Leave it those ‘South Park’ button pushers Trey Parker and Matt Stone to go where other comedians fear to tread.

This week’s new installment of ‘South Park’ will deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement – indirectly, of course. The episode in question, airing at 10 p.m. EST Wednesday, finds the calorically challenged Cartman throwing off the school’s fitness curve.

“I know how this works. You’re the 99 percent ganging up on the one percent,” Cartman cries in a preview clip supplied by Comedy Central.

Weight warfare ensues, apparently.

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The episode, dubbed ‘1 %,’ marks the show’s first, full-on commentary on the fledgling political movement. The beauty of ‘South Park’ is how even-handed it can be in tackling tricky subjects that otherwise split audiences. So expect both sides of the OWS debate to take a licking during the 30-minute show.

Here’s the official episode description:

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One of the reliable joys in entertainment during the Bush years was knowing that despite the relentless, insipid hate passed off as comedy about our President, every week South Park would serve up truly independent, politically incorrect satire which skewered actual sacred cows. When virtually all players in the film and TV industry were brown nosing Al Gore as though they were born without lungs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone mercilessly mocked him. When Hurrican Katrina was the cause du’jour for leftist hatemongers, fictional 4th graders Kyle and Stan called them out for exploiting the tragedy. And, even early on in the show, the hyperventilating, totalitarian dark side of the green movement and multicultural “tolerance” received scathing send ups.

L'homme s'accroche amèrement.

Yet since Obama’s election, their aim has tilted right. While they revisited the nonpartisan issue of censorship over fear of jihadist violence in their 200th episode, the only overtly political targets of the past two seasons have been Glenn Beck in “Dances with Smurfs” and the Tea Party in last week’s episode, “TMI.” In “Smurfs,” Cartman starts to do the school’s morning announcements, quickly transforming into a conspiratorial nut who accuses the school president of murdering the titular cartoon characters. Now, Glenn Beck’s TV show is certainly ripe for parody (not a fan myself), but the episode plays as though Parker & Stone have only seen second-hand accounts of the program (which they’ve admitted regarding other episodes’ source material), and the satire, because it’s only mocking a straw man version of Beck, lacks the bite of their previous work.

In the same way, on “TMI” (spoilers ahead), South Park rips on the Tea Party– which, again, could be a source of truly funny jokes, even mean-spirited ones– with recycled second-hand stereotypes.  Cartman’s principal sends him to a counselor when he measures his and his classmates’ penis sizes. Eventually, the counselor recommends an anger management session, wherein a Tea Party member complains about “stupid-ass blind liberals” while wearing tea bags draped over a tri-corner hat. The counselor quickly surmises that all the anger management attendees act out because of insecurity over their penis sizes. (more…)

Dhimmitude: an attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands.

South Park, equal opportunity satirists, have finally met their match.

No, not the Islamist barbarians who have issued an indirect fatwa against South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the unforgivable crime of satirizing the notion of Muhammed’s appearance.

The veiled threat posted on a jihadist website, is, I’m afraid, totally expected.

It is Hollywood itself that has betrayed Parker and Stone. 

In the episode—I viewed the original before it was censored—Muhammed was shown inside a U-haul, inside a mascot’s uniform, and finally as a child’s stick figure drawing.

It was hilarious.

And deadly. (more…)

While doing research for my upcoming book, tentatively titled Programming America (Harper Collins, due 2011), the inside story of the politically-motivated evolution of television from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Sex and the City and the very real bias of the industry against conservative content and creators, I interviewed Doug Herzog, President of MTV Networks Entertainment Group.  He oversees Comedy Central, and he was kind enough to grant me some time and consent to taping our conversation on June 22, 2009.

During the course of that conversation, I asked Mr. Herzog about the network’s decision to censor South Park in April 2006 – in particular, the network shut down a segment that featured a cartoon image of Mohammed.

Here’s the audio:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

SHAPIRO: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the controversy that surrounded the South Park/Mohammed controversy.  How did that come about and what was the real story there?

HERZOG: The real story was the story you know, which is that the guys wanted to depict Mohammed and the network wouldn’t let them.  And that was the whole story.  And while I think if we had to do it all over again we would do it differently, that was the decision we made at the time.  And I regret it somewhat but I’ve made worse decisions in my life. (more…)

Give Comedy Central an anal probe. Not because of Jon Stewart’s ongoing tiff with Bernard Goldberg and Fox News, which is just polite, interesting fun. Rather, it has to do with the disturbing news that the creators of the animated sitcom “South Park” were threatened by an apparent jihadist organization called Revolution Muslim over an episode that contains some (mildly) irreverent material about Mohammed – and the cable network caved.

They bent over and censored the show. According to the New York Times arts blog posted this morning, the episode in question, a follow-up to the one that showed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume, was edited by Comedy Central to avoid further offense. The version that aired Wednesday contained audio bleeps and image blocks (“CENSORED”), apparently inserted by the network, after the Muslim group warned on its website that show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh.” This is a reference to the Dutch film maker who was murdered – shot eight times then stabbed, with a note pinned to the knife, like in an Eric Ambler story — on an Amsterdam street after he made a documentary critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Fearing for her safety, Van Gogh’s collaborator, Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced to flee the country, and the Dutch Parliament engaged in vigorous debate on the subject of banning certain kinds of speech as “blasphemy.” In other words, they unheroically blamed the victim. (more…)

I’m tired of ignoring the elephant in the room, so I’ll just come out and say it. Christians are corny, out of touch, lonely creepers who generally end up becoming murderers or rapists…. At least that’s what Hollywood’s taught me.

Not to mention they’re all a bunch of minority-bashing fear mongers. Why does anyone continue to allow this hateful, extremist group to exist? Am I the only one who feels that they could stand to learn a lot from the peaceful, Muslim folk?

If I hadn’t been raised in such a logical household, the entertainment industry would have elicited only one reaction from me in regards to “Christians”; “Good God, these people are crazy.”

It all started with the flick “Carrie.” Who can forget Sissy Spacek’s loopy, evangelical mom citing Bible verses amidst insane spiritual tirades until she was finally skewered with every kitchen utensil in the cabinet…all to a disturbing orgasmic moaning session. The scene was used to drive the point home: Christians are dangerous and nuts, but they’re great to make fun of. (more…)

Mormon church leaders are criticizing HBO for including a private, sacred ceremony in its show Big Love, the drama about a polygamous Mormon family in Utah. Apparently only church members “in good standing” are allowed to enter temples and either witness or take part in the rite called the “endowment ceremony.”

HBO, of course, apologized for offending Mormons but defended its use of the ceremony because its depiction is “critical” to the show’s story line. Ah, the quintessential non-apology apology, used frequently by politicians: We’re sorry if we offended anyone, but we’re not going to do anything that will actually rectify the situation. Be sure to tune in, though, and boost our ratings! (more…)