"South Park" Parked by Complaints

[Tab]

Did Comedy Central grant the Catholic League its Christmas wish?

Following the Dec. 7 season finale of South Park, titled "Bloody Mary," the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights slammed the network for its irreverent portrayal of church icons and sought to block the episode from being rebroadcast.

It appears the group may have met with success. A repeat of the finale was scheduled to air Wednesday night, but was pulled from the Comedy Central lineup without explanation.

In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is believed to be bleeding from its rear end, inspiring faithful parishioners to flock from miles around to be healed by the miraculous blood.

Eventually, Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, whereupon he determines that the statue is actually menstruating and thus is nothing special.
...
Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and "a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD."

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/eo/20060103/en_tv_eo/18055

For goodness sakes, South Park makes fun of EVERYONE and EVERYTHING - as Mark Twain said, the more sacred the cow, the better the hamburger. What are Catholic League parishioners watching South Park for anyway?

[Clark2008]

1. I'm Catholic and I laughed my ass (no pun intended) off at this

episode.

So I won't be required the forced apology.

:eyes:

[saigon68]

34. 200 File New Claims Against Archdiocese (MORECHILD RAPISTS)

200 File New Claims Against Archdiocese

By DENISE LAVOIE
Associated Press Writer

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHURCH_ABUSE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US


BOSTON (AP) -- When the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted here four years ago, Bill Garrity was not among the more than 500 people who sued the archdiocese and settled claims in 2003.



The archdiocese says its financial condition has deteriorated since the 2003 settlement and it cannot afford to pay the new round of plaintiffs as much.

But the new plaintiffs say they do not believe the archdiocese's claims of financial hardship and say it is attempting to capitalize on the weariness over the scandal in the hope that the alleged victims will accept lesser settlement.


"It is grossly inadequate and it diminishes the abuse that the people ... suffered," said Tony Cotillo, who said he was raped by a priest in a confessional in St. Joseph's Parish in Holbrook when he was 9.

[Bridget Burke]

40. Gosh, some of the alleged victims may have to answer questions....

The alleged victims are also upset that the archdiocese is requiring some of them to take part in an arbitration process where they would be cross-examined by church attorneys.

Thomas Hannigan Jr., an attorney for the archdiocese, said some plaintiffs will be subject to "limited" cross-examination.

"We're not saying (their claims) don't have merit, but we don't have a sufficient basis to make that conclusion yet," Hannigan said in an interview last week.

But attorneys for the plaintiffs say the archdiocese is treating them unfairly.

If they or their parents had filed charges with secular authorities when the offenses occurred, the offenders might have been put away. But the victims might have had to answer questions. And they would not be in line for a payoff now....

[eridani]

62. I bet you like Lehrer's Vatican Rag too :-)

A stiff-necked Protestant auntie from the other side of the family was horrified, but every Catholic I played the cut for was strictly ROTFL.

[SammyBlue]

2. Fuck You, Bill Donohue! Fuck you so hard your eyeball split

I want to see this episode now. How dare you take my right to watch it away? South Park rips on Jews all the time (Kyle v. Cartman). . .but you don't see Jews going stupid like you!

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!!

I hate these pompous fucking Christian fucks! I hate Christianity! I HATE THESE G-D DAMN PEOPLE!!!

Fuck these fucking fucktards!!! You don't like it, don't watch it! Assholes!

G-d damn, I am so pissed!!!

[Idioteque]

3. I don't know if you use bittorrent.

If you do, you can find the episode here.

[XOKCowboy]

4. I couldn't tell!

You hide it so well.

:sarcasm:

[trogdor]

47. Oh yeah.

And Kyle's mom, besides being a stupid bitch, is about as stereotypic a Jew as it gets.

[Sequoia]

48. Heh, heh....are you my husband?

You sound just like him. I tend to agree with you. What's with these people anyway!

[CatholicEdHead]

54. Donahue is a nut

He has more in common with the radical religious right than the RCC.

[niallmac]

5. Free Speech. A new concept in America?

I have not seen the episode. I may never see it. If someone has a copy and puts it on DVD and I am able to buy it I probably will because I am pretty juvenile when it comes to disrespecting authority in this form. Thought censorship is fascism. I don't give a damn about those who think it is disrespectful to use the term fascism
when the activity does not involve the holocaust. The holocaust will have been for naught if it does not serve to warn us of the many guises of fascism. The result is the same. People no longer can think or feel or experience the diversity of life. If we are to produce quality human beings they must be allowed to have mature experienced minds.
I don't care if it is the Holy See, see. If you act like jack booted thugs I respect you as such. In this instance I reject the infringement on my right to observe a rainbow of thought and expression. Grow up Vatican. Grow up Bush-co. This world may behave day to day like TV mesmerized idiots but I have faith that one day you fascists will push it too far and even if it is "too late" there will be hell to pay for all. Lets respect each other.

[EST]

13. You have a beautiful and authentic way with words.

Or maybe it's the drugs. Either way, well said.

[niallmac]

16. I can't speak for you but for me

it's the drugs definitely.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. At times I find Southpark is funny, and others I find it's pure trash.

About 90% of it is toilet humor, and I'm not partial to jokes regarding fecal matter, passing gas, regurgitation, urination, picking the nose, etc.

As I am against censorship, I'm not against Southpark playing in the air waves, but I do feel it's a program that at its best is slapstick bs, and at its worst, is insulting to the most helpless and needy. To give you one example (of hundreds I could give), Southpark persistently projects an image of the elderly as useless, stupid, and smelling of urine. Programs like Southpark are best when played to no audience at all.

[fudge stripe cookays]

9. Well, we all have different tastes.

I can't stand Howard Stern, but it's not my choice what gets shown and what doesn't. Some people really like toilet humor and T & A jokes. That's their prerogative.

Once this starts occurring (as has already happened with Stern), and now with South Park, where's it going to stop?

I find some of the sacred cows that get roasted on South Park are in really bad taste, but others are hilarious.

[Tab]

12. I don't watch it myself anymore, either

Because the novelty wore off after the first few seasons. It is mainly toilet humor.

That said, I have to give them credit for not being afraid to mock the pretensious institutions out there - and they should be allowed to. It's gutter humor, and I got tired of watching it, but I don't object to it being out there, and I'm annoyed that they caved on this issue. Actually, I'm SURPRISED that they caved on this issue (although I suspect it was higher up at Viacom).

The Catholic League should ask themselves why their members are watching it in the first place. If the members like it, they should shut up. Anyone who doesn't like it won't be watching. I don't see how you can like all the other episodes but only be offended by that one. You're either offended by most, or by none at all.

[MADem]

55. Geez, I guess those old BANNED lists aren't working anymore!!

It used to be that the church could just TELL you NOT to go see Peyton Place or Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, and you'd be struck down by lightning if ya did, sooner than ya would if you ate a hotdog on Friday!!

But back then, no one knew priests were fucking small children, either...

They need to take their moral authority and shove it...

[bpilgrim]

28. most american teeVee does that

"persistently projects an image of the elderly as useless, stupid, and smelling of urine"

and worse...

remember the target audience of SP are the young'ns

peace

[LittleClarkie]

31. I'm sort of all or nothing on this

Either it's acceptable and you play it all, or it's unacceptable, and you decide to stop running it on your cable channel.

I feel the same on music. If a song contains a word that is unacceptable, then don't play that song. But for gosh sake's, don't alter the thing.

That said, I don't watch it much if at all. I don't generally find it funny. I prefer the Simpsons.

[Up2Late]

7. The "Catholic League" really need to get over themselves...

...and realize they don't speak for Catholics everywhere. :eyes:

As a Confirmed Roman-Catholic who has evolved to become a Buddhist, primarily because of idiots like "The Catholic League," I'd love to send all of them a big, "Screw You Catholic League!"

I thought it was a great episode. Those idiots that make pilgrimages to see bleeding statues and "The Virgin Mary" in the bark of trees and such, are ridiculous zealots who need a solid punch in the head.

[0007]

8. Where was the Pope and the League of Catholics when Hitler

was gaining power in the thirties and the forties?

If Hitler had won the war would the Catholics still be part of the program?

[saigon68]

36. Yes -- see the Hitler youth rosters

http://darthpope.ytmnd.com/

[wicket]

10. Beyond LAME!

:eyes:

[Rex]

11. Don't fuck with da Church!

I've been wondering how far these guys would be allowed to go before someone got them yanked. No surprise it is the Church!

Did the Pope offically come out and say something about the episode?


"South Park is not funny!"

[Bill McBlueState]

14. they took the bait! ha!

This kind of attention is exactly what the creators of South Park wanted when they created the episode!

[derby378]

15. Scientology, goose-egg / Catholic League: 1

Wow. Who woulda thunk it?!?

I hope this falls flat on its ass. If this episode is banned even from DVD, that's a really bad sign.

I don't think Matt and Trey are the type who blink in a staring contest, though.

[Renew Deal]

17. I saw it.

It was brutal, but not the worst I have ever seen from them.

[bliss_eternal]

18. I'd be the first in line

to complain that the show has 'declined' in that I haven't found many of the new season's episodes to be particularly funny. But given that everyone is entitled to their own comedic taste, I probably wouldn't.

I saw the episode--while I didn't care for it or think it was funny, it's bullshit that anyone would attempt to censor it.

I am not at all fond of the KKK or the anti-choice people that harass women going to family planning clinics--but they are allowed to exist in the usa...

[silvermachine]

35. Pretty much my views as well...

...I used to watch and enjoy the show regularly but I think the last 2 years have been spectacularly unfunny. What was once bracing and biting satire is now mindless gross out nihilism. And what is Matt and Trey's obsession with menstruation? I understand that the humor is meant to be infantile/potty variety but much of it seems anti-female to me anymore. And much more mean spirited and usually quite pointless. Having said that, I don't think it should be censored. Just change the channel or turn the TV off.

[bliss_eternal]

44. Good to know I'm not the only one--

Besides having a weird fixation with 'menstruation', they also have an odd 'abortion' thing. I don't know what to make of that at all. Like you said, a lot does seem anti-female.

I found their episode dealing with the aftermath of hurricane katrina rather dismissive and insulting... It pissed me off but I still didn't call for it to be censored.

[David__77]

19. I think South Park is nihilistic and amoral.

That's fine. But the actual worldview of these people is bad. Their "libertarianism" is really a thinly veiled anarchism.

[Hardrada]

22. Hey, no fair!

I'm an anarchist.

[David__77]

27. Hmm... let me clarify.

Although I do not support political anarchism, such as politics in the spirit of Bakunin et al., I acknowledge that there was and still to some extent is a trend of political anarchism that is largely progressive in nature. I am referring to the more common use of "anarchism" to refer to complete rootlessness and separation from any sort of guiding ethics.

[Hardrada]

32. I know it's a tough word to pin down

something like "socialism" or even "liberalism."

[baby_mouse]

59. It shouldn't be, although these days it is for some reason

Anarchy means, literally, no hierarchy, no leaders, not *chaos*... you know this, of course.

[Tarc]

20. Rebroadcast? DVD?

Hell, this episode can be found in any p2p or torrent site now, and these ignorant bible-thumpers will do nothing but make more people go download it.

[XemaSab]

21. I was offended by that episode

But moreso by the dismissal of people struggling with addictions than irreverant portrayal of the church.

[IndianaGreen]

23. Are they saying that Mary never menstruated?

Was she a Cylon?

[jobycom]

24. So the creators of South Park join Galileo and Martin Luther

as people the Church has tried to shut up. That's an honorable group. They should be proud.

In fact, they should do an episode around it!

[NVMojo]

25. I was raised catholic and I'm so mad I missed it when it did air!!

Dammit!!! What twisted feckers who can't laugh at themselves and their idol worship.

[LittleClarkie]

26. I'm surprised they didn't have a problem with Cartman as Jesus

when they put him up on the cross so that he'd resurrect, and all he did was get really, really skinny.

Nothing is sacred to South Park. If you're going to show their episodes you should show all of them. I feel about the same re: swear words on the radio. I hate to see a song edited. If the station feels that damn strongly about swearing in a song, then don't play it. But editing out swearing is just ridiculous.

[Divine Discontent]

29. hmmm I agree

and I also say, you shouldn't mock someone's religious figures with perversion, that's degrading and immature, just the stupidity in other areas (like priests absolving sins instead of God, priests commit sins too, they can't absolve anything for anyone). but if you wanna do it, it should not be blocked by anyone as long as kids can't readily access it, and sorry, kids can readily access cable. there's just no easy answer besides the lame "parents should follow their kids around constantly and protect them"

[LittleClarkie]

30. So you're saying you're in favor of censorship?

I don't think parents should have to follow a kid around, hermetically sealing them away from the world and protect them constantly. But surely you can block a channel if you don't like what's on it. It ain't that deep.

South Park is perverse, degrading, immature and stupid. That's exactly their gig. They revel in it. That's like calling water wet. And somehow I think it's a real apples to oranges thing to compare South Park and priests. I'm not going to get into a debate with you re: Catholicism, btw. It's not up to me to judge them or their manner of worship.

Please tell me you're not one of those people who consider Catholics idol worshipers and/or not true Christians. Oh please.

[BlueIris]

33. Okay, I actually did have to abandon S.P. for its periodic bad taste, but

in my view this is...even to me, a viewer with limits (if you must know, it was the stem cell episode that did me in) SO not the most offensive thing S.P. has ever done. I mean, after reading the OP my question isn't "what are Catholic League parishioners watching S.P. for anyway?" but did the League members just start watching, like yesterday? In comparison to so many other sacred cows they've skewered, and in comparison to the other ways in which they've skewered them (and in my opinion, some, not many, but some of those ways did cross the line into creating genuine offensiveness) this is...in my view, kind of a lame episode. The Catholic League needs to toughen up.

[Yavin4]

43. The Right Always Screams That Liberals Are Politically Correct

yet, it's the religious groups who are responsible for most of the censorship in America.

[Loonman]

37. The Catholic League can go fuck themselves

I pay my cable carrier for that content, and it's not cheap.

[pookieblue]

38. I don't like South Park. So I don't watch it.

It's that simple.
Change the channel people. If it offends you, or whatever... change the channel. Don't try and dictate what others should and should not watch.

*note this was aimed at the Catholic League*

[DiverDave]

39. One wonders where these "good catholics" stand

on the rape and torture of kids?
I don't seem to recall an outcry from THAT.

Oh, and I would tell them to get a life, don't sweat the small stuff.
and get behind the VICTIMS of the church's complicity in child rape.

[hedgehog]

41. Could this be a possible scenario?

Dude-- we need to get people talking about us again. What should we do?

I know! Let's go poke the Catholic League with a stick! We'll stir up the right wing by offending them and the lefties will leap to our defense! And it won't even have to be funny!

No, it couldn't possibly have gone like that, because we all know that the people behind South Park are above crass commercialism.

[Yavin4]

42. South Park Exposes Prejudicies, Not Reinforce Them

Three shows earlier, they ripped on Scientology, just ripped that whole religion to shreds, but since most people are not Scientologists, everyone laughed. Now that they rip on the Virgin Mary, all of a sudden the show needs to be banned?

As long as they rip on someone else's group, then everything is okay.

[FVZA_Colonel]

49. An Interesting comic on that subject-

Courteousy of http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Asian/Secret_Asian_Man/sam_archives.asp

[thebigidea]

52. those jerks are riddled with just as many prejuidices, though

they should expose their own idiocy, their heads are so swollen they could easily do with a little self-satirizing.

[SkipNewarkDE]

45. I loved the episode where they ripped The Passion...

... it was pretty damned good social commentary. The Scientology episode was pretty f-ing spot-on as well.

[Initech]

46. What assholes. This isnt the first time South Park ripped on Catholics...

If you have the season 6 DVD, go watch the episode called "Red Hot Catholic Love". It's one of the funnier episodes of that season!

And it's far more offensive than the one in question!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

50. Oh I'm not against censorship. I just think Southpark is garbage.

Watching a Southpark episode about pushing food up the anus and defecating it out of the mouth, is about as funny, intellectually stimulating, and creative as staring into what someone left in the toilet at a gas station bathroom. Yet that's an actual Southpark episode, and quite representative of the kind of trash that makes up Southpark.

[thebigidea]

51. I wish I could muster the enthusiasm to care

South Park has been boring for years... those guys are rich, out of touch, and have become the sort of people they themselves would've mocked years ago. Boring boring boring, especially their atrocious voice overs - every character is a slight variation on two voices. I love nihilistic, crazy comedy of all varieties - but their seriously dumbed down "we don't care about anything! ha ha ha!" act just grew pretty tiresome.

And Team America! My god, with such rich material to plunder and satirize, they decide to concentrate on Garofalo, Moore, and Kim fucking Jong-Il, again with the Cartman voice variation? Boooooring.

Goading the religiously insane is always good for publicity and attention, though. I'm sure the next season's opener will be about the Catholic League, with a Bill Donohue with a Cartman-voice-varation, raping children or something... with some dumb tacked on moral at the end regurgitating the same libertarianism-for-college-dropout-assholes schtick they've been doing for years.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

53. The makers of Southpark

The creators of Southpark are Libertarians (definition: right wingers with a liking for drugs). I can't stomach right wingers. However, the creators of Southpark seem to think toilet humor is hillarious. For me to watch Southpark would require payment. Big, big payment.

[Poll_Blind]

56. Satanic Verses, South Park, White Supremacists, Howard Stern...

Welcome to the land of free speech. Excuse me, Free Speech.

PB

[western mass]

57. meanwhile on Brit primetime tv (you'll never see this in america)...

Monday, 8pm, Channel 4 (one of the major Brit broadcast networks):

The Root of All Evil? The God Delusion. Professor Richard Dawkins, Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and world-renowned evolutionary biologist, is no stranger to controversy. In this contentious two-part series, Dawkins decribes God as the most unpleasant fictional character of all and launches a wholehearted attack on religion as the cause for much of the pain and suffering in the world.

[hippiechick]

58. So' they're re-writing virgin birth to include the 'fact' that Mary

... was also pre-pubescent ? That sounds really, really pedophilic and completely warped to me.

In order to get pregnant, a woman has to be fertile.
Virginal insemination or not.
In order to be fertile, she has to have gone through (some part of) puberty.
At least, in the REAL world.

:wtf: are these people SMOKING???

[Generic Brad]

60. Here's A Solution

If you don't like something on the tube, don't watch or change the channel. Let the market dictate what stays on television. I am so sick of arrogant assholes trying to dictate what the rest of us watch.

Why in the world would Comedy Central cave into the demands of a group who most likely avoids "South Park" in the first place? They lose nothing by airing the show and only gain publicity they would not have otherwise received.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

61. You're absolutely correct. I think it appeals to young, illiterate males

Humor about feces doesn't require an intellect to write, nor an intellect to watch. It does require immaturity and perhaps a little attraction to fecal matter.

[Peter Frank]

63. Last I knew, this is still America...

...where we all have to hold our noses, while defending the right for anyone to publish any shit they want to.