South Park, with a rant attached.

Around a fortnight ago, Comedy Central was forced to pull the season finale of South Park, an episode entitled 'Bloody Mary'.

This particular one - there's no way of putting this delicately - features a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from the ass. This miracle brings people flocking to South Park to be healed, until it transpires that in fact Mary's just having a period. Then the Pope declares that 'a chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle', and everyone goes home disgruntled.

Unfortunately for Comedy Central, the episode was scheduled to run the before the Catholic celebration of the Feast of the immaculate conception. An American organisation, the Catholic league, succeeded in having the episode pulled from the air, never to be repeated. How they managed this may something to do with the fact that Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, has on its board of members a staunch Catholic. The Catholic League also succeeded in securing an apology from Viacom. What's that flying out the window? It looked like the first amendment...

Last year, the Jerry Springer opera opened to substantial controversy in the UK. I didn't see it, and it looked a bit shit frankly, but in spite of protest it was shown here. It showed that although catholicism had a voice here, it wasn't an overpowering one. Which is the way it should be.

The Friday Thing, a satirical commentsheet and the source of much of the previous three paragraphs, points out that this is an indication of, on the other hand, how much influence Catholicism has in the ol' Red White and Blue right now. Similarly offensive episodes have been aired previously (a couple of years ago, to be precise), but when the Catholic League tried to intervene then, they were told to fuck off. Something appears to have changed.

South Park is funny. Its subversion is rudimentary, it can often be peurile, and it's nowhere near as clever as The Simpsons was, but it does have one substantial jewel in its crown: Eric Cartman. He alone makes it worth watching.

The tenets on which the Catholic church have founded itself are so ridiculous - and, it should be pointed out, damaging to women and minorities in general everywhere - that it has no-one to blame but itself for becoming this kind of target. Its bound to be offensive to some catholics, but considering the whole subtext of the immaculate conception in general (docile woman accepts pregnancy as a gift from God, without sullying herself with the 'sin' of intercourse) the church have brought this on themselves.

So. I am going to help in my own little way. Here is a link to a bittorrent location of the episode.

It's fair to say that Matt Stone and Trey Parker wouldn't have the balls to try something like this with the Muslim faith though, even though that's as deserving a target as Christianity.

And now to my next point.

Comedy Central has pulled another another episode of South Park this week. It's called "Come out of the Closet" Tom Cruise. You don't have to be a genius to deduce from the title what that one is about, and all that reminds me of something.

There is rather irritating tendency for people inside and outside the gay community to 'out' people, as soon as they come 'under suspicion'. Even in academia, gay activists such as Andrew Hodges and David Hutter, in the pamphlet 'With Downcast Gays' (a good read, though flawed by its militant politics) point out that the writer E.M. Forster 'betrayed' the gay community by remaining in what was essentially 'the closet'. Maybe he did the gay community a disservice, maybe he didn't, but whom he slept with was ultimately his own business.

Fast forward quite a few years, and now we have people pointing the finger at everyone from Kevin Spacey to Tom Selleck to Tom Cruise. What the fuck does it matter if they are or not? If we (or more accurately, the media) have advanced to the point where we are 'accepting' of other people's preferences, why do we still have to know what their gender of preference is? It's none of our business.

I was in a pub once, in a discussion with someone about a work colleague that neither of us particularly liked. Up came the subject of the unlikeable one's sexual orientation. "At least you say what you are", pointed out the other drinker. To this day, I don't particularly think the unlikeable one is gay, and I couldn't care even less, but I'm pretty convinced that subconciously, the other drinker intended it [his orientation] as a slur because he didn't like him, not out of objectivity or some crusading purpose.

I'm pretty sure that this is what is at the root of what goes on with a lot of outing. A gay person's life is improved immeasurably once they come out. It could almost - though not quite - be argued that by outing someone, you are doing them a favour. But you are also performing an invasion of privacy that is pretty much without equal, and it is almost always something other than altruism that is behind someone making the demand that someone else come out of the closet. It is inevitably more about demander, than demandee.

Tom Cruise has attracted this shit because, on the surface, he is someone that attracts begrudgery. He has made a lot of money playing to the standard Hollywood archetype of the 'red-blooded' action hero, much, it has to be said, to the detriment of the more artistic aspects of his profession. He is good-looking - though not, I must stress, at all my type - and has had quite a few beauties on his arm.

He's also a bit of an arse, with all the Scientology, and in that rubbish about Brooke Shields he really was operating outside his field of expertise. In fact he should have been slapped hard across the face for that one, and it is this characteristic of his that lead people to react by characterising him contemptously. And it's pretty telling to see what they come out with.

Ricky Martin has attracted it. Paul Newman has attracted it. George Michael attracted it for some time before he was very publicly caught, but sometimes there is smoke without fire. Sometimes it's just mean-minded unattractive jealousy with a twist of disrespect for gay men. If you disparage someone, including their orientation as backup can turn the spotlight on what your core beliefs really are, and it can make for a rather unattractive sight.

The 'outing' of politicians that have a history of opposing gay rights is somewhat different, and serves a worthwhile purpose in one sense, but it still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, because by their 'exposure' - try as much as you like to get away from it - you are equating their orientation with something shameful. I suppose the end just about justifies the means, but only just. I wish there was some other way though.

Lastly, some of the gay community are at this as well. Is it out of a sense of injured loyalty, or do they feel better if a closet gay man finally comes around to joining their ranks? I can't imagine why the latter would be the case. Some say that by remaining in the closet, a public figure contributes to the oppression of gay men and women, forgetting that if there was no oppression, whether or not they are in the closet simply wouldn't be an issue for anyone except themselves.

Tom Cruise's decision to remain secretive is most likely motivated by career considerations. The offers of a lead role as a hero in an action movie would probably dry up if he came out. Maybe there's more to it, but if I'm confronted with one prick taking issue with another prick on the basis of the sexuality of the latter, I'm not so much on the side of the latter, as against that of the former.

So. South Park, as entertaining as it can be, is not really so cool with this episode. It's probably not the intention of Stone and Parker, they're most likely just trying to get up the nose of Cruise himself. Unfortunately, the screen 'idol' succeeded in getting Comedy Central to pull that one as well by threatening to sue them, so he's pretty much won, and strangely enough, I don't feel too outraged about this.

You can still watch it here though, and judge for yourself. I'm nothing if not fair.

P.S. If you think there is hypocrisy evident in this post, you need to get a sense of history. Fast.