Trey Parker and Matt Stone are pretty much the preeminent satirists of their generation, two rather dorky guys who have taken their home-brewed proto-viral-video and slowly turned it into one of the most important television shows in the history of the medium: South Park. They go places no one else dares to go, challenging powerful and influential people at all points along the political and sociological spectra. If their work has never offended you, you’re either very open minded (call me, ladies!) or completely detached from your own culture (and probably shouldn’t be reading this, you rascally Amish kid).

I bring this up because, after 200 episodes of taking on politicians, celebrities, Christianity, Mormons, the Moonbat Left, the Wingnut Right, Scientology, racism, war, poverty, online culture, and evil, evil red-heads, the most recent episode of South Park was censored by its network, Comedy Central. The network has, in the past, pressured Matt and Trey to tweak or modify an episode before or during production, but this is the first time that they basically butchered a completed, ready-to-air show. Why? Because the New York-based fuckwarts at a now-defunct site called Revolution Muslim threatened Matt, Trey, and Comedy Central’s employees with death for airing the first episode in the set of two.

(Check out the Google cache of the site, which can be best described as a sociopathic fanboy’s Livejournal, only with less tentacle porn and more rambling hatefulness. Well, okay… less tentacle porn, at least.)

Here’s a video of the boys being interviewed by Boing Boing‘s Xeni Jardin prior to the first episode’s airing:

A few thoughts:

1. Looking at Matt Stone’s beard, I now know where they got the idea for Cartman buying Scott Tenorman’s pubes.
2. Xeni, my love… the spoken word is not your medium.
3. Seeing Matt and Trey going bald is intensely depressing. Oh 1997, where have you gone?

So what do I think of Comedy Central’s actions here? Hm… lemme think. They gave the greenlight to the episode, signed off on the content at every step, and when they changed their minds at the last minute, decided to run it bleeped into incoherence rather than just cancel it and surrender those advertiser dollars along with their balls.

In short, I’m impressed. It takes a helluva organization to come off simultaneously greedy, indecisive, and chickenshit. And I should know, since “Greedy, Indecisive, and Chickenshit” is WCBPB’s company motto.¹

For another opinion, let’s turn to one of the network’s other crown jewels: