South Park

Thou shalt not mock Tom Cruise. Another month, another "cartoon-blasphemy scandal," said Andrew Sullivan in the London Sunday Times. When a recent episode of Comedy Central’s South Park took aim at Scientology, mocking its space-alien belief system as well as devotees Tom Cruise and John Travolta, "all hell broke loose." Singer and Scientologist Isaac Hayes, who supplied the voice of Chef, announced he could no longer work for a show that "disrespects" people’s "personal spiritual beliefs." Then Comedy Central canceled a repeat of the episode, reportedly after Tom Cruise threatened not to promote the upcoming Paramount picture Mission: Impossible III. (Comedy Central and Paramount are both owned by Viacom.) While it may seem grotesque to compare the flap over one "silly episode of a silly series" to the recent global trauma over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, the principle is the same: A society that doesn’t allow religions to be mocked cannot be considered free.

A noble sentiment, said Pia Catton in The New York Sun. But "this righteous theory of comedy" only works if it’s applied evenhandedly. Last year, South Park took aim at Catholicism, producing a bitterly anti-Catholic episode whose centerpiece was a menstruating Virgin Mary. Outraged Catholic groups demanded the episode be shelved. On that occasion Comedy Central stuck to its guns and refused, nobly citing the cartoonists’ "First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people." But "where is that tough talk" now? It would seem that Scientology, with its "aging pinup boy" and its other Hollywood connections, has "won a battle that the Catholics could not." What a sorry statement.