Matt Stone and Trey Parker have, in their time as South Park writers and creators, made fun of and commented on just about every social issue and piece of celebrity gossip known to man. When they did the episode "Tom Cruise in the Closet" revealing some of the inner-most secrets of Scientology as well as ridiculing the practice in the process, they stepped into dangerous territory. Scientologists do not take slights at their faith lightly, and have indeed sued many people who have decried or belittled any part of their doctrine. In that episode, young 8 year old Stan Marsh is prophesied to be the reincarnation of L.Ron Hubbard, the controversial science fiction novelist whose ideas sparked the Scientology movement. Stan is told by the head of the Church of Scientology himself that the whole religion is a global scam, based on teachings of alien overlords and brainwashed alien souls roaming the earth. He tells Stan that if he just writes the book, the next chapter, as the reincarnation, that Scientologists the world over will buy the writing and they will make 3 million dollars. Convinced, Stan writes away, and goes out to meet his adoring public. It is when he sees all the people eagerly awaiting answers to life's great questions that he stops, and tells them all that he's not who they think he is, and that Scientology is in fact just a giant global scam. He tries to reach out to them; and they threaten to sue him. Even the head of the Church, the man who himself told Stan of the scam, is indignant and threatening litigation. Stan stands defiantly against them and says "You want to sue me, FINE! SUE ME!" When the credits come up, the entire show is credited to John Smith (writer, director, make-up, etc etc) and a couple of Jane Smiths. It appears that Stone and Parker were well aware of the potential impact of the show and their possible liability, and therefore comedically covered themselves with this John and Jane act.
Shortly after the show, as you probably are aware, Isaac Hayes, he of "Shaft" theme song fame and the voice of the children's beloved confidant Chef on the show, quit the show entirely, A devout scientologist, he was upset at their portrayal of his religion on the show, and was quoted as saying ""There is a place in this world for satire but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs begins, (BBC News: Isaac Hayes Quits South Park) All this controversy ultimately led to the show being pulled by Comedy Central, South Park's parent network. This did NOT make the guys happy, and the boys were back with a vengeance the last two weeks, in a two part episode they called "Cartoon Wars." Taking backhanded slaps at the shoddy and piecemeal writing of the Family Guy as well as what they perceive as their own network's lack of balls for the Scientology incident, the episodes hit on many of the creators own personal issues with the media right now, as well as the very pertinent points about the reaction to the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed and the subsequent questions raised about free speech.
The first part begins with hysteria breaking out in South Park, as a certain "insensitive" cartoon is going to air a shot of Mohammed right on television! The adults of the town go on to explain to the children the danger of this due to the outrage following the Dutch cartoon, and subsequently have the children take "Muslim Sensitivity Training" in school. While the whole town is barricaded inside the local community centre, watching Family Guy for signs of Mohammed and fearing terrorist reprisal, we get to see the South Park take on Family Guy humour. The entire satire of the Family Guy consists of the entire family (horribly drawn and voiced) sitting around talking about Peter inviting his ex-girlfriend to dinner. There are many random, nonsensical cut away jokes referencing Knight Rider, Star Trek, Captain and Teneel, Mr. T and Mohammed (although the image of Mohammed is completely censored). Every time the scene returns to the family after one of the silly and outlandish cut-aways, the family is reminding us of what the actual plot of the show is by repeating how Peter's ex-girlfriend is coming to dinner. Stone and Parker are known haters of Family Guy and their writing, referring to it as random interchangeable humour that do nothing to advance the plot or story. They have even likened having South Park compared to Family Guy as a "kick in the balls (Parker) *wikipedia*" After the town is spared wrath due to the censoring of Mohammed, it is revealed that the writers of the Family Guy insist on showing Mohammed uncensored the next week. Cartman, in an outrage, vows to stop at nothing in order to get the episode pulled. Kyle, untrusting at first, is pulled in by Cartman's apparent sincerity for doing the right thing. Halfway to Los Angeles on their big wheels, it is revealed that Cartman simply hates the Family Guy and wanted it pulled for selfish reasons all along. Kyle flips out and is baffled, telling him "you should love Family Guy...you're sense of humour is just like that." Cartman loses is, getting in Kyle's face and screaming that he'll kill him if he ever compares him to Family Guy again. He goes on a tirade, telling Kyle he's sick of people comparing them, saying how "When I make jokes they are inherent to a story! Deep situational and emotional jokes based on what is relevant and has a point, not just one random interchangeable joke after another!" echoing the sentiment felt by Stone and Parker. At the end of the episode, after an absolutely fantastic "high-speed" big wheel chase complete with cheesy-poof induced explosions and police pursuit, Cartman reaches the Family Guy studio. Back in South Park, perhaps the most brilliant of all the twists found within these episodes is taking place. The town, not wanting to be perceived as condoning the Mohammed image, buries it's heads in the sand. This is after Mr. Stotch (Butter's dad) makes an impassioned plea on behalf of free speech and anti-censorship. The crowd, faced with choosing whether to fight for free speech or bury their heads in the sand, waffles and chooses to take the easy way out. The idea quickly catches on, and soon the entire U.S.A has their heads in the sand, showing that they had no part of the airing of Mohammed's image. At the end of the episode, captions arise telling us to stay tuned. The narrator asks will the image of Mohammed be allowed to appear uncensored? Will television executives stand up for free speech? Or will Comedy Central puss out? Stay tuned next week...... This is their obvious slap at their own network, as the references to free speech and the first amendment throughout the episode were as well. Stone and Parker were pissed that Comedy Central pulled the Scientology episode, and wanted to make a point. So they made these episodes, promising to air, via their Family Guy satire, an image of Mohammed, if their network would dare to allow them.
So they aired the second part last night. It was fairly benign for the most part, and the whole country still has its head buried in the sand throughout. There IS an amazing cameo by a Bart Simpson clone character that teams up with Cartman to trap Kyle and stop him from getting the show aired. In a classic moment that I feel should go down in cartoon history, the Bart clone tells Cartman "I'm a pretty bad kid." Cartman asks him, "Oh yeah, what's the worst thing you've ever done?" The clone replies "Umm..I cut the head off a statue once!" Cartman looks thoughtful, and then tells him "Yeah, um...there was this kid I didn't like so I ground up his parents into chili fed them to him." The Bart clone looks stunned for a moment, and then says, "yeah, you got it man." and skates away. I love this for the fact that it points out that the Simpsons writers and creators share in Stone and Parker's hatred of the Family Guy, as well as clearly illustrates the wide chasm of disparity in how much more extreme South Park is when compared to the Simpsons. Cartman gets in to see the network executives, and in true Cartman-style manipulative fashion invokes the spirit of Tiny Tim and uses a crutch to aid in his playing of a sick boy named 'Danny Pocket.' It's great to watch as Cartman limps along, coughing and saying 'ow' as often as he can. He makes an impassioned plea, telling the executives that his father worked for a Danish paper that was suicide-bombed after the cartoon of Mohammed was run in Denmark. He begs them to take pull the episode, lest anyone else be injured like he was, as he was in the lobby when the bombers struck. They listen to him, and take him to see the Family Guy writing staff so he can convince them as well.
At this point, Kyle is still trapped by the Bart Simpson clone. Cartman has discovered that the Family Guy is really written by a tank of Manatees that take "idea balls" covered with random verbs, nouns, celebrity references and pop culture words and drop them into a joke vault where they form Family Guy jokes. Cartman finds out that if just one of the millions of 'idea balls' is removed from the tank, the manatees will stop working. This is his only option, as the manatees are unmoved by Danny Pocket. The Network President tells Cartman that manatees are the only mammal unmoved by terrorist threats. Cartman then goes back to where Kyle is being held. Kyle gets really pissed off at him, and Cartman once again speaks for Stone and Parker, telling Kyle "That's good Kyle! That's good emotional character development based on the events of the show. Not at all like Family Guy." Then he leaves to carry out the final phase of his plan. After Cartman pulls the ball from the tank, he tells the president to not give in to the manatees, to take control of his network. The president agrees, and starts the sequence to pull the episode, which will take twenty minutes (or the remainder of the South Park episode.) Kyle then shows up, angry and beaten up from his ordeal so far. He and Cartman wrestle in what is dubbed 'the final battle between good and evil', which turns out to be a great little slap fight that spans the length of the studio including the parking lot. The fight ends with the Bart clone (who helped Kyle escape earlier after Kyle had talked to him about what was going on) smashing Cartman on the head with his skateboard from behind, as he'd done to Kyle earlier. Kyle then races to speak to the executive of the Network. The exec is trying to decide, with little time to spare, whether to pull the episode or not. Kyle implores him that yes, there is danger in violence if Mohammed is shown, but to give in to the threat is to let the terrorists win. Cartman shows up and pleads his case, then pulls out a gun and tries to threaten them. Kyle turns that around as a metaphor for terrorism, and expands on his reasoning. He goes on to say that if we censor the image of Mohammed, that we are saying that if one thing is not okay to make fun of, then we are saying that nothing is okay to make fun of, echoing the sentiments of Mr. Stotch from Part 1. He tells the exec that to stand up for freedom of speech, he MUST air the episode, and convinces the exec to go through with the airing after all. A despondent Cartman wails in anguish as the episode is shown, shooting at both Kyle and the executive to no avail: the gun is empty.
At the end, they show the Family Guy episode with Mohammed. During the satire, Peter makes a reference to getting a "salmon helmet" from Mohammed, the Muslim prophet. They cut to a scene where the doorbell rings, and Peter opens the door. All you see is the fish on top of the helmet, with hands holding it. A caption comes up and says "Mohammed hands Peter a football helmet." Then another caption follows, with the distinctly sour tone "Comedy Central refuses to show an image of Mohammed on their network." It cuts back to the citizens of South Park saying how it wasn't bad at all, not offensive or degrading. The show then cuts to a shot of Al Zawari, vowing revenge. They show a ridiculous cartoon with Americans parading around, shitting on each other. They throw in George Bush and numerous other celebrities, and even Jesus himself, sparing absolutely no-one. It was their way of using awful humour to unite all people, of showing that they can and will make fun of everyone. These two episodes spoke loudly of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's want to fight for free speech, for humour and for good writing and originality in comedy. They want people to feel comfortable to joke about absolutely everything, or to therefore not joke about anything at all. They point the finger at the cartoon industry, their competitors, themselves, their network, and the social issues pertinent to the news today. In short, some may not like South Park's humour, but you should watch these two episodes if only for what they say about freedom of speech and the scope of media and entertainment around us today.

For quotes from Matt Stone and Trey Parker as well as other criticism of the Family Guy by people in the cartoon industry go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Family_Guy

Sir Smittius