Comedy Central Mocks Jesus...Again

From the Houston Chronicle reader blog A Pentecostal Perspective:

Just months after bowing to Muslim concerns and heavily censoring an episode mocking Mohammed, Comedy Central is back on track in its efforts to offend religious people. Christians are the target this time as Comedy Central once again mocks Jesus Christ in its proposed new series, JC.

The animated series focuses around Jesus who wishes to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic" father and live a normal life in New York City. Comedy Central is no stranger to mocking Jesus and offending Christians, with South Park being the offender-in-chief.

More here, with a really funny, or deeply offensive, montage of anti-Jesus South Park moments.

I don't even know where to start.

Comedy Central didn't censor the South Park episode "201" because they were worried about offending Muslims; they did it because of the death threats. It seems to me that if fundamentalist Christians like the one who penned the above excerpted blog post were really serious about keeping South Park from mocking their god, they'd break out the pipe bombs and gasoline. Fortunately, we haven't gotten to that point yet, but this kind of insipid religious whining deserves a response.

When Christians tell me, a non-believer, that I am so worthless and evil that I am deserving of nothing short of eternal torture, I am deeply offended. I mean, I don't believe in Hell, so it's not like I take it as a threat or anything, but the implicit elitist notion that I'm scum because I'm not part of the tribe pisses me off. In short, Christians are telling me that they're better than I am, even though they "love" me, whatever that's supposed to mean.

But from their perspective, it's perfectly fine to offend non-Christians in this way, desirable, even. All they're doing is trying to save us from damnation. Fine, whatever, fuck off. This is America. They have a perfect right to tell me I'm scum. I'm fine with that because I think they're all fools. Being insulted by a fool isn't much to write home about.

Why, then, do so many fundamentalists get so touchy when people insult Jesus? I mean, we're going to Hell, anyway, so why does it matter what we say? Look, I'm not suggesting that non-believers ought to offend believers just for fun, although it is fun. I'm saying that the iconography and symbolism of Christianity loom over Western civilization so intensely that they are fair game for any and all writers, artists, and thinkers. That is, Jesus, as an idea or symbol, cannot be claimed solely by Christians. As a cultural concept, he belongs to everybody, whether you believe in him or not. That means that, from time to time, the Lord will necessarily be portrayed in a very unflattering light, and fundamentalists are just going to have to deal with it.

This is, after all, the land of the free.

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