Grin 'n' 'Bear' It

The South Park guys "get it," writes Diana West:

...They get the free-speech significance of the Danish Muhammad cartoons epitomized by Kurt Westergaard's bomb-head Muhammad.

They even get it across.

"It's so sad, the whole Muhammad, the whole Danish cartoon thing," said Stone, Parker seated beside him during a joint interview with the entertainment website Boing Boing.

Don't laugh. "Boing Boing" here goes where "elite" media fear to tiptoe, let alone tread. The subject was the 200th episode of South Park, which, in unusually clean if satirical fashion, focused on Islam's fanatical, and, to Western sensibilities, ridiculous prohibitions on depictions and criticism of Muhammad, who is at one point presented in a bear suit disguise. (Now you can laugh.)

Stone continued: "It's like, if everyone would have just, like, (done what they) normally they do in the news organizations, (and) just printed the cartoons..."

"Everyone would have rallied together," interjected Parker.

"Now that guy (Westergaard) has to be hiding and all this (bleep) because everyone just kind of left him out to dry. It's a big problem when you have the New York Times and Comedy Central and Viacom basically just (wimping) out on it. It's just sad. I was, like, really sad about the whole thing."...

Not sad--tragic. Putting you-know-who in a bear suit, though: kind of hilarious.