On Sunday the 2nd of May, a car bomb was discovered parked in Times Square, New York, outside the headquarters of Viacom, the media conglomerate in ownership of Comedy Central.
The Secretary for Homeland Security, among other officials, stated that it was a “one-off attack,”. The attack was suggested by others in the House Committee of Homeland Security, including the Representative for New York, to have been in response to the 201st episode of South Park, a Comedy Central programme.
The episode, the inspiration for Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris’ satirical poster designating the 20th of May as a fictitious “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” contains references to the prophet, while obscuring his image behind a black bar across which the word “CENSORED” was written.
This censorship was imposed by executives at Comedy Central, after threats to the creators of South Park were found on the website of radical Muslim organisation Revolution Muslim.
In response to this, South Park Studios released a brief statement:
“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part.”
They went on to identify other aspects of the episode that had been altered, including a speech made by one of the characters, which was censored by audio bleeps, despite making no mention of the prophet whatsoever.
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