It appears that after the censoring of the Muhammad in their cartoons, the makers of South Park have learned their lesson; they have learned that when some shuts you up for offending people, then it's time to scream louder and offend even more people.
There is a new show being developed that many, including myself, do not think that they will even allow it to hit the actual line up. The show is slated to be called "JC" and the premise of the show is that Jesus has come to New York to escape his father, and the reputation that follows him.
Christian groups heard of this, and they were outraged, it appears that the length of time the cartoon has gently poked at religion was close enough, but an entire show dedicated to it is an entirely different issue, the leaders of several religious conservative groups have formed a new group that is being called, "Citizens against Religious Bigotry" or CARB.
They are against this whole heartedly now, they say the entire purpose of the show is to mock and be offensive to Christians.
CARB has sent out 250 letters to Comedy Central advertisers asking them to not advertise for the show, even though the advertisers have not even seen the show yet.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the president of the alliance of Jews and Christians said, "To exclude only Islam" from your comedy "is a sort of pathetic amalgam of hypocrisy and cowardice".
They now all want the same censor that Islam got, and this is exactly what draws Muhammad day was all about. The cowardice of the company allowed itself to be open to be censored by anyone that gests offended.
The heart of the comedy of the south park series is that it highlights affairs of the common society, mocks it, satirizes it, and then puts it down for the viewers to think about.
With no sense of mockery, there is no way to do this, the true source of comedy stems from other peoples tragedy, so as long as everyone gets a chance to be mocked, all people get a chance to laugh as well.
People have come to a point that their beliefs they have are so certain that it is undeniable, yet they also know that they have no proof of what they claim. This is why tension is so high. If they did an episode around the concept of people that denied the theory of gravity, no one would care, people would either find it stupid, some would find it funny, but no one would get offended.
That is because we know gravity to exist, and no one needs convincing of this, and we don't have to constantly re-affirm our faith in gravity for it to be a good thing.
People really need to consider that if their belief can be damaged so easily as someone making a joke at its expense then we need to really think about the reality and honesty of the belief to begin with.
If we get to silence people about their beliefs and their sense of humor simply because it offends us, at what point do I get to stand up and ban television preachers? I don't want to see that day that I can. I can simply not watch it, I can simply ignore it, and go about my life as if it never even was on television believe it or not.
Freedom for all or freedom for none. They are the only two options available. So if you want to keep your freedom to believe as you so choose, then you need to grow a thicker hide.
For links to other articles I've written,
http://rlwoodsiii.blogspot.com/for the original article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn...