Why is Viacom afraid of the Catholic League?

[M Sparks]

It appears that Viacom has caved into the Catholic League again, by pulling reruns of the recent "Bloody Mary" episode of South Park.

And while the Opie and Anthony St Pats incident was indeed much worse than a silly cartoon, the fact remains that the people responsible were either not employees or very low level employees. But they chose to pay millions to O&A to do nothing while driving their station into the ground rather than stand up to the Catholic League.

Oddly, they didn't back down on the Dennis Leary special. While the South Park episode was definately in poorer taste, the Dennis Leary special attacked one of the basic beliefs of the Catholic religion. South Park mearly pointed out that it's kind of stupid to worship a "bleeding" statue. I fully support first ammendment rights of both programs, but if I were a practicing Catholic, I'd be far more upset about the Leary piece.

Poor taste has nothing to do with infringing someone's freedom of religion. And freedom of speech should be equally as important as freedom of religion.

Given that this was a fairly goofy episode, and Viacom has pretty much never blinked at far more libelous material, ya gotta wonder what kind of thugs the Catholic League employs to get a completely legal program pulled on short notice.

(BTW, to those who were offended by my sig, please note that I am attacking the Catholic LEAGUE, not CATHOLICS.)

 

[Cyclone]

Viacom has a long history of Cathoic bashing. Heck, I even call CBS the "Catholic Bashing system". They consistently take cheap shots at Catholics in their programs.

I like South park, but the "Bloody Mary" episode is just outright vulgar for the purpose of being offensive. It was about a Marian statue menstrating. Leary might have been insulting, but a Marian period is gross, disgusting, and over the top.

 

[Purogamer]

I love how people claim to be so upstanding, but meanwhile they're watching south park in their spare time...I guess SP hasn't done anything offensive until this season right? Nobody should be bashing religion but they shouldn't be making their decisions based on some complaints from a relgious group. I watched it and didn't find it disgusting. I found it a bit boring and not funny, but how could I be disgusted by a cartoon...

I found the episode where they stabbed butters in the eye to be more controversial than this...