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.

Comments

[CaptainSmartass]

If anybody's telling me what I should do, then you've got to really convince me that it's worth doing.

Best elevator-speech example of libertarianism I've read today.

[Dylan Ratigan]

Question authority! I had a T-shirt that said that. I may have invented it!

[The Libertarian Guy]

Funny how the people who used to say "question authority", are now in power demanding respect for their authority...

[Dylan Ratigan]

You might even say it's ironic.
I made that up too.

[Jamie Kelly]

Uh, that's "authori-taaaah."

[Sharla]

I guess you got to be a potty-mouthed tween to appreciate being a libertarian.

[SugarFree]

Still better than the brain-damage required to be a feminist.

[Sharla]

Didn't your momma teach you any respect?

[SugarFree]

After I raped her to death I did require a measure of respect at how long it took her to die. Three days of slow bleeding from cunt, ass and eyes is a long time to hold on.

RIP, Mom.

[Steve Smith]

STEVE SMITH... REALLY CAN'T TOP THIS ONE.

[Slut Bunwalla]

I really don't like the whole Steve Smith meme thing here, but this one made me laugh.

[oncogenesis]

Please shut up.

[SugarFree]

I guess when you raped your mom it didn't go so well. Couldn't get it up, could you? Maybe you shouldn't have hammered her tits into a bloody mush first.

[oncogenesis]

Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory much?

[John]

Are you Juanita's ugly sister?

[Sharla]

So why do men always drive every serious conversation down to how a woman looks?

[Fluffy]

We generally only do that after a woman has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has nothing worthwhile to say.

In other words, after about 30 seconds in most cases.

[Sharla]

Less time than you can keep it up.

[Fluffy]

OK, you made me laugh with that one so I guess I have to give you this round.

[Warty]

Did you just state that he can maintain an erection for more than 30 seconds? Leave the insults to the menfolk.

[T]

Unless we're trying to get laid, in which case we'll pretend to care about retard-level discourse until we either get some or figure out it ain't happening.

[Warty]

You sound really fucking fat.

[SugarFree]

And stupid.

Sharla|4.13.10 @ 9:40AM|#
I guess you got to be a potty-mouthed tween to appreciate being a libertarian.

-------

Sharla|4.13.10 @ 10:13AM|#
So why do men always drive every serious conversation down to how a woman looks?

She thinks trolling by calling us "potty-mouthed tweens" is a serious conversation.

[Sharla]

Stumbling into the comments here at "Reason" is like accidently walking into the boys room in Junior High. So libertarians are just boys that never grew up.

[SugarFree]

Crybaby.

[Fluffy]

accidentally.

Weren't all of your trips to the boy's bathroom more in the way of professional visits, and not accidental ones?

[Warty]

Are you still talking? Shut the fuck up already.

[P Brooks]

*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

[Neu Mejican]

The show is saying...

And here we have the root for why the show is so rarely funny anymore.

[Fluffy]

Everyone who says that doesn't actually WATCH the show any more.

[Warren]

I watch SP and this season has been very sub par. Sexual Healing and Scrotie McBoogerballs weren't even worth watching. MFC was an even bigger dissappointment. Cartman as Cramer in 0 Friends was the best twenty seconds of the season thus far. It's really looking like they've got nothing left but dick jokes.

[Cartoon Suicde]

But you don't eat when you've lived too long.

[Fluffy]

OK, but look at last season:

Margaritaville
Fishsticks
Pinewood Derby
Fatbeard
WTF
Whale Whores
The F Word
Dances with Smurfs
Pee

All classics.

[Warren]

Ugh no. Actually you didn't mention The Coon or Bottom Bitch which I thought were superior. Of what you did mention only The F Word stands out. Most the rest was serviceable, but Fishsticks and Pee were just beaten past death dick jokes.

[Fluffy]

Whale Whores was probably the best episode since Cartman froze himself.

But I imagine it's funnier if you actually watched Whale Wars, and scratched your head wondering when something would happen, as I did. And the reveal on the 60 year old deception of the Japanese amused me.

I thought The Coon was not that great. I haven't seen Bottom Bitch, I missed that one.

Pee was uneven, but I am laughing out loud AGAIN here right now as I picture the look on the face of the first monkey as someone pees on him. And the mystification of the scientists as they record the results of their tests.

[Warren]

Yep, one long dick joke.

Whale Whores was almost as bad as Wale Wars. Which works as parody take down, but not very entertaining.

Oh but let me inject mad props for giving The Mouse the full South Park treatment in The Ring

[Fluffy]

I also think you're underestimating Scrotie McBoogerballs.

[Warren]

Possibly. How did it excel?

[Fluffy]

All of the scenes where the boys express frustration that their elders think A Catcher in the Rye is somehow daring or dangerous made me laugh, especially since they came so quickly on the heels of Salinger's passing.

[PapayaSF]

Last week's takedown of Facebook was amusing but rather weak, not as good as the WoW episode, and certainly not the classic the Mormon episode was.

[Warren]

Exactly

[ManikMonkee]

This book has sex, profanity and made someone shoot the King of the Hippies!

classic stuff

[heller]

agreed.

[PapayaSF]

And it turns out Parker and Stone are doing a Broadway musical called The Book of Mormon!

[chancrecleer]

agreed. last two seasons confirm the show is over. Please end this unfunny mess!

[Joe C]

There are many who disagree. Don't watch it if you don't like it. Let the market decide when it ends.

[vanya]

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

Well sure, if you ignore the fact that Rumsfeld was actually in a position of great power and responsibility, and Moore is essentially just a (bad) comedian. That really is a 4th grader view of politics.

[John]

So morality is only judged by your position? I would say that your morals are determined by who you are not what you are. The fact that Moore happens to just be a film maker doesn't say anything about his morality. Ezra Pound was just a poet. But morally he was just as bad as anyone who pulled a trigger in the name of fascism.

[The Libertarian Guy]

Great analogy!

[Mo]

You really believe that Ezra Pound is as bad as the guys that manned the Auschwitz showers? Talk about a morally bankrupt point of view.

[John]

Yes. I think he was. Just because you are not the guy pulling the trigger doesn't absolve you of responsibility. If you are endorsing and furthing the ideology and policies that produced the evil, you are no different than the person who actually does the evil. You just have a different job. Indeed, Pound might be worse than the guy who ran the showers. Maybe that guy was forced into his job and made a horrible decision to avert death. That doesn't excuse him, but it does mitigate. Someone like Pound freely and gladly chose to do what they did and has no mitigation.

[@]

So what did Pound do, exactly, besides write almost impenetrable poetry, that would make him worse than Mengele? Examples, please.

[John]

Form Wiki

"In 1933, he had a personal audience with Italy's prime minister Benito Mussolini and presented him with A Draft of XXX Cantos. Mussolini's response was: "How amusing." Later, Pound would be asked to make radio broadcasts from Rome. In a radio broadcast in June 1942 he would say "Every man of common sense, including the odd British MP, knows that every man of common sense prefers Fascism to Communism, from the moment that he learns a few concrete facts about both of them."[10]

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Pound made his first trip back home to the U.S. in many years. He considered moving back permanently, but in the end he chose to return to Italy. Pound also had personal reasons for staying in Italy. His elderly parents had retired to Italy to be with him, and were in poor health and would have difficulty making the trip back to America even under peacetime conditions. He also had an Italian-born daughter by his mistress Olga Rudge: Mary Rudge was a young woman in her late teens who had lived in Italy her whole life and who might have had difficulty relocating to America (even though she had American as well as Italian citizenship).[citation needed]

Pound remained in Italy, residing primarily in Rapallo, after the outbreak of World War II, which began more than two years before his native United States formally entered the war in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor. He made several radio broadcasts from Rome, for which he was paid a small sum, but he also continued to be involved in scholarly publishing. Pound wrote many newspaper pieces. He disapproved of American involvement in the war and tried to use his scant political contacts in Washington D.C. to prevent it. When Pound spoke on Italian radio, he gave a series of talks on political and cultural matters, art and patronage and economic theories. Pound believed that economics was the core issue for the cause of World War II. Specifically, his talks were largely about usury and the notion that representative democracy has been usurped by bankers' infiltration of governments through the existence of central banks, which made governments pay interest to private banks for the use of their own money. He maintained that the central bank's ability to create money out of thin air allowed banking interests to buy up American and British media outlets to sway opinion in favor of the war and the banks. Pound believed that economic freedom was a prerequisite for a free country. Inevitably, he touched on various sensitive political matters in his denunciations of the war.[11] In addition, various comments of his were considered anti-semitic.[12]"

He acted as a propaganda agent for one of the worst ideologies ever and actively tried to subvert the war effort against it. Pound is about as low on the moral pecking order as you can get.

[@]

Congratulations on your ability to copy and paste, but one man's "propaganda" is another's freedom of speech. Holding irrational, unsupportable political views shouldn't be a crime.

[John]

Propagandizing for the Nazis and cheering on while millions were murdered is just political speech. Pound should have been shot.

[@]

Jane Fonda and Joan Baez too?

[Zeb]

Was he propagandizing for Fascists or Nazi's?

[@]

The first one.

[Fluffy]

He didn't just hold irrational political views.

He accepted a paid position advocating for a state implementing those political views.

Taking a state position throws a "magic switch" morally. If you're a Nazi, and a private citizen, you can speak all day long and I'll defend your right to do so. But if the Nazis actually were to subvert the Republic and attain power, and you took a position working for the new Nazi state, I would be morally entitled to blow your fucking brains out.

If your argument is correct and Pound wasn't guilty, that means that Goebbels wasn't guilty, either. Are you really saying that Goebbels bore no moral responsibility for the actions of the state he spoke for?

[Lester]

You could be anti-semitic but not advocate genocide. Nothing in that post endorces genocide.
Sean Penn says people should be jailed for criticizing Chavez. I don't think that makes you the same as Penn. But it makes you his spiritual butt-buddy.

[Jeff]

You really need to do more homework than wikipedia! The idea that he was a propaganda agent is patently untrue according to Pound and everyone who is remotely familiar with his work and radio broadcasts. Find the TRUTH, not the wiki-truth (truthiness). Pound knows more about economics--the history of economics from the origins of money-lending; he attempted an audience with American politicians (as did Edgar Allan Poe) to try to stave off the war (he was adamantly against the war). In doing so, he praised the ECONOMICS of fascism. But really, John, do your homework before you start spouting off; make yourself familiar with Pound's work in economics and politics through The Cantos before you form an opinion.

[Mo]

It's easy to talk big and not do it. Look at all of the healthy men of military age that were more than happy to cheer lead the Iraq War and tout how it was a vital action for the freedom and safety of the American people from the safety of their mom's basement homes rather than putting their money of their mouth was.

Saying something and doing something are not at all equivalent. Saying we should volunteer to the poor doesn't make one as good as someone that actually donates time/money to their local soup kitchen.

[John]

I don't know anyone who lives in their basement. Most of the people I know who support the war in Iraq either fought in it or fought in another war. It is the anti-war people who never seem to have much conviction to do anything beyond whine about a war, they have never been expected to fight in and do anything to support.

I don't know that someone like Bob Geldolf has ever actually given anyone food in his life. But, the fact that he did raise millions that allowed other people to do so makes him pretty significant.

[Mo]

You missed this then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.....tion,_2004

[Warren]

Doing bad things is worse than saying bad things. Always. If you're saying bad things then then at worst you're an asshole. If you're doing things, then we need a judicial system to deal with you.

[Eva]

You know who else locked people up for saying bad things?

[R C Dean]

Doing bad things is worse than saying bad things.

But saying bad things on behalf of those doing bad things, to enable them to do bad things, moves you pretty much over the line, in my book.

[vanya]

No. Comparing an executor of an ideology (Rumsfeld) with a theorist (Moore) blurs the lines of whatever "extremism" you're pontificating against, and is not terribly illuminating or useful. And it gets worse. Is Rumsfeld even an extremist, really? Some would say he was just faithfully executing his President's orders. Most GOPers would consider Ron Paul an extremist, not Rumsfeld. And Moore's ideology is such a confused mish-mash of half digested socialist rhetoric, populism and gotcha journalism it's hard to know what kind of extremist he is. In many ways he's not a typical leftist at all, as reprehensible a human being as he might be. All fine really - South Park is a cartoon, and the creators have a cartoon level understanding of politics.

[Mo]

Especially with the news that Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo because he was afraid that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq.

Apparently, locking up hundreds of innocent men in a prison camp, potentially turning them into anti-American terrorists is equal to being a douchy filmmaker. Great false equivalence there guys.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....092435.ece

[Alan Vanneman]

"The episode features Mohammed, Rob Reiner, and a calvacade of even-more-annoying stars."

Someone more annoying than Rob Reiner? Is that even possible? I'm afraid this is one episode I'm going to miss.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but Parker and Stone are totally gay. They showed up at the 2000 Oscars in drag and then later claimed that LSD made them do it, and also claimed that they never took LSD again. Ballsy!

http://www.brightlightsfilm.co.....do-it.html

[Warren]

Hah! Fags!

[L. Ron Hubbard]

Someone more annoying than Rob Reiner? Is that even possible?

Irony, the cruelest of mistresses.

Your lack of self-awareness is astounding sir. And I'd like a word with you.

[vanya]

Sorry, I don't care what he says. Rob Reiner still gets a pass for "Spinal Tap".

[Godwin]

My work here is done.

[Zeb]

How is that? I don't think anyone compared their opponent to a Nazi, did they?

[John 1.0]

Nazi, fascist, same thing.

[hurly buerhle]

And here we have the root for why the show is so rarely funny anymore.

I disagree; I think they have about as many hits as misses these days. If you want to rip an animated show for having lost its way and being painfully unfunny, Family Guy is a much more worthy target.

[Warren]

I disagree. SP has hit the skids lately. As for FG, it was always painfully unfunny except for Brian and Stewie. They still carry the show.

[Zeb]

No my tastes in comedy are correct and you should agree with me!

[Zeb]

I heard an interview with them recently, where they pointed out that not only had they already aired a cartoon image of Mohamed, but they did so in the opening sequence of every single episode in subsequent seasons.

[MatTrue]

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/04.....ll-season/

Over four years now!? Those infidels will surely burn in hell while being raped a thousand times a day! RIOT!!!

[zeebs]

so was the interview any good? i am allergic to xeni jardin and could not bare to watch.

[Jamie]

Meh. As much as I find South Park amusing, the bullshit equivalence thing gets old.

Twitter me when Micheal Moore is running an invasion of a nation state.