If you don’t watch the TV show South Park, or um…. follow the news in any fashion, you may have missed the fact that the writers of South Park, Matt Stone (Jewish) and Trey Parker, received some pretty serious death threats because of their portrayal of the prophet Muhammad as a bear (and discussion of censorship and fear around depicting the Prophet at all) in Episode 200.
Despite these death threats, these controversial and brave cartoonists decided to run Episode 201 once again portraying Mohammed as a bear.
If you watch the video of Episode 201 below, your first reaction will likely be curiosity – were the cartoonists trying to laugh at themselves by bleeping and censoring the entire episode? No. Their statement on the subject explains that Comedy Central bowed to the Death Threats and censored the show independently of the cartoonists.
The Huffington Post reported that Matt Stone and Trey Parker issued this statement on April 22nd:
“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.”
By the way, if you google this issue, you’ll notice that most of the people who write about this subject, like me, haven’t included an image of Muhammad as a bear in their articles. As they say, it’s low benefit, high risk. But really, how f—ed up is that?
You can read all the articles you want on this subject elsewhere, but only TC Jewfolk puts all the videos about the South Park death threats in one easy-to-view-and-easy-to-get-frickin-pissed-off location. Check them out:
Episode 200 – The South Park Episode (in relevant part) which started the controversy.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZkJ6reIP1U
Episode 201 – The South Park Episode censored by Comedy Central
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bse9GmHJ7U
And my personal favorite….
Jon Stewart railing on the South Park Death Threats, plus his special message for those who threaten death in the name of religion or politics
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| South Park Death Threats | ||||
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I find it funny there’s the prohibition against depicting Muhammad (which isn’t actually in the Quran, but obviously derived from the Torah prohibition against graven images), but you can have pictures hung everywhere of people like Khomeini in Iran. When I was in Morocco and I couldn’t buy a bottle of coke from a street vendor without looking at the mug of the Moroccan king posted above refrigerator with another above the street plaza staring down imposingly. You’d think he was the next contestant for Arab idol if you didn’t know any better!