After so many years, it's not surprising that South Park would have some hit or miss episodes, but the previous two episodes were fantastic.  Good for Parker and Stone for pushing the Islam envelope, and shame on Comedy Central for once again caving to pressure.  You have to beep Muhammad's name and black him out when he's wearing a bear costume?  Thanks for showing how deep the hypocrisy goes.  Buddha can do coke, and Jesus watches porn and poops on George Bush...but we can't even say the name Muhammad on TV anymore.

So a cartoonist declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day"...and then backed out when the idea went viral.

What a bunch of wimps we've become.

Free speech is easy to defend when it's uncontroversial.  All this hullabaloo about freedom of speech to criticize Bush's war or Obama's health care plan.  No one is threatening our freedom to do any of that.  We throw around "freedom of speech" for the frivolous things and like to pretend we're being brave by "speaking truth to power."  Oooh, your "free speech" might get some mean comments on your blog or make your co-worker ticked off.  But there is a real and growing threat from radical Islam that we've been childishly ignoring for far too long.  It is times like this that it's most important to stand up and defend the right of cartoonists to draw whatever satire they wish.  It's crucial to make a stand and say that we refuse to be cowed by ignorant barbarians who seek to threaten and murder others for holding different beliefs.  Or just for making a joke they don't like.

I'm drawing Muhammad here on May 20th.  The lady who came up with the idea for the day may have decided she's too scared to stand up for her values, but I think it's of the utmost importance for many people to band together and say that we're not going to accept this pandering to Muslims anymore.

And if I were Parker and Stone, I'd put Muhammad in every single episode from now on.

Man, I love those guys.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1  AGREED!  I saw a tweet from someone I follow the other day.  It was awesome, so I'll just copy and paste it here:

"Derka derka. RT @ExJon: If your religion is endangered by a crudely drawn cartoon, it's time to re-evaluate your belief system. #teamsouthpark"

I think I will participate in Everybody Draw Muhammed day, too.  Sounds like fun.

Posted by: Deltasierra at April 26, 2010 06:47 PM (/Mv9b)

2 The South Park incident reminded me of a passage from Sebastian Haffner's memoir about growing up in Germany in the 1930s. Haffner was a refendar, something like a law clerk, at the Kammergericht, the Prussian high court. That morning, the court had bowed to the Nazis demands and all Jewish judges and other employees had been expelled. In the evening, Haffner went to a comedy club, the Katakombe, with his girlfriend. The performer was a man named Werner Fink:

His act remained full of harmless amiability in a country where these qualities were on the liquidation list. This harmless amiability hid a kernel of real, indomitable courage. He dared to speak openly about the reality of the Nazis, and that in the middle of Germany. His patter contained references to concentration camps, the raids on people’s homes, the general fear and general lies. He spoke of these things with infinitely quiet mockery, melancholy, and sadness. Listening to him was extraordinarily comforting.

In the morning, the Prussian Kammergericht, with its tradition of hundreds of years, had ignobly capitulated before the Nazis. In the same evening, a small troop of artistes, with no tradition to back them up, demonstrated the courage to speak forbidden thoughts. "The Kammergericht had fallen but the Katakombe stood upright."

(my review of Haffner's book is here)

Posted by: david foster at April 27, 2010 09:16 AM (Gis4X)

3

Great idea but why limit it to one day and just a picture? We should name our dogs Mohammed, our pork dishes should have the name Mohammed in them (Mohammed ribs anyone?) and lastly we should call our more unpleasant tasks/experiences after the war mongering, pedophile - “Man, I just took a big ole Mohammed”., “Dude, you just stepped in Mohammed.” The possibilities are endless!

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2010 11:46 AM (vb4Ci)

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