I still point to the charlie hebdo shooting as a huge fork in the road of my life.
I saw people, who i thought were my friends, being unbothered by the idea that extremists would shoot people because of cartoons they drew. I don't know what happened along the way to left leaning city dwellers of america but there were sincere conversations being had about if it was alright to censor this stuff, or just shoot the artists you didn't like. I was so disturbed by that revelation that I moved far away from the SF bay area and frankly never want to return. Standing up for art, art you don't even have to like, is supposed to be a core value. It's pathetic that we're having to still fight about cartoons while the world falls apart around us.

Five for evil. I'm frankly tired of sugar coating religious 'holy' books as some sort of moral guide or moral compass. The bible itself has a lot of evil in it and has been used for a long time to subjugate people and to oppress evil. The exact same can be said of the Quran.

In the Bible, even Jesus himself says a few things that are obviously morally object - including that he is the only way to get into heaven. Mohammad in the Quran marries a 9 year old girl. Both books say some incredibly stupid and hateful things, and somehow some of it gets a pass because of political correctness? Or it's ok for religious intolerance as long as those people aren't white? I just don't get it.

I remember recently re-reading Roots, and yes I'm aware that it's not really historically accurate, but I also remember the first few chapters mentioning how the village could not feed itself in certain ways to avoid famine because the Quran said so. And because of religion, it was perfectly ok to let people die as long as archaic and arcane and meaningless rules from Allah were followed.

Not to mention that human sacrifice among indigenous peoples were commonplace because of religion and superstition, and religious subjugation and oppression happened there too.

Not to mention how many african american people were subjugated by white protestant religion in the beginning, and were later brainwashed by it in the end.

I just don't get the notion that if white people religion it's evil, but if non white people religion then it's always 100% ok somehow, when the very root and problem of religion is the idea that if you think you know the mind of god, you can become a very dangerous person.

I frankly don't like any religion, and the only ones that I can barely tolerate are some of the eastern religions where at least there's some concept of peace and balance and harmony, and there's some concept of actually not treating people like assholes.

Yes, the majority of those episodes were pulled because extremists threatened to blow up the Comedy Central building. There were plenty of people at the time who thought it was stupid. And maybe it would have been fine as a temporary decision, except the South Park Studios Website, Hulu, HBO Max, et al. also kept them out of circulation. You can't find these episodes anywhere anymore except Internet Archive. That takes this beyond an emergency measure and instead makes everyone involved in it complete fucking pussies. It's also extremely hypocritical, seeing as Matt Stone and Trey Parker have taken the piss out of everything for decades, including repeated "problematic" depictions of Jesus, and even a school shooting episode that shows kids running and screaming from gunfire.

And of course it transcends even the original safety precaution now. It's gone from "we don't talk about that because we don't want to get blown up" to "by all means, talk about whatever else you want on your show, but talking about this is somethingsomethingphobic." "Why?" "Well, because it's unfair to stereotype brown people...also we might get blown up."

Way to go South Park, you sure showed the whole religion if Islam what for, they're really crying now.

Ok, but why is the beefcake episode banned?