Big Balls

2006-07-13 - 9:35 a.m.

Woke up this morning to a bloody nose. No idea how THAT happened. But I seem to have gotten most of the blood out of the pillowcase, and I put some Shout! gel on what little is left. After I launder, we'll know.

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Well, look here - Comedy Central has grown a pair.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Trapped in the Closet," the controversial "South Park" episode that skewers Scientology and its popular proponent Tom Cruise, is hitting the airwaves again.

Comedy Central plans to air the Emmy-nominated episode on July 19. It was last scheduled to rerun in March but was abruptly pulled by the network.

The network rotates its 150 episodes of "South Park" in and out of the broadcast schedule, spokesman Tony Fox said Wednesday.

"This episode just happens to be rotating back in," he said.

The show's co-creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were told in May that the episode was pulled from the schedule to appease Cruise and his partners in "Mission: Impossible III," according to reports.

"If they hadn't put this episode back on the air, we'd have had serious issues, and we wouldn't be doing anything else with them," Stone said in Wednesday's edition of the trade paper Variety.

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount...which has the "M:I" franchise. When the episode was pulled, the reason given was that Tom Cruise had refused to promote "M:I III" if the episode aired. Cruise - and his Scientology friends - denied this.

Now, I don't know a lot about Scientology. In fact, I know very little about it, like I know little about Islam.

But one thing I do know is this: nobody - and I mean NOBODY - should be immune from satire or parody.

One of the nice things about this country is that most of us can take a joke, even about ourselves. Hell, I laugh at myself if I've done something stupid. But some folks take themselves so seriously that they have extreme reactions to people who make fun of them. Ask the Danish newspapers.

And when the extremists come out, they tend to look all the more ridiculous. After all, in part two of South Park's "Cartoon Wars" episode, Comedy Central wussed out and didn't allow a depiction of the Islam prophet Muhammed...despite the facts that:

• the same "Cartoon Wars" ep shows Jesus and George Bush defecating on an American flag. Evidently THAT was okay with Comedy Central, but they didn't want to offend Muslims. Double standard, much?
  and
• Muhammed had appeared in a PREVIOUS EPISODE way back in season 5 called "Super Best Friends". They could have said, "We did this before and you didn't complain." I know times change. But the season 5 episode was broadcasted less than five years ago. I think they could have used that logic.
  

This doesn't mean that libel and slander are permitted. Those are still against the law, and should be.

But if you think you're immune from people making fun of you, they'll do it all the more...poking you to get a reaction. And the more extreme you react, the stupider you look.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be an idiot.

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In The Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept.:

Special thanks to our own Bindyree for showing me how to use a couple of HTML commands in this very entry. Since I frequently don't know what I'm doing, I get help where I can...and she was my resource this time.

Thanks, Brin!

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Be seeing you.

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