Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

So now Comedy Central finally goes and does the unthinkable and censors South Park for religious satire. So It was OK when it was Jews, Christians, Mormons, Scientology and just about any other religious and ethnic group in the world - but Muslims and Mohammad in a bear suit is apparently where the line is drawn. They cower in terror to the threats of some 20 year-old kid turned radical Islamic nutjob.

The guy claims it wasn't a threat, though I would say sharing the addresses of Matt Parker and Trey Stone with Muslims in the nutjob clique kinda seems that way.

The creators of South Park didn't back down and, hell, they never do. That's why I can respect them. I can't really get offended when they go after all things equally. Nothing should be safe in satire - that's the whole point. No one gets to be a special case above ridicule or criticism.

CC even went so far as to censor the moral of the story, too.

This is not thuper.

[Feba]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

What makes you think they ever had balls? They've been doing this for years. The only reason Mohammed made it into the Super Best Friends at all was because nobody cared back then.

They cower in terror to the threats of some 20 year-old kid turned radical Islamic nutjob.

Yes, pretty much exactly. Scientology is the only other group on that list that presents a threat of physical harm, and that's far smaller, since those sorts of things tend to be organized by the church itself-- and they're probably more on guard these days, considering how pretty much everyone sees them as a joke at best. Making an enemy of the leaders (in quantity, if not quality) of satire wouldn't help their cause.

If you want impartiality, look to the remains of the journalism industry. Not Viacom.

[Malacite]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

They wouldn't even let them say his name on the episode, never mind showing him. What a punch of pussies. I have my doubts that the DVD for this season will be uncensored either seeing how scared CC is.


All this Islamic BS is going way, way too far. Kinda funny that South Park got censored while Jonh Stewart told these people to go fuck themselves in song! No one id exempt from Satire, that's the point. You don't like it? Tune it out, or better yet (to the extremists/radicals) leave the country. It reminds me of a point Southpark made back during the Family Guy episode from Kyle;

"No, Muslims aren't allowed to depict Mohammed)." So if you don't follow Islam, then all bets are off. Otherwise you may as well just ban any public celebration of any faith whatsoever, or anything else from X religion that would offend Y believer.

Incidentally this is a big part of why I'm agnostic. It's not that I don't believe in some kind of higher authority (at least until science can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt otherwise) I just find every religion is flawed because it's an invention of man to explain the unknown & control the masses. For all the good it's brought us (Rule of Law etc) I ultimately feel it's done, and is continuing to do more harm than good.

[hexx]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Y'all seem to forget that as a company, they need to watch their bottom line, lest they ignore the risk and Tray and Matt wind up like Theo Van Gogh dont ya think? So human life be damned, you wanted the cartoon to be shown unedited even if it comes at the lives of the creators of Southpark? They're a company, which means they care about what happens to their products. If Tray and Matt did get killed because of this, they would lose one of their longest running shows.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

What makes you think they ever had balls? They've been doing this for years. The only reason Mohammed made it into the Super Best Friends at all was because nobody cared back then.

If you're going to keep making claims of "doing it for years" then I'm sure you can provide a plentiful number of examples. I haven't watched TV with any regularity for the last seven years, but I know where South Park goes and know that the Daily Show has fallen from grace. That and they gave a man who steals jokes from other comedians his own show.

If you want impartiality, look to the remains of the journalism industry. Not Viacom.

That's kind of my point here. Washington Post, New York Times and other outlets wouldn't back down. They wouldn't go out of their way to publish images of Mohammad - which is apparently enough to gain the ire of these people - but they wouldn't back down if they did it.

They don't back down on much else, well, aside from pitching the president hardballs.

[quote-Hexx] Y'all seem to forget that as a company, they need to watch their bottom line, lest they ignore the risk and Tray and Matt wind up like Theo Van Gogh dont ya think? So human life be damned, you wanted the cartoon to be shown unedited even if it comes at the lives of the creators of Southpark? They're a company, which means they care about what happens to their products. If Tray and Matt did get killed because of this, they would lose one of their longest running shows. [/quote]

So who should defend our freedom of expression then, Hexx? The poilice, the military? The government?

No, this is in our hands and the media's hands. When you let the other side decide the narrative, you lose.

If our media won't stand up to thugs - any part of that media - then why should they express themselves at all? How many death threats do Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann get on a daily basis for saying what they think, be it right or wrong? If those guys backed down, they wouldn't be respected at all. As I understand it, they have to keep some serious security.

[Feba]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

If you're going to keep making claims of "doing it for years" then I'm sure you can provide a plentiful number of examples.

Simple. They already did an episode about depicting Muhammed. Surprise surprise: he was censored.

[DieselBoy09]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

http://www.3click.tv/mp4//South%20Pa...ata/179606.jpg

Oh crap in a hat!

[Feba]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Oh crap in a hat!

Yes, Super Best Friends wasn't censored. In the episode about censoring images of Muhammed, he was censored. See Cartoon Wars Part II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I said. They've had this standard for years. They didn't censor back when he was originally animated not because they were committed to not backing down, but because they didn't have anything to back down from then.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Simple. They already did an episode about depicting Muhammed. Surprise surprise: he was censored.

No shit.

You've added no new insight here. Why shouldn't I be surprised, in either case, that there was censorship? There was nothing to censor. Mohammad is not a slur, a swear or anything offensive. He's a religious figure. Why does one religion get to make the rules and the rest of us have to take it? That's not how we work in America.

Nintendo and EA didn't back down from publishing games that had some Islam in them. I don't know how you exactly get around telling the tale of Dante's Inferno without touching Mohammad. Has anyone bombed EA yet? Nintendo's still there. Zelda: Ocarina of time had chants assumed to be Islamic and deemed "offensive" though its questionable it was at all.

Sony caved right away on Little Big Planet, though. There wasn't even at threat involved on that one, but Sony apparently did want their business, so no Islamic chants in the opening in LBP.

Granted none of them are American companies, but they're in democratic nations with free speech. So its the same situation.

Just because its "nothing new" doesn't mean it doesn't become an issue. Censorship is censorship, regardless of context.

[Malacite]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Konami edited out the twin towers getting nuked for the NA release of MGS 2.

[Kailea]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

I dont think anything should be edited, if morons want to start shit over a game and or cartoon... fine let them, and see who wins.

I understand why thing are edited, but at the same time, I find it stupid.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Konami edited out the twin towers getting nuked for the NA release of MGS 2.

Incorrect. There was no plan to nuke the twin towers (and why would it just be the towers). Septermber 11th would have been a major setback for the development of MGS2. The game was about to go gold for November release They'd have to rework and entire portion of the scenario considering the game came out in November of the same year.

What really happened is they simply removed the Twin Towers, which had been seen in previous background shots and demos of the game. This was to reflect historical accuracy. Kojima likes his historical accuracy. Removing them was acknowledging what had happened - that's not censorship.

GTA3 was going to have a mission where you flew a plane into a building. Rockstar cut the mission out of the game before release because it would have been considered in really poor taste and the cut wasn't going to be consequential to the story. There was a lot of work you got in the game from fringe groups not connected to the main storyline. This mission was one of them, so the cut was easy to make before the game went gold.

The game was going to create controversy no matter what they did, so I guess they didn't want to look like totally insensitive assholes.

The scene with Albedo and Momo in Xenosaga - that was censorship, though it didn't really change the story in the slightest. It just changed where he placed his hand on her. He was still doing something bad to her, just not looking like a pedo in the US version when he did it.

Censorship is often the act of a third party, though. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did not censor the episode, Comedy Central did. If Parker and Stone decided to make some cuts to the story to be sensitive to other groups, those would just be cuts, but that's clearly not the kind of people Parker and Stone are so that point is moot. .

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

Where did their balls go? They censor useless stuff out all the time.

They censored the part in Team America World Police where they were naked. THEY WERE TOY DOLLS.

But then again, that was kinda funny itself they did that.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

They censored the part in Team America World Police where they were naked. THEY WERE TOY DOLLS.

But then again, that was kinda funny itself they did that.

ding ding ding

Even the censor bar can be satirical.

[Feba]

Re: Comedy Central: Where did your balls go?

You've added no new insight here. Why shouldn't I be surprised, in either case, that there was censorship? There was nothing to censor.

As I said. You're assuming Comedy Central used to have balls. Right there in the title. I'm pointing out that they never have. Protest censorship all you want, but don't act like the network is suffering some fall from grace.