Apple breaks its silence over South Park “200″ & “201″

South Park recently aired it’s 200th & 201st episodes. The plots were full of classic South Park references highlighting some of the funniest – and most irreverent – situations of the show’s fourteen season history. A subplot of these episodes revisited a storyline about an appearance by The Super Best Friends, a parody super-hero group of the world’s religious icons Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Moses, and Muhammad. As it did on a previous occasion, Comedy Central censored the Muhammad character for fear of backlash from the Muslim community. While preventing the Islamic backlash, Comedy Central came under heavy fire by others defending the creator’s – and viewer’s – First Amendment rights. (Read more about the fallout here.)

I’m a season pass holder of South Park over at the iTunes Store. While Apple initially made episode 200 available to subscribers, it was ultimately pulled and episode 201 never made an appearance. This sparked a bit of outrage of my own resulting in the creation of the following review:

As a Season Pass holder of South Park for many years now, I find it highly disappointing that recent episodes “200″ and “201″ have not been made available through the iTunes store. Whether this is a decision made by Comedy Central or Apple, the unnecessary level of censorship supported by both companies is disheartening. While South Park episodes have been readily available for free (both by Comedy Central and other avenues on the Internet) I have been an ardent supported of paying for quality television. My reward for this support? Two companies deciding for me that I’m not intelligent enough to understand the satirical use of a religious figure as a cartoon character. I call on both Comedy Central and Apple to immediately release episodes “200″ and “201″ via the iTunes store or issue an immediate refund of my Season Pass payment. This is neither “uncensored” nor “complete” as promised.

(The rant is currently the highest ranked review for South Park: Season 14 on the iTunes store and has received 162/163 positive feedback! Whoa!)

Last night I received the following email from Apple:

Dear John,

Thank you for purchasing a Season Pass for South Park, Season 14. Episodes “200″ and “201″ are currently not available for download. We do not know if Comedy Central will make these episodes available at a later date.

We appreciate your understanding and have issued two free video credits to your account.

While ultimately not what I asked for it does highlight the source of the censorship to be Comedy Central. From the network which has promoted a show with a history such as South Park, the nightly social commentary of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, and at one time allowed Dave Chappelle to dominate it’s airwaves, this is so extremely disappointing. It’s not as if the parodied character Matt Stone and Trey Parker were drawing was doing anything other than standing there and being present (as opposed to say, Buddha doing lines of cocaine)

So if Comedy Central doesn’t have the guts to show to a cartoon character of the prophet Muhammad standing around doing nothing, someone should.