Far be it for me to be a profound social critic but the brouhaha over the censoring of Southpark’s depiction of Mohammed reminds me of the musical Cabaret.
A central progression in Cabaret is the audience transforming from enjoying the subversive cultural progressivism to its jolly enjoying the triumph of Nazism.
Southpark has led in revealing the inanities and contradictions of almost everything. Yet, it became too much for Comedy Central to allow Southpark to depict Mohammed and Comedy Central also censored Southpark's defiance of self-censorship to avoid the wrath of ideologic gangsters.
Comedy Central features the funniest and the most vile forms of comedy, never before to my knowledge censoring itself in targeting or revealing cultural inanities and contradictions or denigrating cultural pieties.
Yet, now Comedy Central reveals itself in allowing the takeover of its Cabaret by thugs, becoming itself complicit.
Comedy Central reveals itself as enjoying the profits of decadence until its lack of spine collapses upon itself. Comedy Central transforms from the presenter of any irreverence to become the channel of self-imposed cultural decadence that refuses to resist and indeed joins in capitulation to thugs.
Are we to be that Cabaret audience?
Other takes, from Memeorandum:
Ross Douthat / New York Times:
Not Even in South Park? — Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of “South Park” entitled “Super Best Friends,” in which the cartoon show's foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures …
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