Friday, December 30, 2005

Missionary!

"South Park" parked by complaints by Sarah Hall

Did Comedy Central grant the Catholic League its Christmas wish?

Following the Dec. 7 season finale of South Park, titled "Bloody Mary," the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights slammed the network for its irreverent portrayal of church icons and sought to block the episode from being rebroadcast.

It appears the group may have met with success. A repeat of the finale was scheduled to air Wednesday night, but was pulled from the Comedy Central lineup without explanation.

In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is believed to be bleeding from its rear end, inspiring faithful parishioners to flock from miles around to be healed by the miraculous blood.

Eventually,
Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, whereupon he determines that the statue is actually menstruating and thus is nothing special.

"A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle," the pope declares in the episode. "Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time."

Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and "a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD."

The Catholic League also sought a personal condemnation from Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano Jr., who the group noted is a "practicing Catholic."

Califano was only too happy to oblige. After viewing the episode, he released a statement calling the episode an "appalling and disgusting portrayal of the Virgin Mary."

"It is particularly troubling to me as a Roman Catholic that the segment has run on the eve and day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day for Roman Catholics," Califano said.

Califano also pledged to have Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston review the episode.

Comedy Central did not respond to a request for comment on why "Bloody Mary" was yanked from the schedule.

Screencaps of the episode were no longer available on Comedy Central's press site or on comedycentral.com's South Park section.

The Catholic League previously tangled with Comedy Central in 2002 over a South Park episode titled "Red Hot Catholic Love," but failed to produce any results.
end article

Ok. Now seriously folks. I haven't seen this episode, so I can't be certain, but from the little quote above it certainly sounds like the list of people who are being made fun of here does not include the virgin mary. It sounds like the joke is on holier than thou missionaries (I said missionary!) who subjectively determine what is and is not miraculous.

As I said, I'll have to get back to you on this one, but for now I'm going to re-express my irritation with the Catholic League. As far as I can tell, these are angry, mean people who act like catholicism is in some sort of minority status, when it is, in fact, the largest or second largest religion on the face of the earth.
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Couple of questions: 1. What would it take for you, as a Catholic, to be offended by South Park or some other show for its irreverent portrayal of Catholicism? 2. What would it take for you to be ok with the Catholic League taking action against such an act?

1:14 PM, December 30, 2005
Nathan said...

I'm not sure if I could be offended by south park or some other show for irreverant potrayal of catholicism. I was made a little sad about the red hot catholic love episode, because obviously not all priests are into little boys. I felt sorry for those priests who got an undeserved bad rep.

But even that didn't offend me. In fact, I don't think any story or joke could ever really offend me, if about a group, unless said group was somehow underpriviledged and losing the battle for continuing existence and the story or joke helped to push them down a little further.

The creators of south park are humorists whose literal job description is to make hilarious, offensive, off-color (and sometimes topical) jokes. I'm almost surprised catholicism hasn't been hit up for humor more often, as it is such a huge and powerful religion in america today.

In answer to your second question... Quite a lot. For one thing, catholicism would have to be in minority status. It is not. I understand that there are fewer catholics than protestants in America, but catholicism is doing pretty good when compared against specific religions, like baptism, mormonism, lutheranism, etc.

I really think the catholic league has very little place in this society, except as an organization backed by a powerful group to bully everyone else. They aren't trying to help the sick or the poor or the blighted when they're doing something like this. They're trying to help themselves and their own pride.

Being catholic myself, I find such behavior repugnant.

One other thing, for those who still don't understand the point of this episode of south park. This episode has very little to do with the virgin mary. It could have been about any religious statue. Mary was handy because there have been a few famous sightings of statues of Mary crying bloody tears.

The joke was about people who deem some things holy and other things not, based purely upon subjective whims. The joke was about people who ignore their family, and blow their children's college money so they can go to a tiny village in south america to see a "miracle." The joke is about people who harm their loved ones while seeking personal self-fulfilment.

This may be hard for some of you to swallow, but I think the south park boys specifically chose Mary's period as the holy/not holy event. It's all about people looking to statues, rather than people when trying to find God.

1:51 PM, December 30, 2005
Anonymous said...

Who is the "you" that you are talking about in your last paragraph? Who does the Catholic League typically "bully" around?

2:23 PM, December 30, 2005
Nathan said...

Um. Answering the second question first: anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda/ anyone who doesn't fit into their moral standards.

Now on to the first question: it was a pretty generic you. In this case I'm going to say anyone who thinks the south park people only make surface points, not necessarily conservatives or liberals or catholics or protestants. Just people who don't see or don't believe that a deeper meaning may be found in something as crass as south park.

Ok, now back to the second question again, because it is more fun. Let is examine recent news releases by the Catholic League.

For example: 12/1/05: "Lands' End Neuters Christmas"

Now here is a classic example of catholic league bullying tactics. They start by finding someone with a reasonable position (here i.e. a catalog trying to reach as many costumers as humanly possible) and vilify it using the aggressive and tactless verb "neuter."

The CL asked Lands' end why they chose to do this, and lands' end attempted to be nice about it, even complementing the catholic league by saying that catholics are open and full of "love for one's fellow man."

The CL, of course, took this as an insult, then made it seem as if, Lands' End was suggesting that all christians were a "loveless bunch of bigots who have an impoverished understanding of their own religion." (quote coming not from Lands' End, but from the always pleasant Bill Donohue.)

As far as I can tell, this entire article is designed to get some of political hay out of a bit of nothingness that a catolog did out of economic necessity. It is aggressive, angry, spiteful, mean-spirited, and generally unpleasant. And it's entire purpose is to attack another in order to protect self-pride.

That is the definition of a bully's behavior.

Now, Grant, this is only an example of the approximate jillion times the CL has refused to turn the other cheek, gotten upset about a bunch of words that weren't actually hurting anyone at all, and put down anything in its path.

It's kinda funny that Bonohue used the phrase "loveless bunch of bigots" when that so accurately defines himself. If he really wants to defend catholicism, he should ACT like a catholic. Feed the poor. House the sick. Cloth the weary. And stop crucifying anyone who disagrees.

6:59 PM, December 30, 2005
Anonymous said...

Do you know of any other groups similar to the Catholic League that are as bullyish, spiteful, and mean-spirited? Or, is the Catholic League alone in its bigotry?

7:28 PM, December 30, 2005
Nathan said...

Oh, I'm sure there are many others. Standard examples include Fox News and the Sierra Club. The difference is that I identify as a catholic, which makes it that much more irritating that a group exists that counters all of the goodness and hope that I see eminating from our religion.

8:06 PM, December 30, 2005
Joel said...

Jesse Jackson, NAACP, ACLU all suck too and bully people around. Not to single out black organizations, but those ones seem to jump on every bandwagon and get pissed off at a lot of stuff and they're the first that come to mind.

Add in Jerry Falwell.

I'm sure there's more.

I just wrote this on Kristi's blog without having read this one first, but the episode in question was a pretty ugly shot at the catholic church, but more so because it was gross than because it was off target. Come on, I saw on the news the other night that some woman in Oklahoma had a water stain that looked like Mary (uh, yeah right) on a ceiling tile and she was going to cut it out and sell it on E-Bay.

People like that deserve to be made fun of. The bleeding mary thing is a little differnt, but not much.

That said, the rest of the episode was good stuff. Stan's dad gets a DUI and has to go to AA and has to "give himself up to a higher power" and stuff and AA convinces him he has a disease. Stan's dad then gets all wrapped up in blankets and sits on the couch chugging beers and claiming he's so sick with his disease, so Stan goes to the AA meeting and is like "you can't just tell people shit like that. Now my dad really thinks he has a disease."

The AA people are like "he does."
"No. He doesn't. He drank too much."

And Stan eventually goes on to argue that alchoalism isn't a disease and AA isn't good solution because you never really solve your problem, you just ignore it. The only way to solve the problem is by drinking just a beer or just two without going freaking nuts.

That was the message of the episode.

All that said, and that was a whole lot said, I think it's pretty silly to get all butt hurt about that episode. I mean, the best parts of South Park are the jokes it takes at segments of society, like the one earlier this season where Cartman demanded Stan give up his "jew gold". After a couple minutes of refusing, he eventually pulled a little sack of gold from his pocket.

One of my favorites was an episode that pretty much bashed the ENTIRE morman religion, making it all look REALLY really stupid. Another great one from this season bashed Scientologists, again making them look REALLY stupid.

I laughed my ass off and I bet you would too (and I bet a lot of members of the Catholic League would too).

Now, doesn't it seem a little silly start hating South Park because it turned its jokes on Catholics? Where was the Catholic League when other religions were being blasted? Where were all these people when the joke wasn't on them?

It's a stupid issue to get so bent out of shape about and everyone that is all mad needs to grow up.

5:42 PM, December 31, 2005

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