Chef goes sour on “South Park”

  • dead chefGreg sent me this this morn­ing from the news wires:

    Isaac Hayes has quit Com­edy Central’s South Park, where he has voiced ladies’ man/school cook Chef since 1997, say­ing he can no longer stom­ach its take on religion.

    “There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intol­er­ance and big­otry toward reli­gious beliefs of oth­ers begins,” the 63-year-old soul singer and out­spo­ken Sci­en­tol­o­gist said.

    South Park co-creator Matt Stone told the Asso­ci­ated Press yes­ter­day, “This is 100 per­cent hav­ing to do with his faith of Sci­en­tol­ogy. … He has no prob­lem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show mak­ing fun of Christians.”

    Stone told the AP he and co-creator Trey Parker “never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Sci­en­tol­ogy. [An episode in Novem­ber poked fun at the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy and its celebrity fol­low­ers.] He wants a dif­fer­ent stan­dard for reli­gions other than his own, and to me, that is where intol­er­ance and big­otry begin.”

    Who knows what hap­pened exactly, but it does sound kind of funny that Isaac Hayes would sud­denly have a prob­lem with reli­gious intol­er­ance from the guys that brought us ‘Jesus n’ Pals.’

    And by the way, that episode of “South Park” on Sci­en­tol­ogy won’t be re-run in this coun­try and, I believe, won’t be broad­cast in Canada or over­seas. Good to know what good lawyers can sup­press these days.

    (Couldn’t find a link to that exact story, but here’s one that’s just like it in most regards.)

    Follow-up
    Liked Wall St. Jour­nal Online’s com­ment on this:

    Well, after all, it’s one thing to mock Jews, Mus­lims, Mor­mons, Catholics, Evan­gel­i­cals, blacks, gays, whites, Mex­i­cans, Asians, Cana­di­ans, French­men, peo­ple with birth defects, women, trans­sex­u­als, Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, lawyers, cops, cows, peo­ple with red hair and freck­les, goths, the hand­i­capped and fat kids. But sat­i­riz­ing Scientology–that’s just intolerant!

    One more follow-up
    Hap­pened to hear an addi­tional quote from one of the South Park guys that they didn’t do a show about Sci­en­tol­ogy for a long time because of Isaac Hayes’ affil­i­a­tion, but that when Penn Jil­lette told them that he couldn’t do an expose of it on his “Penn & Teller’s Bull****” show, they decided it was time. Good grief! What Her­culean lawyerly mus­cle does this stu­pid sect have that lets them do this? And why don’t the Mus­lims think about get­ting some of that rather than burn­ing down embassies to deal with their critics?


    Related posts:

    1. Blog round-up
    2. Why I don’t believe what Penn believes
    3. Car­toon rage, cont.
    4. [Baloney] on ghosts
    5. Vat­i­can to Mus­lims: prac­tice what you preach

    March 14th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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