Matt & Trey: “Not a meta-joke on our part”

So in my last post on the recent South Park / Islam scrape-up, I suggested that the moralistic closing speech was censored as a meta-joke, a “piling-on” by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in an effort to show how far religious censorship is willing to escalate a situation before it is satisfied. Turns out, I had more faith in the inherent humanity of the folks at Comedy Central than was merited.

Via their website:

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. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.

That “whole new show” apparently included Bill Donahue of the Catholic League. Yeah, the same guy that said the Pope is being framed, and it’s not child molestation if the kids are at least 12. He didn’t have a speaking role.

I can’t help but figure the Bill Donahue walk-on role IS a meta-joke, to suggest to Comedy Central that their level of censorship over Muhammad could escalate if someone more local who subscribes to a delusion more in-line with the local flavor happens to get his nose bent over South Park. But I’m going to reserve judgment on that fact until I hear from one of them that it is indeed the case.

{advertisement}
Matt & Trey: “Not a meta-joke on our part”
{advertisement}