Bloody Mary

So, the guys from South Park have done what they do best and taken their particular art form to a new level with the "Bloody Mary" episode, which raised howls of protest (well, a press release) from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who were concerned that the Holy Mother not be depicted with blood spraying from her vagina. They demanded action from Comedy Central, and got it. The episode is now being censored, a scheduled rerun of the episode having been pulled from the schedule.

None of this is that surprising because it's no secret that freedom of expression has never been a particular concern of the Catholic Church. For much of their history, Catholics have engaged in the censorship, torture and murder of those who disagreed with them and said so, therefore I suppose this can be seen as a step in the right direction.

I have a few observations on this matter, though, that I'd like to work through.

First of all, I have seen the episode in question. I don't watch South Park religiously (intended) any more and hadn't watched it when it aired. However, after Mr. Donohue's fuss spread through the internet/blogosphere, I became aware of it and downloaded it immediately. This is the delicious irony of this kind of attempt at censorship in the 21st century: not only does it not work, but it most often has the opposite effect that the commotion acts as high-quality advertising. This episode will certainly live forever on the net as the "censored" episode. In that respect watching Mr. Donohue "protect" his religion by using the weapons of press release and censorship is something like watching a dog trying to program a VCR.

Second, I must take issue with this quote:

“Already, we are being deluged with hate mail that is as obscene as it is viciously anti-Catholic. All because we exercised our First Amendment right to request that Comedy Central not offend Catholics again! But we’re used to such things and will not be deterred.”

Presumably by "First Amendment right", Mr. Donohue is referring to freedom of speech, although there are several other rights described in the First Amendment. In other words, then, Mr. Donohue is complaining that South Park fans are using their freedom of speech to protest the fact that he used his freedom of speech to squelch someone else's freedom of speech. (Never mind that the first amendment is irrelevant to all of this, since it only prohibits the Government from making laws that restrict speech.)

Third, let's assume that, hypothetically, there is a large subset of the population that are tremendously offended by images and other works depicting torture, execution and pain inflicted upon innocents. Would Mr. Donohue advise representatives of this group to pressure television networks to censor such images from the airwaves? Of course, depictions of crucifixion would easily fall into this category of imagery.

Bottom line: If you don't like something, just don't watch it. Stopping me from watching it just makes me curious and annoyed.