Just weeks after Comedy Central executives censored a program because of its depiction of Muhammad, the network has announced it has a new cartoon series in development that could not be more disrespectful of Christianity. Entitled “JC”, the show will depict Jesus living in contemporary New York City trying to “escape his father’s enormous shadow.”

Comedy Central’s long history of defaming Christianity.

Putting aside  Comedy Central’s religious insensitivity, it takes a lot of guts to attack Christians and wimp out to violent Muslim fanatics. (more…)

We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.

That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim mayhem around the world protesting such infidel abominations as the Danish Muhammad cartoons and Geert Wilders’ short film Fitna.

“Red lines” indeed – a phrase chillingly reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s famous observation that “Islam has bloody borders.” Except that the red lines the OIC is referring to aren’t geographical – they are the ever-tightening limits that Muslim fundamentalists are imposing to choke off our freedoms.

The influential OIC is the world’s largest Muslim assembly, consisting of 57 member states (you know, the same number of U.S. states candidate Obama campaigned in). Its primary aim is “conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront Islamophobia.” (As I’ve written here before, Islamophobia is a mythical beast that the OIC and collusive groups like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, use to intimidate us into craven appeasement.) Their goal is to abridge our free speech by making criticism of Islam an international crime; their strategy works because the West has been so emasculated by multiculturalism that we’d rather embrace cultural suicide than offend the tender sensibilities of such violent barbarians as the Danish cartoon rioters. (more…)

That would be Ross Douthat of the New York Times, the center-right Op-Ed columnist who looks like Attila the Hun next to his allegedly conservative stablemate, the pathetic accommodationist, David Brooks. Writing about the most recent episode of South Park, which sought to elide post-9/11 proscriptions against joking about Islam by not depicting Mohammed, he writes:

These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to Islam named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, didn’t technically threaten to kill them himself. His post, and the accompanying photo of van Gogh’s corpse, was just “a warning … of what will likely happen to them.”

This passive-aggressive death threat provoked a swift response from Comedy Central. In last week’s follow-up episode, the prophet’s non-appearance appearances were censored, and every single reference to Muhammad was bleeped out. The historical record was quickly scrubbed as well: The original “Super Best Friends” episode is no longer available on the Internet.

Sgt. York

Well, that’s America in 2010 — almost a full decade after we were attacked, we cower in fear of the people who attacked us; Sgt. York and Audie Murphy would be so proud.  Why, it would be as if, after the attack on Pearl Habor in 1941, the country suddenly banned all depictions of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, ceded Hawaii to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and went on a prolonged sushi orgy. (more…)

Having made a handsome living offending Scientologists, Catholics, Evangelicals and just about every ethnic group in the human family, Matt Stone and Trey Parker are writers who make people squirm, laugh and think. Now they’ve gone and outraged yet another religion.

Nearly every interest group, public official and celebrity caught up in the day’s news has been used in South Park’s story line to make viewers laugh.  The show is smart and thought-provoking, the jokes are crude and vulgar, and no one is immune from criticism.

I like South Park because it makes me laugh when I want to just laugh. It also makes me think when I want to just laugh. But truth be told, I, too, have been offended while watching (and laughing) at the show’s depiction of Christians, conservatives or gays in any given episode.

When South Park took on Christianity and mocked Jesus Christ, I found myself a bit uncomfortable and somewhat offended, yet I was still humored.  I’ve even been so outraged by a stereotypical character or plotline that I’ve been moved to openly discuss it, analyze it with friends and bring it up in a later discussion.  That is what makes it unique. Stone’s and Parker’s appeal is their ability to offend everyone.  You know what you are getting when you watch South Park, so if you are upset by vulgar humor, it’s best not to watch it.

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Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” in defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. All freedom-loving Americans should get behind this. While initially I thought it was an ironic joke that South Park was censoring everything related to Mohammed in their last episode, obviously we have seen over the last few days that against the creators’ will, Comedy Central cowered in the face of a thinly veiled Muslim threat.

In fact, submission, the definition of Islam, is the apt word to describe Comedy Central’s cowardice.

The bottom line is that the First Amendment guarantees free speech including criticism of all peoples. We are an equal-opportunity offense country. To censor ourselves to avoid upsetting a certain group (in a cartoon no less) is un-American.

It is especially egregious because it represents dhimmitude. We are sacrificing our law and our heritage to Sharia. The law of our land is the Constitution and beyond that the natural law granted to us by our divine creator.

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That sound you’re not hearing is the media, holed up in their towers along Sixth Avenue and across the street from the old Show World Center porn palace on Eighth Avenue, noisily rising to the defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the South Park creators who recently upset the tender Muslim sensibilities of this guy:

That would be Zachary Chesser, or as he currently styles himself, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee.  This 20-year-old from Fairfax, Va., trolling away on his blog, was able to get Comedy Central to censor one of the most popular and lucrative shows in its lineup merely by suggesting that Stone and Parker might meet the same fate that befell Theo Van Gogh when he “outraged” Muslim sensibilities.

Most of the stories so far have been along the lines of this one from the Los Angeles Times, which examines the “dilemma” media companies face in dealing with controversial subject matter: (more…)

In light of the news about Comedy Central’s astounding cowardice in the face of some veiled threats from Troglogyte Central, my thoughts turned to this movie, and not just because I wrote the sequel:

Forget the famous love story this time, and see Casablanca for what it also is: a great World War II movie, in which the alienated ex-pat Rick Blaine finally realizes that his policy of sticking his neck out for no man is just not going to fly; when the rusty scimitars come out, you don’t have to stick your neck out to get your head sawed off.

Remember, these threats allegedly came from an American named Zachary Chesser, who styles himself Abu Talhah al Amrikee — his adopted name, “al Amrikee,” means “the American” — who is living in this country.

Mark Styen gets it.  He spoke about what a crucial moment the Comedy Central espisode was this afternoon while guest-hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, and writes about it here: (more…)

The mythical figure of the war correspondent has a special place in the history of American journalism. The images are indelibly etched in memory: Edward R. Murrow broadcasting live while Nazi planes showered London with bombs; Ernie Pyle telling the personal stories of life in the trenches and ultimately paying for those stories with his life; and in today’s war with the jihadists, Michael Yon’s amazing reports from Afghanistan. This kind of fearless reporting made for journalist-heroes: courageous men and women that all Americans could admire.

Contrast Murrow, Pyle, et al with the cowards populating today’s mainstream media outlets. Everyone in the media today – whether new or old – is a war correspondent, in fact if not in name. The war is here, around the globe and most of all within our borders, courtesy of bullies and thugs who have spent the better part of thirteen centuries killing non-believers and trying to force a backward, hateful ideology cloaked in the robes of religion upon the world. Yet, though this war includes not only body counts, but ultimately threatens the existence of the free press itself, the mainstream media meekly cowers as the foundations of free speech and a free society are worn away by Islamic gangsters. (more…)

While doing research for my upcoming book, tentatively titled Programming America (Harper Collins, due 2011), the inside story of the politically-motivated evolution of television from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Sex and the City and the very real bias of the industry against conservative content and creators, I interviewed Doug Herzog, President of MTV Networks Entertainment Group. He oversees Comedy Central, and he was kind enough to grant me some time and consent to taping our conversation on June 22, 2009.

During the course of that conversation, I asked Mr. Herzog about the network’s decision to censor South Park in April 2006 – in particular, the network shut down a segment that featured a cartoon image of Mohammed.

Here’s the audio:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

SHAPIRO: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the controversy that surrounded the South Park/Mohammed controversy. How did that come about and what was the real story there?

HERZOG: The real story was the story you know, which is that the guys wanted to depict Mohammed and the network wouldn’t let them. And that was the whole story. And while I think if we had to do it all over again we would do it differently, that was the decision we made at the time. And I regret it somewhat but I’ve made worse decisions in my life. (more…)

Mark Steyn, at NRO, has this to say about Ann Coulter’s recent Kafkaesque experience in Canada:

A couple of days ago, I mentioned François Houle, the leftist apparatchik and provost of the University of Ottawa who threatened Ann Coulter with criminal prosecution before she’d even set foot on Canadian soil.

M. Houle warned Miss Coulter not to “promote hatred.” As this young lady points out in her report from the university, the only hate-promoter here is the buffoon Houle, whose barely veiled threats led to a gang of menacing Houligans (le mot juste) getting the event closed down. Alliances between the state’s ideological commissars and street mobs are a familiar feature of certain kinds of societies, and I suppose Canada will soon get used to its membership of this unlovely club. Ann Coulter says of her experience in the Great White North: (more…)