Southpark "200" and "201" episodes vs Offending Muslims

[Amerist]

This topic was suggested by another user who might have just been a bot; however, the idea seems to be fitting with the website and forum topics so I wanted to redeem it from the sinkhole the said other user vanished it into.

200. Aired Wed 14 April 2010 posited a usual-for-weird story about the city of Southpark where 200 celebrities get together in a class-action lawsuit against Southpark for defamation. Possibly because whenever celebrities visit they tend to get called out and laughed at. In a gambit to prevent ridicule the celebrities call for Southpark to produce Muhammad, the founder of Islam, so that they can tap him for his ability not to be ridiculed. Hijinks ensue.

Already a so-called "radical Muslim" website has posted apparent threats against the lives of the creators of Southpark for their ridicule of Muhammad and his religion. The threat posted on the website carefully worded as not to be specific enough to trigger laws protecting citizens from assault and intimidation. This threat surfaced in mainstream news such as CNN before the air date of 201.

201. Aired Wed 21 April 2010 -- if it could be said to have done so. The actual episode aired allegedly contains so many bleeped out portions to have gone from the normal insacrosanct questioning and ridicule to an almost-Poe extreme display of why censorship is immature. The web page southparkstudios.com displays a message when attempting to stream the video warning that it is not available and that Comedy Central added much post-production bleeping to the broadcast. Many of these bleeps cover the name Muhammad and other yet unknown phrases that seem to be referring to Islam, Muslims, or Muhammad himself.



Super Best Friends. The episode that actually displayed a cartoon depiction of Muhammad in 2001, which has since been pulled from streaming on the southparkstudios.com web page as of the posting of this discussion topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZbtgjx9xE0 - CNN video news story outlining the threat released after the airing of 200.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/19/se ... outh-park/ - CNN article about the Radical Muslim website threatening creators of South Park.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/ ... ng/?src=mv - New York Times article about the airing of 201.

[Amerist]

In a notice from the creators of Southpark, Matt and Trey, state as fact that they did not intend the episode to air with the extraneous censorship.

A Statement from Matt and Trey
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.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/news/3878