NEXT WEEK'S TARGET: BILL DONOHUE?

As Memeorandum indicates, by late afternoon the so-called South Park "Cartoon Wars" overtook Iran's nuclear ambitions and Scooter Libby's pre-trial motions in terms of blogospheric attention. I don't have much to add, except that after last week's nearly perfect part one, I thought the to be continued was itself a joke. I was wrong, and the first half of the episode didn't work for me. The presidential press conference didn't work for multiple reasons. Repeated too many jokes from last week. And South Park has already paid homage to The Simpsons, so I'm not sure what the Bart character was doing there (except perhaps to separate that show from Family Guy, a show I never liked when it was first on, kinda grew to appreciate during its post-cancellation DVD golden age, but soon grew tired of when it returned).

That said, the second half — the imagined retaliatory al Qaeda cartoon making fun of the U.S. and Trey Parker and Matt Stone's exposing of Cartoon Network's/Paramount's/Viacom's free speech hipocrisy — more than made up for it.

Good show. While The Simpsons will always rank as the greatest show of all time (and have you noticed the current season is the strongest in a few years?) it's South Park that will prove the more serious work. They won a Peabody for the last season. Give them a Nobel next time.

Update — Underscoring how rarely I go to church anymore, or perhaps just my forgetfulness about that one aisle at the supermarket, it takes the AP's David Bauder to remind me:

The comedy -- in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians -- instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag.

This aspect of South Park's statement about the Inkifada reminds me of an old Bill Hicks joke where he suggested that, in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's foiled plot to assassinate Bush 41, we should kill him to just to show Saddam how it's done (I forget the context, but hey, it's Bill Hicks, come on). That's sorta what Parker and Stone did last night — minus the treason and, you know, actually in the service of a legitimate argument.

But even better, also via Bauder, is this:

A frequent "South Park" critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored.

If nothing else, Parker and Stone saved their honor by embarrassing the network. One could argue these two episodes were, in fact, all about doing so.

But anyway, let me get this right: Donohue likely would prefer that South Park not be on television, and so he appeals to Parker and Stone on principle in encouragement to leave the show, so eventually it wouldn't be on television. Not to mention, that's exactly what nearly happened to Family Guy in the "Cartoon Wars" episodes. That's actually pretty clever, even if prima facie disingenuous.

Or maybe I'm being too harsh? I wrote the foregoing before reading the next paragraph:

"The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central -- that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not -- it's Parker and Stone," [Donohue] said. "Like little whores, they'll sit there and grab the bucks. They'll sit there and they'll whine and they'll take their shot at Jesus. That's their stock in trade."

No... if anything I gave him too much credit.

Bauder declines to clarify the Scientology analogy, but his description of last week's episode is worth concluding on:

Chef was seemingly killed and mourned as a jolly guy whose brains were scrambled by the "Super Adventure Club," which turns its members into pedophiles.

Update 2 — Tied to its daily deadline, the Blogometer couldn't catch up until this afternoon. No matter, they've got it covered now.

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posted by WWB at 7:41 PM |