South Park edited, again.

AuthorSuderman, Peter
PositionFollow-Up

"We never set out to do a libertarian show," South Park co-creator Matt Stone told reason's Nick Gillespie and Jesse Walker at a 2006 conference in Amsterdam. But intentionally or not, the show became known as much for its libertarian-leaning politics as for its outrageous humor.

The interview with Stone and his co-creator Trey Parker was printed in the December 2006 issue of reason as "South Park Libertarians." Much of the discussion centered on the show's multiple political controversies--particularly episodes that had been edited or pulled from air as a result of outside pressure.

The most famous such incident occurred in 2006, when, following a violent reaction to a series of anti-Muslim cartoons featured in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Parker and Stone decided to write an episode in which the Prophet Muhammed appeared in an episode of Family Guy. Parker and Stone wrote a two-part story, teasing the appearance of Muhammed in the second episode and framing it as a test of broadcaster Comedy Central's commitment to free speech. "That whole week we were trying to get Comedy Central to show Muhammad," Stone told reason. "And they pussed out." The scene was replaced with a black, text-only title card describing what would have been shown.

Another controversy arose when the pair decided to rerun an episode...

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