South Park - I love it but...

[Daisyspop]

Race Relations Mulls South Park Boycott

Call For South Park Boycott
20/02/2006NewstalkZB

The Race Relations Commissioner says news and entertainment are different issues when it comes to broadcasting offensive material.

Joris de Bres is comparing the controversy over anti-Muslim cartoons, and Catholic bishops' call for a boycott of CanWest advertisers because of C4's plans to run a South Park episode featuring a bleeding Virgin Mary.

He says a viewer can choose their television channel in an entertainment programme, but there is not as much discretion with getting news information.

Mr de Bres says C4 is not the news media, although the channel does have a responsibility in terms of decency and good taste to look at their programming. He believes the South Park controversy is a different issue to the Muslim cartoons.

Mr de Bres says freedom of expression is an extremely important fundamental right in a democracy.
Freedom of expresssion is fine but how come it is ok to take the mickey out of Christianity on an almost daily basis but not ok to do the same with the Muslim faith?
More to the point, which all commentators thus far seem to have missed - how can we expect other faiths to respect Christianity when it is abundantly clear that we do not?

[MotherBear]

It?s only right that Muslims should register offence about the cartoons if they feel that strongly, but they have taken the matter to extreme lengths to illustrate their anger. Although it?s said that they are hitting back at Denmark and the other countries involved in publishing the cartoons, it appears that most of the people being killed or hurt in the protests are their own people. They are fighting each other. Are they using this situation purely to let off steam at their frustration about other matters going on in their countries? An apology has been received from the Danish newspaper that first issued the cartoons, but still the killing continues unabated.

I don?t understand what it is they want any more apart from the massacre, it would appear, of all those concerned, from the original cartoonists to the newspaper editors who printed the offending material and maybe even the shops that sold the newspapers and those who had the audacity to read them. Perhaps then they would finally call a halt to the rampaging and murder that has gone on for the last few weeks.

Here, thankfully, the protest has been a peaceful one (so far) and takes the form of removing all Danish products from the supermarket shelves. I?m sure that would hurt Denmark much more than Pakistanis, Afghanis, Libyans and Nigerians etc. killing each other. There are other less barbaric ways of dealing with the matter.

[MotherBear]

For those who haven't heard about this debate and don't know what it's about (like me) you can read more about it here. It'll be interesting to see how it's handled by the western world, as there are comparisons between this and the cartoons.