South Park's 200th Episode, Featuring Mohammed & Even More Litigious Guest Stars, Airs Wed. April 14

Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin has a great video interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park on the show's upcoming 200th episode. The episode features Mohammed, Rob Reiner, and a calvacade of even-more-annoying stars.

Will Comedy Central, which (as Stone puts it) "pussed out" on a post-Danish cartoons showing of Mohammed, allow an image of the prophet to grace the small screen? (Mohammed, as Stone also points out, still is shown in reruns of the great "Super Best Friends" episode). Will Scientology sue? Tune in on Wednesday, April 14 to find out.

Read Reason's interview with Parker and Stone here.

Snippets:

Parker: To some degree, South Park has a simple formula that came from the very first episode ["The Spirit of Christmas," which featured Jesus and Santa fighting over who owned the holiday]. There was Jesus on this side and there was Santa on this side, there's Christianity here and there's Christmas commercialism here, and they're duking it out. And there are these four boys in the middle going, "Dude, chill out." It's really what Team America is as well: taking an extremist on this side and an extremist on that side. Michael Moore being an extremist is just as bad, you know, as Donald Rumsfeld. It's like they're the same person. It takes a fourth-grade kid to go, "You both remind me of each other." The show is saying that there is a middle ground, that most of us actually live in this middle ground, and that all you extremists are the ones who have the microphones because you're the most interesting to listen to, but actually this group isn't evil, that group isn't evil, and there's something to be worked out here.

Except when it comes to Scientologists. They're all fucked up….

Stone: I think [libertarian] is an apt description for me personally, and that has probably seeped into the show. But we never set out to do a libertarian show….

I had Birkenstocks in high school. I was that guy. And I was sure that those people on the other side of the political spectrum were trying to control my life. And then I went to Boulder and got rid of my Birkenstocks immediately, because everyone else had them and I realized that these people over here want to control my life too. I guess that defines my political philosophy. If anybody's telling me what I should do, then you've got to really convince me that it's worth doing.