Thursday, April 22, 2010

Knee-Jerk Dhimmitude

I’ve never been a fan of South Park, but ever since their show took on Mohammed, I’ve admired Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their guts — and their willingness to swim against the Hollywood tide. A few years ago Comedy Central censored their depiction of Mohammed, but Parker and Stone knew about it in advance, and built the censorship into their story line.

Fully understanding the rules of the new mo-game, their recent episode featuring Mohammed put the prophet into a bear suit to protect him from the noisome gaze of filthy infidel South Park fans. Needless to say, Muslims from every crud-encrusted corner of the globe rose up as one to protest this new insult to the honor of the prophet. A radical Muslim group even made a video promising the South Park duo the same punishment that was meted out to Theo Van Gogh.

And Comedy Central responded by telling Islam it could go take a flying leap, that there was no way they would ever restrict the creative freedom of their artists…

Hah-hah! My mistake! That isn’t what really happened; I must have been thinking of an alternate universe. Maybe the one in which Jimmy Carter was never elected president and George W. Bush never said that Islam means “peace”.

Here’s the real story, according to Lachlan Markay at NewsBusters:

Comedy Central Caves, Censors ‘South Park’ From Even Saying ‘Muhammed’

The elite gatekeepers of American pop culture huff and puff about freedom of speech. But when political correctness actually threatens that right, Hollywood’s stalwart defenders of free expression are nowhere to be found.

Last night, Comedy Central gave into threats of violence against the creators of the animated sitcom “South Park” and not only censored the image of the Muslim prophet Muhammed — as it had last week and in one previous episode — but even censored every verbal mention of the prophet’s name (see the video below the fold).

The decision came days after a radical New York-based Muslim fundamentalist group warned that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show’s creators, would be killed for supposedly mocking Muhammed.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” wrote Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee on the website of the group Revolution Muslim. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Theo Van Gogh was the Dutch filmmaker who was brutally murdered in 2004 for making a movie critical of Islam’s views on women.

Comedy Central did not respond to requests for comment. The New York Times reported, however, that “a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.”
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The irony of the whole situation is that the threats of violence against Parker and Stone — and Comedy Central’s reaction to those threats — drives home the point of the two episodes that sparked outrage from hard-line fundamentalists: Islam is the only world religion — indeed, perhaps the only large-scale organization on Earth — that has succeeded in insulating itself from criticism.

Indeed, in last night’s episode Parker and Stone showed Buddha snorting cocaine, and vulgarly bickering with Jesus Christ, who, it is suggested, is a compulsive consumer of pornography. So while Comedy Central gave into demands the word Muhammed not even be mentioned, other prophets were portrayed in tremendously offensive ways.

(As seen in the picture at the top right, Muhammed also appeared in a 2001 episode of “South Park” — before the publication of the Danish cartoons that sent the world into a terrified tailspin towards political correctness. That episode is still available online, fire-shooting superhero Muhammed and all.)

For all Hollywood’s claims that it is edgy and pushes the boundaries of the socially acceptable, a bastion of mainstream pop culture could not even bring itself to say the name of a religious figure.

South Park is legendary for its take-no-prisoners attitude to ridiculing, well, everyone. It is the scourge of political correctness, taking on public figures from the Pope, to Al Gore, to Tiger Woods. Yet somehow, in the midst of all of the occasionally offensive, yet undeniably funny things that South Park has done and said, Muhammed is off limits.

See the original article for the video.

I hardly need to point out that this has been another very successful probe for Islam in America, right up there with the Flying Imams.


Hat tip: Zenster.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

"Abu Talhah Al-Amriki"??
So that's an American!?
They shouldn't take a converted jail bait seriously - smoke him out and lock him up!

EscapeVelocity said...

“This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Dont bring Muslims into your country.

MauserMedic said...

But: the overt censorship sends a message of its own, which will energize a number of people in the audience. There's a significant percentage of American's that do not respect being told that they aren't permitted to see or hear something because they aren't worthy. This will draw attention to Islam's attitude toward The Other, alternatively known as everyone who isn't a Muslim. It will raise awareness, and that is something sadly lacking in most of our population.

heroyalwhyness said...

Quote: "A radical Muslim group even made a video promising the South Park duo the same punishment that was meted out to Theo Van Gogh."

Followup by msm, CNN's Anderson Cooper re: Muslims Threaten To Kill South Park Creators

this video includes the unedited "South Park" clip and goes on to have CNN's Drew Griffin interview Younes Abdullah Mohammed, one of the founders of "Revolution Muslim", source of this threat.

Younes Abdullah Mohammed, who is introduced as one who doesn't see anything wrong in what he states, dislikes the United States and desperately yearns for a Muslim world, states at 4:36:

MOHAMMED: We're commanded to terrorize the disbelievers.

GRIFFIN: Commanded to terrorize the disbelievers?

MOHAMMED: The Koran says very clearly in the Arabic language: (UNINTELLIGIBLE, porhiguna?)"Terrorize them." It's a command from Allah!

Zenster said...

Excellent comment, heroyalwhyness, especially your quoting of the statements by Mr. Younes Abdullah Mohammed. It's pretty easy to tell who America’s enemies are when they do not denounce the 9-11 atrocity. One day, scum like Abdullah will learn to curse bin Laden's name because of how his atrocities triggered Islam’s end.

Anderson Cooper’s linked CNN reportage was surprisingly on target. It was vital that Parker and Stone had an opportunity to go on record as opposing any special treatment for Islam, despite Comedy Central's own self-abasement.

Cooper's reference to the Danish Motoons provided crucial perspective about this current struggle to defend Freedom of Speech. The stalwart attitude of people like political cartoonist Kurt Westergaard make for a very unflattering contrast to the prevailing atmosphere of submission (every bit of irony intended), demonstrated by modern media in its refusal to criticize Islam.

How is it that recent generations−raised amidst some of the least repressive societal norms regarding individual expression and public behavior−are among the readiest to self-censor when Islam enters the room?

Too often, this younger generation demonstrates a sense of entitlement that defies all customary restraint in terms of acceptable conduct. How is it then that they are often among the very first to go all quiet about Islam’s frontal assault upon the Freedom of Expression that they take such advantage of? More importantly, why is it that a much older generation of someone like Kurt Westergaard clearly places more value on such freedoms despite coming from a time where personal expression was, often voluntarily, much more restrained?

Short answer? Much of this younger generation is a bunch of spineless whingeing little crybabies that simply cannot tolerate no one being on call to wipe their pampered little arses. They vigorously embrace a doctrine of Multicultural Politically Correct Moral and Cultural Relativism that will eventually kill them and much of modern civilization in the process.

Long answer? People of Westergaard’s generation fought and died in the cause of human liberty. They battled against tyrants and thugs identical to the Islamic fascists that confront us today. More clearly than anybody, they see the striking parallels between traditional Islam and the totalitarian ideologies of Nazism and Communism that would normally alarm even the most tepid minds.

The West’s most recent generations have enjoyed unprecedented security, prosperity, freedom and opportunity that were unheard of even a single century ago. With little to no comprehension of how hard won these benisons of modern civilization were, they see little harm in meekly surrendering them in the face of Islam’s menacing bullies. Little do they know that, once forsaken, such liberties are rarely regained without even more bloodshed than it originally took to secure them.

In yet one more ghastly way, the eventual butcher’s bill is upped again. We already face a horrendous loss of life because modern Western leadership adamantly refuses to retaliate against Islam’s repeated onslaughts. Their stalling brings us still closer to the looming Muslim holocaust and needlessly forces even more of us into the impending mêlée. As always, Islam licks it chops at the notion of such wholesale slaughter and cannot wait for the bloodbath to begin.

The post WWII generation’s feckless disregard for how precious modern Freedoms are only adds one more round of carnage that will be needed to overcome this latest threat to humanity. The mass murder of Hitler, Tojo, Stalin and Mao dims in our collective memory even as we come face to face with their modern day equivalent.

Were that we might be so lucky as only to repeat history. In this age of nuclear weapons, it is much more likely that we will make history with an avoidable genocide that Islam continues to thrust upon us.