If Comedy Central ever had a reputation for being an “edgy” channel it has lost it now. The story of the channel’s decision to, uh, tinker with episode 201 of South Park ought to be well known to many who look at this blog, but some useful background can be found, courtesy of the New York Times here.
The story begins with episode 200:
On April 14 Comedy Central broadcast the 200th episode of “South Park,” a cartoon that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have produced for that channel since 1997. In honor of the occasion, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone populated the episode with nearly all the famous people their show has lampooned in its history, including celebrities like Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand, as well as major religious figures, like Moses, Jesus and Buddha. Cognizant that Islam forbids the depiction of its holiest prophet, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker showed their “South Park” characters agonizing over how to bring Muhammad to their fictional Colorado town. At first the character said to be Muhammad is confined to a U-Haul trailer, and is heard speaking but is not shown. Later in the episode the character is let out of the trailer, dressed in a bear costume.
That triggered an ominous comment from precisely one Muslim website, and here’s what happened next:
In a new episode of “South Park” broadcast Wednesday on Comedy Central, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone exercised a degree of self-censorship. In continuing the previous week’s story line about the Prophet Muhammad, that character was hidden underneath a “CENSORED” graphic, and an audio bleep was heard when his name was said. But in a message that appeared Thursday morning on SouthParkStudios.com, the Web site of Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker’s company, the studio said that Comedy Central had imposed further changes to the show. “After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode,” the message said. It added that the network was not allowing the episode to be streamed on the Web site, where “South Park” shows generally appear after they are broadcast on Comedy Central.A spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed on Thursday that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the version delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not permitting the episode to be shown on the studio’s Web site.
That’s appalling. Nevertheless Comedy Central (a part of Viacom) is privately owned and it has the right not to show whatever it wants. That said, it would be interesting to know if Viacom will react in quite the same way to the now-inevitable complaints from other religious groups “offended” by the portrayal of one of their holy men in a future Comedy Central show. If it does not cave in to those complaints, it should attempt to defend the double standard – in all its humiliating detail. And if it does cave in, it will have provided yet another helpful example of just how corrosive to freedom of speech the fear of “giving offense” really is.
A Seattle cartoonist named Molly Norris has proclaimed May 20 to be “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” in support of South Park.
And–make a note of this, guys–Jennifer McCreight has declared this coming Monday (April 26) to be Boobquake Day. McCreight is urging women worldwide to show off their cleavage as a means of counteracting the theory recently proposed by an Iranian cleric that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes.
This quote is from The Marriage of Figaro, the play written in 1778:
“I sketched a comedy about harem life; being a Spanish writer, I assumed I could be irreverent towards Mohammed without any scruples: but at once an Envoy from somewhere complained that my versus offended the Sublime Porte, Persia, a part of India, all Egypt, the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco; and there was my comedy burned, to please some Mohammedan princes not one of whom I suppose knows how to read, and who keep cursing away at us all as “Christian dogs” — not being able to degrade the human spirit, they take revenge by abusing it.”
The more things change…
I read that article too. As much as I want to bash Comedy Central over their decision, I know that what’s really to blame are the overly litigious and irrational people in this world. Comedy Central was simply making the best business decision possible under the circumstances, much in the way that the Supreme Court has done the complete opposite over the years: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2010/04/08/the-last-100-years-of-the-supreme-court/
Article: “Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the New York Police Department was “aware of the threat, and we’ve looked at it.”
He added, “We don’t think that this threat, as is currently assessed, rises to a crime right now.”
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly apparently thinks that making threats is A-OK as long as Special people are doing it.
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Giving in to Muslim demands teaches them that they’re in charge. This is an ugly precedent.