Muslim Threat Results In Censorship
Via http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/south-park-episode-is-altered-after-muslim-groups-warning/?hp we have this:
An episode of “South Park” that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading “CENSORED” after a Muslim group warned the show’s creators that they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a character said to be the Prophet Muhammad was seen wearing a bear costume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam in 2004 after making a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.
...
On Thursday morning, a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.
So we are now at the point where an organization based in New York can issue veiled threats against cartoonists, and the authors' publishers will censor their work.
Censor this, assholes:
Update: See also http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/04/22/muslims_threate.html and http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/comedy-central-cowers-in-face-of-murder.html.
Update 2: Instapundit says: "Obviously, Christians -- and Sarah Palin fans, and lovers of My Mother The Car -- should take heed of this incentive system our modern media is creating. Don’t want things you treasure satirized? Just issue a “prediction” and -- voila! Meanwhile, note how entirely real radical Muslim threats and violence are treated as just part of the weather -- something you have to adapt to -- while nonexistent Tea Party violence is an existential threat to the Republic."