| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| South Park Death Threats | ||||
| ||||
Tim Blair's at it again, issuing a stinging rebuke to everyone and no one in particular.
When did freedom of speech disappear?, he cries, while acknowledging that thus far no one has managed to shut him up, and that his relationship to science and his science teacher is deeply suspect, and that still won't shut him up.
Profoundly concerned that the folk at Comedy Central have done a little fiddling with an episode of South Park involving Mohammed dressed as a bear, Blair issues a clarion call for freedom:
Now might be the time for journalists and entertainment folk to step up. A force far more repressive than John Howard or George W. Bush is stomping all over your freedoms. Got anything to say about it?
Anything at all?
Sheesh Tim I guess you missed that fiend from the left Jon Stewart speaking up, as linked to above. Guess that's what happens when you don't actually watch a top notch comedian, as currently regularly featured on ABC2 in the land of Oz, but instead spend all your time watching cars go around in endless, monotonous circles.
Not that I can get totally excited about the notion that watching a censored episode of South Park is somehow a stomping all over of my freedoms, but I get the drift.
It's a bit like Senator Conroy stomping all over the Internet, and I've admired your relentless campaigning against Conroy on an almost daily basis from the privileged position you occupy with your blog. In much the same way as you've done your bit for global warming.
I keed, I keed. You know how to maintain the silence of the lambs when it counts.
And I guess that you also missed Threat against 'South Park' creators highlights dilemma for media companies, but that's probably because it's in the godforsaken LA Times, which as we all know is a company rag in an industry town full of perverts, homosexuals, deviants and other Hollywood liberal types. (What, the Islamics and the Christian fundamentalists are agin 'em? Well I never).
And lordy, there was Patrick Goldstein in a blog attached to the same rag scribbling furiously:
If Lenny Bruce, one of our seminal provocateurs, were around today, he'd probably be putting all of Trey and Matt's jokes into his act, daring the Muslim extremists to come after him too. Not everyone has to be that brave, or foolhardy, but I come down on the side of believing that the best thing you can do when you're dealing with knucklehead extremists is to call their dare. If they want to live in a free country, they'll have to accept that fact that freedom includes the freedom to mock, heckle and stir the pot. It's a freedom that's too important to be hijacked by extremists who should learn to accept one of our most sacred freedoms: To live in America, you have to be able to take a joke. (Muslim threats to 'South Park': Did Comedy Central cave in to knucklehead extremists?)
Ah Lenny, my first stand up hero:
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government."
Or as Jon Stewart noted in relation to Islamic fundamentalists. Fuck you.
And I guess Blair also missed boing boing's featuring an interview with creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, which you can catch here, where it can be downloaded as an mp4 or alternatively watched via YouTube. The sweet lads aimed to alienate - piss off I think is the more politically correct term - as many celebrities as they could find by stuffing them all into a single episode.
The usual form in this sort of nonsense is to list all the hideous examples of things which liberals and lefties approve of - chardonnay, latte, fearlessly attacking the Catholic church over paedophilia, endorsing global warming, rabbiting on about the splendours of Bill Henson's "creepy" photographs of naked children, getting excited about the dropping of The Glass House, and failing to notice that Danish newspapers published cartoons of the prophet which produced a little heat, and then failing to have an anxiety attack about the ABC's response to said cartoons:
It was big news at the time, but local fans of uncensored artistic expression suddenly clammed up when it came to publishing the images exploited by violence-hungry Islamic cranks. The ABC actually forbade their broadcast on television or online. In a memo to staff, then-managing director Russell Balding wrote: "The ABC believes it is not essential to include explicit depictions of the original cartoons."
Um, if you want to maintain the rage Tim, why didn't you publish a few of the cartoons with your piece? Couldn't find them? Here they are, the only pity being that they're a pretty motley and feeble lot. Guess you didn't think it was essential to include explicit depictions of the original cartoons in your trawl through history.
Meanwhile, it's also the usual form to suffer with the Christians as they are dealt unholy blows, in much the same way as the world suffers with Tom Cruise when he's impaled by South Park as a dealer in the fraud that's called scientology:
Perhaps they'd have relented if Bill Henson was involved. Alas, "Naked Fourth-Grader Muhammad" remains on hold until Henson's next talent-spotting tour of a Lakemba-area primary school.
It's almost worth coming up with an anti-Jesus cartoon of even greater venom, just to see what the reaction would be in Christian circles. To really upset Bible-thumping types, it would have to insult America too.
Let's see. Imagine if one were to, say, depict Christ defecating on the US flag.
Take that, you uptight Baptists and repressed Presbyterians.
Too late! It's already been done. In 2006, satirical cartoon South Park broadcast exactly such an image after Comedy Central, the show's US network, had told the program's creators they couldn't use an image of Muhammad. Originally, South Park merely wanted the prophet to be shown saying "hello".
Evidently a Jesus defecation scene isn't nearly as offensive.
Well let's not get into a sidetrack about anal retentiveness, and the awful way that western culture downsizes in a hail of high fructose corn syrup the beneficial results of regularity and eating bran. But this is beginning to sound like a competition between a good crap and benign folk simply wanting to say hello. Who's to say which is worse.
That said, um, why not lead the way Tim, in being offensive? Here's a set of Islamic and non-Islamic depictions of Mohammed in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of forms.
Why we even have William Blake doing it in the National Gallery of Victoria, as an illustration for Dante's Inferno:
Those fiendish subversive liberals in the National Galley, even if it's really only a state gallery with a grand name. Who'd have thought.
Oh I know ripping open a stomach isn't up there with a bit of healthy defecation, but hey it's more graphic in the Gustav Doré version.
You see, the problem is Tim, if you take cheap shots at Bill Henson and get into line with fundie Christians, who'd like to ban lots and lots of things (including homosexuals), you end up sounding not like a freedom fighter ... but a member of ... the Taliban.
But at least you score one palpable hit. On Cate Blanchett. Sheesh, that must have been a tough one.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I think fundamentalist Muslims might be on to something with their whole suppression of women thing.
What a hoot. Tim Blair endorses the burqa. Oh wait, I get it, he keeds, he keeds. Slap my thigh with a watermelon. (Or does he? Keed that is. Is there something deeper going on with Cate Blanchett?)
But I see the cheese eating surrender monkeys have got it right, and what's more even copped a sterling endorsement in The Australian in Sally Neighbour's Battle against the Burka is not based on bigotry. Yep, that's right, one of those pesky ABC reporters rabbiting on about the French might be on to something by standing up for secularism.
How about it Tim? How about instead of slagging off Bill Henson and worrying about Christians copping more abuse than Islamics, as if it can be measured as kind of competition... like you know (yep they really do say like you know all the time in America) ... like, you know ... once again the Christians have copped an unfair penalty for handling the ball while the liberal leftie satirical ironical referee has let the Islamics get away with murder scott free ...
... as if taking offence should be some kind of equal opportunity platform, where liberals must offend all religions in equal strength and in equal depth all the time, how about instead of all that, why not take that Eureka flag and plant it at the top of the secularist hill, and announce to the world that it's wabbit season for all the secular satirists wanting a bite of all the world's weligious?
Or should we just settle for pictures of bears?
Next week? Tim Blair gets agitated about militant atheists attacking all forms of militant religion, including Christianity and Islam. The reason? They didn't mount as militant an attack on Islam because they're scaredy cats ... or is that because Christians like to turn the other cheek?
Whatever. Here's a picture of a bear ...
Christ, does anyone actually still watch "South Park" anymore?
ReplyDelete