Bill Donohue has a tantrum about a show on Comedy Central

Comedy Central has a new show called Corporate, which is a satirical take on the drudgery of working in the corporate world. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in an office will find aspects of the show to be familiar. Overall it’s pretty decent. The only critiques I have are that the satire has all the subtlety of a brick through a window, and that Aparna Nancherla is underutilized.

Segments of the right do not like this show. I only know this because Jake Weisman, one of the show’s creators, has been gleefully posting articles about the backlash. It’s tended to skew towards accusations of the show being “anti-business,”but after a recent episode, Catholic tears began to flow:

They really hate Christians, especially Catholics. [this makes little sense as the episode in question is mostly, if not entirely making fun of Protestantism] Indeed, that is the most defining characteristic of those employed by Comedy Central. It is not certain whether they screen for bigots, or whether only bigots apply.

“Corporate” is a show most Americans have never heard of. They are not missing anything. Last night it sent a Valentine’s gift to Catholics by portraying a lay person dressed like a nun who gives an advertising executive the finger.

She works for a group of mega-churches, the Glorious Salvation Ministries, and is interested in hiring the ad company to do a marketing campaign. An employee of the ad firm shows up wearing an oversized rosary, suggesting that both characters are Catholic. [not true – this was performative Christianity on the part of the employee as directed by the CEO. I can’t tell if this makes it more or less blasphemous]

At the end, the nun-like character is shown sucking a cross-shaped popsicle seductively. She smiles, saying, “My favorite flavor—the blood of Christ.”

All the employees are godless and the show writers never pretend that the Christian god has any basis in fact:

After learning about the Catholic League response, Weisman tweeted about it. Someone responded, leading him to joke that he wanted to “bring the whole system down.” Or, wait was he serious??? Enter Bill Donohue:

Viacom has a serious problem on its hands: Jake Weisman, the co-creator and writer of the Comedy Central show, “Corporate” (he also stars in the show), has threatened to “bring the whole system down.” He was referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

Weisman made his threat yesterday on Twitter. His incendiary comment was in response to a news release I wrote about the February 14th episode of “Corporate.” In it, the Eucharist was obscenely mocked.

…

It must also be said that the filthy responses that supported Weisman’s tweet cannot be reprinted here—some were aimed directly at me.

In one sense, I am happy Weisman made this threat. While Hollywood was not always a bastion of anti-Catholicism, in the past half-century it has certainly evolved into one. Let’s be honest: If Jews were portrayed the way Hollywood portrays Catholics, it would be labeled the premier anti-Semitic industry in America.

(This is somewhat reminiscent of the Jesse Farrar fiasco, in which people are apparently unable to recognize obvious jokes.)

I’m generally not in the business of parsing out nonsense like this, and I will not start now except to say fuck this guy and his pathetic victim complex. Weisman, for his part, was positively (and justifiably in my opinion) gleeful:

I have to admit this adds to my enjoyment of the show.