From this morning’s Jolt:
This Looks Like a Job For Team America
I played Devil’s advocate to Cam last night: Pretend you’re the Comedy Central official who makes the call on what gets bleeped on South Park. You know that while the show offends everyone, when Muslims get offended, things start blowing up and insurance rates go up. You know that if material that offends Muslims gets out there, somebody might do something to your company and your co-workers. And while some would-be-jihadist might target creators Trey Parker or Matt Stone, they might just firebomb your corporate offices and incinerate some nice receptionist who had nothing to do with the television show’s production. Are you willing to risk the life of that receptionist, when you know bleeping the controversial sections might make the threat go away, at least partially, and at least for a while?
I don’t buy into the Devil’s advocate argument; ultimately, while the hesitation to expose a receptionist to a terrible terror attack is understandable, knuckling under effectively replaces this official as programming director and gives creative control to Islamic Rage Boy. Sure, Parker and Stone offend him, but everything non-Islamic, including visual images, offends him.
The capitulation of Comedy Central shouldn’t be that surprising; remember very few papers ran the Mohammed cartoons. The bomber’s veto is very much in effect in our society.
The news: “On Thursday morning, a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.”
At Hot Air, AllahPundit gives us to us straight, that the news media does not see its job as telling us what’s going on; it believes its mission is to tell us what to think: “As InstaGlenn says, this is actually the perfect ironic conclusion to the media’s post-Tax Day binge of hyperventilating about tea party extremism. Cranks holding up “Impeach the Kenyan!” signs at a right-wing rally are grist for a thousand NYT op-eds about Oklahoma City, but have jihadis intimidate the parent company of one of the most highly regarded comedies on television into blacking out its shows and it’s essentially a curio for the TV beat.”
At Big Hollywood, Woody Hochswender asks a fairly good question about the reports of threats against creators Parker and Stone: “Where is Homeland Security on this? (Oh, never mind, they’re most likely busy infiltrating Tea Parties.)”
At Contentions, Abe Greenwald notes that the New York Times feels the need to soft-pedal the obvious, when they note that a ‘Muslim group’ suggested Stone and Parker could face violent consequences: “What’s a ‘Muslim Group’? Call me old-fashioned, but I thought bodies that reportedly threatened violence and murder because of the portrayal of religious figures were called alleged terrorists. I just hope someone tracks this angry bunch down before they’re able to pull off a deadly act of groupism.”