oh good grief...do they even bother to really watch their own shows?

[acroyear]

Appearantly, South Park did this episode this week where the kids actually tell FOX that they shouldn't be afraid of picturing Muhammed (specifically, Muhammed was going to give a football helmet to Family Guy), because that would be giving in to the terrorists.

And so it worked, and the episode was going to show the fictional Family Guy scene as described.  Only it didn't - it was replaced with a black screen describing what was going to be seen.  And at first it was thought that it was just a multi-layered satire (which would have been brilliant). 

However, it turned out that Comedy Central itself actually cut the scene out, saying today: "In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision." (Parker and Stone were notified a few weeks ago that it was going to be cut.)

So the CC execs completely missed the point of the episode, or completely failed to realize that they themselves were the target of that episode.  To make matters worse, they displayed great hypocricy in their great concern for sensitivity to the Muslim community, as they completely ignored the Christian community because that very same episode has "Jesus" being rather disgusting.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Comedy Central Censors South Park:

But the rest of us should condemn them for their cowardice and their hypocrisy. They've allowed South Park to make brutal fun of anything and everything except this, and that sends one and only one message: threats of violence work. Threaten us with violence and we'll cave in and do whatever you want.

Oh, and to confuse matters more, Comedy Central has shown Muhammad on screen before, on South Park, in the episode titled, "Super Best Friends" (various prophets and sages become Justice League-style superheroes). And apperantly THAT went without any public reponse or outcry at all...

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

oh dear.

[motherwell.livejournal.com]

It seems like Cowardly Central is following the strategy articulated by Cartman: censor one scene in one show, but show another scene that offends a different group, virtually begging that group to protest and cause a scene; set a precedent for censorship, so that CC either censor other scenes or look like hypocrites; and thus keep on censoring scenes until the series isn't worth running anymore. A more honest approach, of course, would be to say: "We're cancelling 'South Park' because we feel it's tasteless and offensive."

It's possible that CC are making a big show of caving in to threats in order to generate buzz and free publicity, and later on they'll re-air the show uncensored, to show how brave they are. I vaguely remember bookstore chains doing something similar in response to Khomeini's fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

I caught Part One of this segment, and honestly thought the walking black block next to the in-cartoon "Peter Griffin" was Matt and Trey's doing, which at the time I thought was an even more brilliant bit of satire. Then at the very end of the segment where they asked, "...or will Comedy Central pussy out?" set me to wondering if it was really satire or not.

*sigh* I take it the second half decisively concluded that CC did, indeed, pussy out. Pathetic.

Well, that'll probably be another "bonus segment" to be included in the DVD set, right alongside the Scientology episode that so upset Tom Cruise (and Isaac Hayes), and the "Virgin bleeding out her ass" episode that so incensed the Vatican. South Park's doin' great this season! Hope Matt and Trey can still manage to work in stories offensive to Hindus and Buddhists before the season wraps.