Comedy Central: Scared of Free Speech
I haven’t seen last night’s South Park episode yet, but I intend to ASAP. From an article on CNN.com:
Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the creators of “South Park” skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon’s most recent episode.
The comedy — in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians — instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag.
[…]
Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Mohammed, according to a person close to the show who didn’t want to be identified because of the issue’s sensitivity.
The network’s decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said.
Comedy Central said in a statement issued Thursday: “In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.” Its executives would not comment further.
Comedy Central’s decision is based off of the rather bigoted notion that American Muslims will violently react to something shown on a basic cable cartoon show. Incredibly, Cartoon Network apparantly believes that it would be held responsible for such a violent reaction.
Of course, where there’s defecation, there’s Bill Donohue:
A frequent “South Park” critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored.
“The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central — that’s their decision not to show the image of Mohammed or not — it’s Parker and Stone,” he said. “Like little whores, they’ll sit there and grab the bucks. They’ll sit there and they’ll whine and they’ll take their shot at Jesus. That’s their stock in trade.”
If they’re whores, then consider me a gentleman caller.
