Comedy Central Grovels Before Violent Islamists

Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Foreign Affairs & Policy

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have consistently produced some of the best social satire in the 14 years that the show has been on the air. In celebration of their 200th episode, they did a mash-up of many of the story lines they’ve dealt with over the years, including the use of Muhammed.

After the first half of the show aired, a Muslim website threatened the pair with violence for referencing Muhammed. In response, Comedy Central censored the second half of the show.

It’s rare that I find anything said by Andrew Sullivan to be quotable or worth discussing, but he summed it up well:

…It actually helped illuminate the unique intolerance of Sunni Islam among world religions today. SP has long had Jesus and Satan, they have ridiculed Mormonism, eviscerated Scientology, mocked Catholicism and showed the Buddha actually doing lines of coke. None of the adherents of these other faiths have threatened to kill Matt and Trey, but, of course, some Sunni Islamists did so.

So what does Comedy Central do? They wussed out even further. They bleeped even mentions of the name of Muhammed spoken by characters.

Matt and Trey responded to the censoring with this statement:

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.

The sadly ironic part has been bolded. Comedy Central ought to be ashamed for caving to such threats, thereby encouraging continued radical Islamist violence.