I'm fully behind the message Parker and Stone were trying to deliver with last night's South Park, but Comedy Central's self-censoring was hardly a surprise and definitely not unique. Christian groups and Scientologists have both succeeded in getting pulled the re-broadcasts of South Park episodes that they found offensive recently. Do I wish that Comedy Central had more backbone? Yep. But that applies for both the rebroadcasts that were pulled and the censoring of the Mohammed image last night. This a growing trend for Comedy Central in regards to religious pressure in general, not just Islam. A lot of people are putting it on a parrallel with the recent cartoon riots and making it all about Islam. It isn't. Islam was part of the message last night, but it wasn't the whole message.
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And before I get the comment to this effect, I can and do differentiate between the innocuous image of Mohammed last night and the gross imagery of the Bloddy Mary episode, but unfortunately the Scientology epsiode was just as innocuous as last night's. Parker and Stone were spot on with their intended main message, which was essentially, "Islam can shit on President Bush, Jesus, and the American people but we can't show Mohammed just standing there." But the secondary message played out in Cartman's quest to kill Family Guy by getting just one episode pulled, not because he was truely offended but because he just didn't like it.
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