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.

—–

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:

The kids at South Park Elementary are being punished for Cartman’s failings in the physical fitness department. What will Cartman do when they all gang up on him?

Perhaps the best example of how Parker and Stone ladle out the satire in equal measure came with their 2004 feature film ‘Team America: World Police.’ Will the duo do it again Wednesday?

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.

This first meeting isn’t actually that annoying yet, as the Tea Partier is just one of many mocked characters. However, when staple character Randy Marsh gets sent to anger management, he begins to parrot the Tea Party complaints about big government and socialism (which is uncharacteristic of Randy– historically, he’s been rather liberal) and starts a riot. In an attempt to stick it to the federal government, all the characters in the meeting attack Federal Express, American Apparel, and other private businesses that seem nominally connected to the feds. In a hostage situation, the Tea Party character pipes up that he demands to see “Obama’s real birth certificate.”

From that summary, one might assume that I didn’t find the episode funny, which is false. No matter what the setup is, when the punchline is Cartman or Randy flipping out, South Park remains one of the best comedies on television. “TMI” is an episode full of great gags and outrageous performances, but I can’t help but be disillusioned at how safe and politically correct the jokes about the Tea Party are. Since its inception, comedians have picked on the Tea Party with virtually identical insults. “Hey, look at those silly costumes!” “They’re angry white men sublimating their insecurities!” “Crazy birthers, every one of them!” There’s a word for comedians who just repackage other people’s jokes:  hacks. And I have a hard time defending Matt and Trey when I think about whether that charge can apply to their Beck/Tea Party jokes.

I have no beef with South Park making fun of what I believe; “Goobacks” and “Christian Rock Hard” are two examples of standout episodes that mock Christians and anti-illegal immigration sentiments. They work far better than “TMI” and “Smurfs” because they send up the actual follies of those ideas; they don’t just rinse and repeat straw men representations of the satire’s subject. Also, they weren’t just piling on ridicule for a much-maligned object. Whereas South Park is best known for being politically incorrect and unabashedly skewering that which no one else dare touch with a ten-foot pole, attacking Beck and the Tea Party when everyone else is already doing just that places the show in the back of the herd. It takes courage to stick your neck out against someone powerful and popular, but it doesn’t to be the last guy in line kicking some kid on the ground. Hopefully, Parker & Stone will turn things around soon, because this could be the point where South Park loses its edge– and therefore its appeal.

This article was originally posted at the Landmark Report.

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.

I knew immediately that Parker and Stone would be threatened with a fatwa.

Radical Islam is on the march, and unlike Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. Islam demands that non-Muslims submit to their beliefs.

I was also not surprised when Comedy Central censored the episode. Every single reference to Mohammed was bleeped, like a dirty word.

The original episode cannot even be viewed on YouTube.

Islam means submission, and making Hollywood submit to a bunch of raving, murderous Islamic fanatics turns out to be easy as pie.

Look, the official position of the Obama administration is that the U.S. is fighting “terrorists in overseas contingency operations.” Not, mind you, Islamist terrorists who subscribe to Salafist Islam.

So why should Hollywood identify an enemy that Obama says does not exist?

Remember when you first heard about Arab Muslim suicide bombings?

They were directed against Jews in Israel.

You were horrified, right?

Or, maybe not.

In any case, there was no great outcry.

In fact, the left reliably defended these terrorist outrages, claiming that the poor oppressed Arabs had no choice against the powerful and evil Jooz.

Consequently, suicide/homicide bombings metastasized in every Muslim battleground across the earth. And now when the suicide bombers explode and body parts are scattered everywhere, what do you do?

Yawn.

The same with beheadings.

When Daniel Pearl was beheaded you shuddered. This is not possible, you said to yourself. What kind of barbarians commit such acts.

But at the same time you were assured by, ahem, moderate Muslims in America, that Islam is the religion of peace.

Peace means the absence of conflict, so when enough infidels—Jews, Christians, Buddhists, homosexuals, women who do not take the veil—are beheaded, well, there you go:

Welcome to the peaceful Islamist landscape.

And when the Afghan Taliban exploded the ancient Bamiyan Buddhist statues, again, you were horrified.

But the West did nothing.

After all, it’s their culture, and all cultures and religions are the same.

Never mind the horrific fate of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Never mind the malignant Jew-hatred that fuels the genocidal Islamist world.

The liberal Hollywood elite—who bravely compared President Bush to Hitler—will submit.

In fact, a prominent Hollywood producer said to me: “Parker and Stone should have known better.”

Thus, the victims become the aggressors.

It’s like cutting off a man’s leg and blaming him for limping.

Producers will insist on alternative antagonists: Neo-Nazis, right wing militias, Evangelical Christians, Tea Party members, the Pope, multinational corporations, and oh yes, the frightening Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.

Comedy Central should have run the episode.

And every American network and cable station should have broadcast this South Park at the very same time.

The American airwaves should have been plastered with this episode.

Such defiance is the only way to fight radical Islam.

But cowardice and appeasement have won the day.

Welcome to Dhimmi Hollywood.

Where the future bodes well for 7th century Islam.

But the future for Parker and Stone is grim.

Like the novelist Salman Rushdie, and the courageous freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both threatened via murderous fatwas, Parker and Stone will need to secure round the clock armed security guards.

I strongly recommend former Israeli commandos who provide such services.

Unlike President Obama, these men know the enemy well.

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.

SHAPIRO:  Why did the network make that decision in the first place?

HERZOG: You know, there was concern that it might not be the most prudent thing to do at that time, and people were kind of losing their heads over it, I think wrongly so.

SHAPIRO: Prudent commercially or prudent politically?

HERZOG: I think combination.

END TRANSCRIPT.

In other words, the heads of Comedy Central freaked over the cartoon image of Mohammed because they were worried they would offend radical Muslims, pulled it, and Herzog told me they’d do it differently next time.

Except they didn’t.

This week, Comedy Central again censored South Park – again because they were afraid that a cartoon image of Mohammed would fire up Muslim radicals.  Instead of showing Mohammed or lines about Mohammed, Comedy Central bleeped all of it out.  “After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode,” said a message on Trey Parker and Matt Stone website. “We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.”

So what about Herzog’s statement that Comedy Central had changed its ways?

Yeah, not so much.  The censorship and appeasement continue unabated.  So much for Comedy Central’s claims as champions of free speech and speaking truth to power.

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.

Based on the information so far, the honchos at Comedy Central are cowering like the Dutch. A spokesman for Comedy Central said, according to the Times, that it was not giving permission for the episode to run, without censorship, on the studio’s website.

A few questions:

First, where is Homeland Security on this? (Oh, never mind, they’re most likely busy infiltrating Tea Parties.)

Second, what is it about animation and cartoons that these idiots cannot understand or abide? There is probably no point in trying to explain to them that this is a cartoon series and is deliberately, delightfully offensive (the original pilot for the program was entitled “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”). Ever see any of the episodes about the gay teacher? And his leather-clad “assistant,” Mr. Slave? If you happened by any chance actually to be a gay schoolteacher who saw those shows, you either: a) wanted to die, or b) were dying laughing and will continue to chuckle every time you think about it for the rest of your life.

Planet Earth to Revolution Muslim: You need a sense of humor to live in this country. Otherwise go away.

Last, why are our media outlets run by jellyfish? Are there no bravehearts in the newsrooms and control rooms anymore? The Emmy-winning “South Park” is a take-no-prisoners sort of show whose main characters Stan and Kyle (not to mention the inimitable, somewhat anti-Semitic Cartman) bravely tread where no newspaper commentator, Op-Ed columnist, cable news bloviator, or talk radio loudmouth will ever dare to go. They go, literally, where the sun don’t shine. Stone and Parker are — like Theo Van Gogh — free-speech fundamentalists. Are we going to allow courageous artists to go it alone? We can’t let the bullies win.

Comedy Central needs a backbone, and Revolution Muslim needs a bitch-slapping. This is a situation about which the Left and the Right can easily agree.

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.

Even though ripping on those of the Christian cloth is nothing new, edgy, or thought provoking, Hollywood feels the need to do it with each of their religiously overtoned talkies. It’s gotten to the point where even the completely irreverent Matt Stone of “South Park” has expressed sentiments of pulling his punches on “society’s whipping boy.”  I hope you’re listening Seth McFatlane (the name is childish I’ll admit, but I accept it). The fact is, it’s been done to death.

But why is that? We’ve never seen Hollywood go after Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Islam. I’d be inclined to believe that it’s due to the first two revolving around more subjective moralities (which is cool with the 310) and the latter… well, they blow crap up. Sure Muslims are the cause of virtually all terrorism in the world today, yet the good old folks of Tinseltown go out of their way to portray them as “good people, given a bad name by extremists” (see “Babel,” “Kingdom of Heaven”). On the other hand, we’ve got Conservative Christians who are statistically far and away the most generous people on the planet (whether you’re judging by missionary work or basic tax returns) consistently being portrayed as hateful villains often using scripture to justify horrifying acts (see nearly every spiritual horror/psycho thriller movie made in the last three decades). Disregard the fact that people like my middle-class father annually give more to charity than President Obama and Joe Biden combined, because folks like Sean Penn have already boxed him in as a greedy, judgmental jackass. If people in the Sean Penn clan feel that way, then it’s got to be true!

So I ask all Christians, Agnostics, and Atheists alike: when is enough, enough? Hasn’t this beating of the dead horse (*insert John Kerry joke here*) grown tiresome? Isn’t it time to move on?

I think the time for an “anti-establishment uprising” has come… And by that, I mean it’s time for Hollywood to take a serious risk in their portrayal of modern-day Christians.

Here’s a premise for you: They’re well-meaning people with a heart for helping others. Run with it.

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!

What I’m more interested in learning, though, is if there are any shows or movies in the works about the “sacred” rite of female genital mutilation – more kindly known as female circumcision – or “honor killings” in Islam. I’d even settle for a program that just depicts a polygamous Muslim family living somewhere in rural America.

I’ll wait. I have plenty of time.

Back in 1997, Law and Order aired an episode about an American man, married to an Egyptian immigrant, who murders the doctor brought over from Egypt by his wife’s family to perform female circumcision on his daughter. That was before 9/11, however, and since then it’s become politically incorrect to say anything unflattering about Islam or Muslims, no matter what the context.

Note that the Church of Latter Day Saints outlawed polygamy back in 1890 while Islam, to my knowledge, has not. Americans were horrified when a rogue Mormon sect not sanctified by the church was discovered in rural Texas and hundreds of children were removed as authorities investigated allegations of abuse and the forced marriage of teen girls to much older men.

But just this week, ABC’s Good Morning America focused on Daad Abdul Rahamn, a Muslim in Dubai, who is getting closer to his goal of fathering 100 children. He’s only supposed to have four wives at a time, but “he has had 17 and is looking for more.” Diane Sawyer practically swooned in wonderment. (Maybe she’s thinking of applying to be the next Mrs. Rahamn?) But perhaps this case is different because the local sheikh approves and Rahamn is not ashamed to accept the sheikh’s handouts to help finance his growing family. Liberals love socialism in any shape or form.

And yes, I know Good Morning America is officially under ABC’s news division, but how many people actually watch it for its contributions to serious news?

Remember when South Park aired its now-infamous Scientology episode that not only skewered top dog Scientologist Tom Cruise but the depicted the “sacred beliefs” of the religion started by second-rate science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and followed by a growing number of Hollywood glitterati? Comedy Central pulled the episode from its initial rerun schedule because of pressure from Cruise, although it did end up rerunning it later in the season. But that wasn’t the only fallout. The late Isaac Hayes, who voiced the character Chef and was a Scientologist, quit the show in protest of its “intolerance and bigotry towards religious rights of others.” Show co-creator Matt Stone responded by saying Hayes had “no problem – and he’s cashed plenty of checks – with our show making fun of Christians.”

I guess it doesn’t pay to annoy the wrong people.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the leftist entertainment industry has no qualms about airing what is supposed to be a sacred Mormon ritual on television because Mormons are not on the list of protected victim groups. Don’t believe me? Remember what Mitt Romney had to endure during the last presidential election regarding his religion. I’m not suggesting that production companies avoid producing entertainment that negatively focuses on a particular religion because its followers might be offended. However, I am offended by the double standard that means certain groups are considered fair game while others are left alone in the name of “multicultural sensitivity.”