Comedy Central's JC

This Reuters article provides a synopsis of a controversy brewing over an animated program about Jesus that may or may not air on Comedy Central:

Comedy Central — the same TV network that managed to both anger and bow to Muslim sensibilities in April by airing and later censoring a “South Park” episode portraying the Prophet Mohammad — is now at the center of a pre-emptive storm over plans to develop a comedy show about Jesus.

A new coalition of family and religious groups Citizens Against Religious Bigotry has called on Comedy Central not to air the animated series “JC” and asked advertisers to refuse to sponsor it.

The show, billed as being about Jesus trying to live as a regular guy in New York City, is still in the development stage, is not on the air yet, and has not yet been given a green light by the network.

Still, Parents Television Council president Tim Winters called the series offensive, labeled Comedy Central as bigoted and said he was fed up of Hollywood “using the notion of being offensive to everyone as cover” for its comedy targets.

I have no particular thoughts about this show. But people who favor boycotts are just too lazy to engage in the scorn and ridicule necessary to sink programs they don't like while protecting the right to free speech.

Posted by Jim Naughton on June 20, 2010 7:47 PM | |
Comments (3)

The Jesus I love has a sense of humor. Even if the show were offensive, I wouldn't mind it being shown. But I suspect it will be funny and hope to watch it.

Posted by Bill Carroll [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 20, 2010 7:52 PM

South Park is a wonderful show. Once you get past the crass outer shell, the social, cultural, and oftentimes religious commentary that it gives are rather incredible. In the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there is a program called "The Gospel According to South Park" held once a semester, where an episode is chosen as the launchpad for conversation. This past semester, the episode "All About the Mormons?" was used as an introduction to a dialogue with a Mormon family from the community, focusing on ecumenism.

Jesus was all about knocking down barriers, as we heard in the Epistle for today. I think he would get a kick out of lambasting the pseudo-Christ that the Church has constructed over the past two millennia. Certainly the leaders of the Anglican Communion could use a reminder that their "Jesus" might have little to do with Yeshua bin Miriam.

Posted by Patrick Burrows [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 20, 2010 9:04 PM

There you go guys tolerance is the key. Why would you want a show in which you know will depict my savior as any ordinary guy. Lets all get lured into the fact that we should accept it and laugh about it. at least the muslims are concerned about their image being protected. Maybe Comedy Central should do a show on the 50 million abortions we have done in this country. I am sure we could find some humor in that as well..TIME TO WAKE UP AMERICA!

Posted by Paul David [TypeKey Profile Page] | July 8, 2010 1:23 AM

Add your comments

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Reminder: At Episcopal Café, we hope to establish an ethic of transparency by requiring all contributors and commentators to make submissions under their real names. For more details see our Feedback Policy.

Advertising Space