” Parker says. “We met in film school at the University of Colorado.”

“We were like the only two people [in the program] who were into comedy and doing weird little films that weren’t black-and-white, sexual exploration pieces,” Stone adds. “We were the only two people who did not want to be Martin Scorsese. So we were kind of thrown together.”

They bonded over a shared love of politically incorrect humor.

“Our biggest influence is Monty Python,” Parker says. “I remember watching their show as a kid, not even getting a lot of it, but knowing it was funny. They were saying stuff that, if you said it in school, you got smacked in the mouth. It was, ‘Oh, you’re not supposed to make fun of that, are you?’”

“South Park” revels in that you-can’t-do-that-on-television philosophy.

For example, Parker says, “The sight of Jesus made of out construction paper is just funny. I remember, when we were doing ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ [which was the precursor to ‘South Park’], I was laughing the whole time.”

As for celebrities, “South Park” mercilessly mocks people like Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton and Bono because, well, they’re just asking for it.

“If anything, we do it only because we think our celebrity-obsessed culture isn’t exactly healthy,” Stone says. “They get lauded so much that it’s all blown out of proportion. Besides, most of the time – in fact, all of the time – we’re not ripping on the celebrity so much as on the celebrity image.

“It’s like, when we turned Barbra Streisand into a mechanical monster, some people said, ‘Oh, my God, what did Barbra Streisand ever do to you?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never met Barbra Streisand and I honestly hope I never do.’ She’s talented and all that. But it’s not like she found the cure for fucking polio.”

Stone and Parker recently extended their contract with Comedy Central to keep “South Park” up and running through 2011.

So what taboos remain that can be broken in the seasons to come?

“I wish I knew,” Parker says. “But the truth is, ever since ‘South Park’ started, it’s been this kind of thing where we do it the week before. At first, Comedy Central was always yelling at us, ‘You’ve got to figure out a way to get them done earlier. You can’t keep cutting it this close.’”

Then something happened to make the network executives change their tune. The “South Park” guys decided to do an episode paralleling the story of Elian Gonzalez, the boy who, in a custody battle between his Miami relatives and Cuban father, became the pawn in an ideological dispute between the U.S. and Cuba.

“We only had four days to do an episode and we had no idea what it was go to be,” Parker recalls. “It was going to air on Wednesday and, on Friday, we had no show. So we said, ‘Let’s just do a show on the whole Elian Gonzalez thing.’”

So on that Easter Sunday, as the “South Park” team was in the office working out a plot for the episode titled “Quintuplets 2000,” a border patrol tactical team raided the Miami home where Gonzalez was staying and took the boy.

“We were like, ‘There it is! There’s the third act!’” Parker continues. “So we put a raid in our show. As it was happening, we were watching television and writing stuff and giving it to the animators. We didn’t think anything of it. As far as we were concerned, we were doing another episode in four days, which we’ve done so many times.”

But many viewers and the media hailed it as a groundbreaking achievement in animation: an episode that was truly timely, topical and relevant.

After that, Parker says, the network execs climbed off their backs about delivering down-to-the-wire episodes and “just let us do our thing.”

Now, after a decade of “South Park,” Stone and Parker are obscenely rich. Their new deal with Comedy Central reportedly will pay them $75 million over the next four years. But they maintain that success hasn’t really changed them.

They still believe that nothing is sacred. They still see themselves as “equal opportunity offenders,” which is to say that absolutely no one can watch without seeing something to be offended by. And even though they’re pleased when viewers love their work, they’d still rather be hated than ignored.

Says Stone: “You’re not really doing anything that has any relevance on the culture, if no one’s having to form any opinions about it.”

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