Censorship on “South Park”

Over the years South Park has made fun of a lot of cultures, celebrities, religions and politics. However South Park has never actually been unable to show and mention a person on South Park. Due to a threat from www.revolutionmuslim.com, Comedy Central not only censored an image of Muhammad on the episode April 20, which was its 200th episode, but all mentions of his name as well as a speech at the end about not giving in to fear and intimidation which, interestingly enough didn’t even have Muhammad mention in it to begin with. So why, why would Comedy Central censor its highest rated show on its most watched episode that evening? “In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too,” says Trey Parker and Matt Stone the creators of South Park.

Another question that needs answering is why would Comedy Central give in to a terrorist threat? The fact that they would give into terrorist demands makes this issue blown out of proportion. South Park makes fun of all kinds of religions. In fact, when they first showed Muhammad on South Park he was shown to be a part of a group of religious figures in super friends cartoon-like fashion. Sure the episode was partially making fun of Muhammad, but that episode was also making fun of every celebrity that was ever made fun of on South Park. There were at least 70 other celebrities that were made fun of as well as several other religious figures like Buddha and Jesus Christ, both of whom were made fun of a lot worse than Muhammad has ever been made fun of on South Park.

“It doesn’t mean anything”, says Asif Ali. If you weigh the odds on how many more inappropriate things Comedy Central has let South Park do and say on their show, then them censoring this episode seems like a bad case of judgment on their part.