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For those of you out there without cable or DirecTV, you missed South Park at its best last night. In the final half of a two part series, the kids and their big wheels took the Danish cartoon controversy head on, calling out Cartoon Network and Viacom on their hypocrisy. AP has a good round up of what it was all about. Two-thirs of the way through the article, well, let's just say this bit surprised me:

A frequent "South Park" critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored. "The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central — that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not — it's Parker and Stone," he said. "Like little whores, they'll sit there and grab the bucks. They'll sit there and they'll whine and they'll take their shot at Jesus. That's their stock in trade."

Matt and Trey were called "little whores" by the spokesman for the Catholic League? Ironic word choice, given what the big guy himself once had to say:

1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

As for the whole resignation thing, I think Donohue is (as usual) badly missing the point. Matt and Trey created an episode that would clearly be offensive to both Christians and Muslims. To the first group, an animated version of Jesus defecating on Bush and the American flag would without a doubt be offensive. I found watching that part a bit like watching The Aristocrats - I was laughing my ass off, but I felt REALLY guilty about it. And to the second group, the image of Muhammad delivering raw salmon on a bicycle helmet to Family Guy's Peter would be equally offensive. And I suppose there's a third group - Family Guy supporters. Watching Bart Simpson and Cartman team up to trash their show couldn't have been easy to watch, no?

Predictably Cartoon Network decided to air the first segment but not the second. But that's precisely the point. The entire show was about censorship, tolerance, and intellectual freedom. As these guys always do, they took on EVERYONE, from Bart Simpson to Jesus. But Cartoon Network only censored one 3 second portion of the show, as if somehow that part was more offensive.

What Donohue is missing is that exposing hypocrisy was the entire point of the show. As the kids kept saying, its all or nothing. Either you censor all of it or you censor nothing, because as soon as you give in to the demands of one group, there's no ethical reason not to give in to everyone. It wasn't a critique of Islam or Christianity. It was a critique of us, of our society, and of how badly we missed the point of the Danish Cartoon controversy. Most of the show was spent watching the parents in town town overreact by quite literally burying their heads in the sand. By burying their heads, they believed they could claim they hadn't seen the images, and that as a result they couldn't be held responsible for them. If they buried their heads, they thought the terrorists would leave them alone. If they made sure no one saw the cartoons....

So resign? Hell no. Viacom censoring their show only makes their action more powerful. It only adds to their critique. They're trying to get people to wake up, to recognize what's happening and talk about it. The fact that they provoked such an illogical response from the spokesman for the Catholic League only underscores how important and successful their actions have been.

UPDATE: Want more details on this? Ask and ye shall receive.

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