Comedy Central Hypocrisy

The last two weeks of South Park have featured a storyline in which the Islamic prophet Muhammed is the subject of various kidnapping plots by both a coalition of mocked celebrities from South Park's previous episodes and a group of angry "gingers" (red haired kids who, according to Cartman on the show, "have no soul").

In the second episode, airing April 23, 2010, any mention of Muhammed's name was bleeped out and any depiction of him was censored with a black bar.  This was in reaction to a posted warning on a website called "revolutionislam" which tacitly threatened the show's creators with the same death which befell a Dutch filmmaker who was critical of Islam.

They hypocrisy of Comedy Central is blatant, obvious, and disgusting.  Kowtowing to a group of extremist religionists, bowing to threats made by extremists, is cowardly and servile.  It's not in keeping at all with the free expression South Park has enjoyed in the past where they equally targeted any and all public figures for satire.  In the US, you have the right to say pretty much anything you want, but you do NOT have the right to not be offended.

Searching through the South Park archives, I found an episode from season 5, in July of 2001, called "Super Best Friends".  It freely depicts Muhammed as a super hero alongside Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tze, Krishna, Joseph Smith, and Seaman.  9/11 was obviously just a few months later and the world suddenly turned into a terrorized planet where even the mention of some illiterate, nomadic sheepherder from the Middle East of 1400 years ago was punishable by threats of violence.

Fuck that.

Here's Super Best Friend, Muhammed:

[caption id="attachment_560" align="alignright" width="291" caption="Ironically enough, he has the power of "fire"][/caption]

Also, here's the clip of the show itself:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEg-BKAVEzc

And just in case YouTube removes the video, here it is again on a different server:

sps5e4-1 This is a Quicktime file

sps5e4-1 Here is a Windows file

And if that video gets taken down, I'll find another server and another.  Want to display the video on your server?  Contact me.

*EDIT*  Some people are saying that Viacom is already blocking the YouTube video.  If that's true for you, simply use the secondary links for Quicktime or Windows.  More video uploads are happening now and I will post them here as I finish.

DailyMotion video link:  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xd25a3_south-park-depicting-muhammed-free already blocked

Vimeo:  http://vimeo.com/11179002

File download:

The following links contain a zipped file of both the Quicktime and Windows media formats:

MegaUpload

RapidShare