“That's where we kind of agree with some of the people who've criticized our show,” Stone says. “Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We've had him say bad words. We've had him shoot a gun. We've had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn't just show a simple image.”
During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted—benignly, Stone and Parker say—the show ran a black screen that read: “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.”
Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots—claiming they were refraining because they're religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.
“No you're not,” Stone retorts. “You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: ‘We're afraid of getting blown up.’”
Via Instapundit [1], “ABC News: Secrets of ‘South Park’ [2]”
Another problem with writing entries after the fact [3], even with notes, is forgetting about the notes. I had ment to blog this last week.
Sigh.
Anyway, I have respect for the creators of South Park [4]—they go after everybody eventually, even if it means loosing a cast member [5] (and they were aware that it was a possible outcome).
It also doesn't hurt that the show is uproariously funny.
And yes, they do have a point—criticise Islam and deal with death threats [6] (even The Last Temptation of Christ [7] never garnered its author or filmmakers a governmental and religiously sanctioned death threat (The Satanic Verses) [8]).
[1] http://instapundit.com/archives/032754.php
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Entertainment/story?id=2479197&page
[4] http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/southpark/
[5] http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1525988/20060313/issac_hayes.jhtml?hea
[6] http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/09/french-professor-goes-into-
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ