Sunday, April 16, 2006
4 Questions
In honor of Passover and my recent family Seder, here are four questions that have been weighing on my mind recently regarding religion:
1. Danish Fallout: It seems that the newspaper cartoon controversy that tore Copenhagen apart has finally led to freedom of speech limitations here in the United States. I refer of course, to South Park, which has previously tackled every issue under the sun from stem cell research to corporate crime with relatively few restrictions from network executives, finally ran into a roadblock in their recent two-part Cartoon Wars episode. The show centered around the fallout that would occur if a popular cartoon (in this case, Family Guy) decided to show the Muslim prophet Muhammad in a relatively innocuous situation, like ordering iced tea or handing someone a football helmet. The network executives on the show waffle back and forth between showing the potentially offensive episode, censoring it, or pulling it off the air, and eventually decide to show the cartoon uncensored.
And then real life intervened. At the culmination of an episode vindicating free speech, the Comedy Central network staff decided to pull the offensive scenes, inserting the message below instead. (And lest one think that this was just part of the episode, consider the following interview with producer Anne Garefino posted at the Volokh Conspiracy)
Now here's the question. Regardless of the motivation for this censorship decision, whether fear or tolerance, will the Powers That Be ever release the actual scene, which was in point of fact, produced?
And the other question...is does it not strike anyone as hypocritical that Muhammad has appeared in a prominent speaking role and superpowers (pyrokinesis!) in a previous South Park episode which has been broadcast and rerun on several occasions? And will they ever rerun that episode ever again in the aftermath of Denmark and last Wednesday's censorship decision.
Whatever the answers to these questions are, one thing is clear. This looks like a job for the Super Best Friends!
2. The Angel of Death and Incomplete Information (courtesy of the Invisible Grandfather): Consider the following scenario. You're an Egyptian overseer living at the time of Moses, Aaron, and the rest of that crew. One afternoon after a hard day of oppressing the masses for the glory of Pharaoh, you notice something strange. All your slaves are painting their doors with the blood of a slaughtered lamb. When you ask one of them the origin of this strange custom he explains (after some duress) that he was told that the Angel of Death would be flying over the land killing off the first-born children of anyone whose house does not have lamb's blood on the door. Figuring it's better to be safe than sorry, you decide to imitate the slaves and streak some lamb's blood across your doorpost. This is a two part question: First, will the Angel of Death fall victim to your ruse and thereby spare your firstborn or will he be informed otherwise from On High? Second, if he can be directly informed from On High, why do the Jews need to slaughter all those poor baby lambs in the first place?
3. 9 & 1/2 Plagues: So I was recently trying to remember as many of the plagues of Egypt as I could, and found myself only able to name nine. A quick check on Wikipedia revealed the missing plague was #4: Arov. The reason I could not remember it was because the plague has a strange translation...it either means "flies" or "wild beasts." My question is this...shouldn't there be a relatively large distinction between these two things? The term wild beasts evokes, in my mind, large quadrapeds, which are, incidentally, carnivorous. Not flies. So are flies a plague of Egypt or not? And if so, don't arthropods seem a tad overrepresented in the whole plague thing what with confirmed swarms of lice and locusts?
4. To Hell With The Lunar Calendar!: Do you notice anything wrong about this picture?
In honor of Passover and my recent family Seder, here are four questions that have been weighing on my mind recently regarding religion:
1. Danish Fallout: It seems that the newspaper cartoon controversy that tore Copenhagen apart has finally led to freedom of speech limitations here in the United States. I refer of course, to South Park, which has previously tackled every issue under the sun from stem cell research to corporate crime with relatively few restrictions from network executives, finally ran into a roadblock in their recent two-part Cartoon Wars episode. The show centered around the fallout that would occur if a popular cartoon (in this case, Family Guy) decided to show the Muslim prophet Muhammad in a relatively innocuous situation, like ordering iced tea or handing someone a football helmet. The network executives on the show waffle back and forth between showing the potentially offensive episode, censoring it, or pulling it off the air, and eventually decide to show the cartoon uncensored.
And then real life intervened. At the culmination of an episode vindicating free speech, the Comedy Central network staff decided to pull the offensive scenes, inserting the message below instead. (And lest one think that this was just part of the episode, consider the following interview with producer Anne Garefino posted at the Volokh Conspiracy)
Now here's the question. Regardless of the motivation for this censorship decision, whether fear or tolerance, will the Powers That Be ever release the actual scene, which was in point of fact, produced?
And the other question...is does it not strike anyone as hypocritical that Muhammad has appeared in a prominent speaking role and superpowers (pyrokinesis!) in a previous South Park episode which has been broadcast and rerun on several occasions? And will they ever rerun that episode ever again in the aftermath of Denmark and last Wednesday's censorship decision.
Whatever the answers to these questions are, one thing is clear. This looks like a job for the Super Best Friends!
2. The Angel of Death and Incomplete Information (courtesy of the Invisible Grandfather): Consider the following scenario. You're an Egyptian overseer living at the time of Moses, Aaron, and the rest of that crew. One afternoon after a hard day of oppressing the masses for the glory of Pharaoh, you notice something strange. All your slaves are painting their doors with the blood of a slaughtered lamb. When you ask one of them the origin of this strange custom he explains (after some duress) that he was told that the Angel of Death would be flying over the land killing off the first-born children of anyone whose house does not have lamb's blood on the door. Figuring it's better to be safe than sorry, you decide to imitate the slaves and streak some lamb's blood across your doorpost. This is a two part question: First, will the Angel of Death fall victim to your ruse and thereby spare your firstborn or will he be informed otherwise from On High? Second, if he can be directly informed from On High, why do the Jews need to slaughter all those poor baby lambs in the first place?
3. 9 & 1/2 Plagues: So I was recently trying to remember as many of the plagues of Egypt as I could, and found myself only able to name nine. A quick check on Wikipedia revealed the missing plague was #4: Arov. The reason I could not remember it was because the plague has a strange translation...it either means "flies" or "wild beasts." My question is this...shouldn't there be a relatively large distinction between these two things? The term wild beasts evokes, in my mind, large quadrapeds, which are, incidentally, carnivorous. Not flies. So are flies a plague of Egypt or not? And if so, don't arthropods seem a tad overrepresented in the whole plague thing what with confirmed swarms of lice and locusts?
4. To Hell With The Lunar Calendar!: Do you notice anything wrong about this picture?
