South Park censorship controversy: Not Without My Famous

Last night’s episode of South Park saw the network  censor a great deal of content in a way not intended by the creators. The action suggests that the network was scared of backlash by radicals. It’s nice to Muslim brothers and sisters taking cartoons seriously. If only they would tone it down a little.

Let me put this out there. I have no problem with South Park’s previous or current portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad. The taboo against depicting Muhammad only applies to Muslims. The reason there is a taboo is to prevent an image from dominating  the teachings — As is the case with White Jesus and God as an old man in Christian tradition.

The Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad as a bomb, suggesting inherent Islamic support of terrorism, are hateful provocateur scribblings supported by a foundation of  anti-immigrant bigotry.The authors deserve to be called out as cowardly chauvinists, safely bashing a persecuted minority behind native majority privilege, instead of threatened with death. Death threats just  provide them a level of possibly necessary security and a martyrdom complex to hide behind along with the privileges that allowed them to bash minorities in the first place .

The South Park portrayals are not as edgy as everyone thinks they are, and surely not malicious enough to deserve angry rebukes, much less death threats.

To the islamophobic trolls — I assure you that the classic April Fools episode Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus got a lot more angry messages than the 200th episode, which got a single threat. The site where the threat appeared got hacked shortly after anyway. I know nothing ever satisfies trolls, but I would call it even.

South Park hasn’t been relevant or funny for a long time. It isn’t a stretch to day that this was a big stunt go get people interested in South Park again. Gee, whudagreataudience!