White Civil Rights : The Website for Europeans and Americans Wherever They May Live

by Jeff Davis

For those unfamiliar, South Park is a bizarre cartoon which started out with a cult following on the Comedy Channel and has recently made its way to network TV. In each episode of the first season, the character Kenny was killed (reappearing in the next episode without explanaton). Each time Kenny met an unfortunate end, the characters Stan and Kyle would yell “They killed Kenny. You bastards!” Some episodes make hamburgers out of liberal sacred cows while other episodes have a nauseatingly liberal slant. The character Chef while frequently funny has unfortunate dating habits which would offend many Americans.

In a fascinating little Hollywood turf war, the weirded-out Church of Scientology cult has declared war on the frequently obscene and often deranged cartoon show South Park. Hollywood scuttlebutt has it that celeb Scientologist Tom Cruise got very upset with an episode entitled “Trapped In The Closet” which has some unkind things to say about him and fellow Scientologist John Travolta. In response, Cruise went into a sulk and threatened not to participate in promotions for his multi-million dollar sequel “Mission Impossible 3″ which is scheduled for release this summer, unless Viacom, which owns Comedy Channel and is a sister company to Paramount which is handling the movie, pulled a rerun of that South Park episode off the air. They complied and yanked the offending episode off the schedule at the last minute.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker responded in best Eric Cartman fashion. “So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! …You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!” In a related development, Scientologist Isaac Hayes who voices the character of Chef quit South Park last week, saying that he could no longer tolerate its religious “intolerance and bigotry.” Hayes has been on the show from its inception almost ten years ago, and he has only just now noticed that the show makes fun of religion. He apparently had no problem with earlier episodes ridiculing Mormons and Catholics, not to mention some really vicious smears against Mel Gibson after he made Passion of the Christ.

Scientology is the result of a drunken weekend binge in California in the late 1940s between hack science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and a number of cronies. The pulp writers were lamenting their low rate of pay and Hubbard came up with an idea that “the real way to make money is to found your own religion! Why can’t we create a futuristic religion based on sci-fi?” The guys kicked that idea around for a while, but forgot about it when they sobered up. Hubbard didn’t. (Forget about it –that is, presumably he sobered up.) Today Scientology is a multi-billion dollar empire attracting not only top-level Hollywood celebs like Cruise and Travolta but a new generation of movie stars such as Erika Christensen. Definitely a rich man’s “church,” Scientology reportedly charges hefty fees for “auditing sessions” that clear all one’s mental and spiritual problems, using an electronic gadget called an “e-meter” to zap bad thoughts called “en-grams.”

South Park is an oddity. It seems to be the only thing on television which is exempt from the rules of political correctness, and has ferociously lampooned and mocked every religion and ethnicity (including Jews, repeatedly), every celebrity and movie star, and every sacred cow the Establishment has. Scientology represents the rich and powerful with no sense of humor versus a hugely popular cartoon show that makes fun of everything. This is going to be an interesting little spat.