So apparently there's a usage violation happening there (gee, I wonder what the problem is)... however, I experienced my first moment of youtube serendipity (i.e. I found something random on the site other embarrassingly awful whiteboy freestyles):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZD59Ic9T8

Now that's awesome... however, it's also chilling, if you *DARE* to imagine an army of mechanized, augmented cockroaches who've harnessed the power of this new technology they've been given, roaming the streets of cities the world over under the auspices of some evil cyborg scientist, you know the type...

Ridiculous. There are tons of other South Park clips on YouTube. The original message I got from them was that it had been taken down due to inapproprite content -- i.e., the portrayal of Muhammad. Fuckers.

"First one suicide bomber, then another... like Mexican jumping beans. *cough-cough-ow-oh*"
Watch out, Crazymonk. Zawahiri's gonna burn you.

Mohammed doesn't just stand there, he says "Jihad, Jihad."

I agree that it should have been shown, but he wasn't just simply standing there.

I want evidence that this is real. That character Mohammed looks just like the animated one from the South Park Super Friends episode. And it wouldn't take much to just add it in, considering South Park is such a simple animation.

I demand PROOF!

Can we all just agree that that's basically what it WOULD have looked like?

Jihad, jihad.

As I said on YouTube, if that's a fake, it's a very sophisticated one. The simpler explanation, I think, is that Matt & Trey animated the original (since it would've been so trivial for them to do) and either one of them or someone who works on the show seeded it on a torrent tracker. Occam's Razor would make the latter explanation in my book, rather than to imagine that someone went through all the work to put it in seamlessly.

oh, marco, if only i had the power to call a nerd jihad against you....

sorry flea, but I think the outcome there would much more resemble sunni-shi'a infighting.

although I suppose that could still be called jihad. the word seems amenable to a range of applications.

Jihad jihad.

i have a question. did viacom *really* censor the muhammed image, or did south park "censor" the muhammed image to make a point? i have not heard decisively one way or another.

neither; it was comedy central. "Comedy Central said in a statement issued Thursday: "In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision." Its executives would not comment further."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060413/ap_on_en_tv/tv_south_park_muhammad_9

That's my point jgb. The way shows work is, you have to pitch the ideas for the season and the network has to greenlight the idea. So my guess is Matt and Trey pitched an idea (some variation of what we saw), Comedy Central said no to Muhammed, and so the episode changed in response to that. The point of the episode was that we were never going to see him, otherwise why the poop ending? Why the whole "all or nothing" speech?

I don't know- it works either way, because they're not just making fun of american media censoring the image, they're also making fun of the response by the 'islamic world'. that's what the pooping was aboot. that said, I doo (doo) think it was a little bit of a simplification, as far as satire goes. I think free speech as an ideal has been violated by global politics/economics on the whole, been turned into a pawn just like everything else. Which is NOT to say that I don't value the fact that I can speak freely. I think there are levels to it.

yummy, yummy crap.

ps i haven't seen it yet; i've heard both that the black-and-white text screen was an actual block, and that it was an intentional block.

intentional block! 5 yard penalty.

To reitterate and elaborate on what I wrote earlier: I don't believe that this clip is real. Mohammed does much more than simply stand there in the clip. His saying "Jihad, Jihad", really can't be deemed as innocous as him just standing there. It clearly highlights the violent nature of Islam. I think the whole point of the show was that he was just standing there doing nothing that could be deemed offensive. Maybe I am wrong. If so, I think the show would have been more effective without him saying anything, but believe that the show is most effective by not having him there at all as it aired.

Here's an interview with Exec Producer Anne Garefino that should clear things up. Short summary: they *did* animate it with Muhammad, but the clip above *may* be fake.

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_04_09-2006_04_15.shtml#114498496...

Quotes:

"In an interview Thursday evening, South Park Executive Producer Anne Garefino revealed to me that the show was faced with two options: deliver the episode as written and animated with Mohammed shown and then allow Comedy Central to censor it, or edit out the disputed scene and write their own language explaining why Mohammed was not being shown and whose decision it was."

"Garefino also confirmed that a short video circulating on the internet, which purports to be the excised South Park scene with Mohammed, is a forgery, though she revealed that a scene with Mohammed was animated and does exist. Garefino reported that she still hopes that the original, uncensored episode of South Park will be shown in the near future."

Me again. The forgery may not be what I've posted on this site, because she refers to it as a "short video," while the clip I posted was taken from a full episode found via a torrent tracker. I'll poke around.

So the clip is fake. Click the link in the third update of the blog post above. I still think it was a fairly sophisticated job, but the audio was a big mistake. Plus, wouldn't they have animated Muhammad Family Guy style?

But I was right about them actually animating it, so I can claim a half-victory.

NERDS HAVE TOO MUCH FUCKING TIME ON THEIR HANDS.