Centerfield

I'm going to toot my horn. I predicted in the previous thread about Isacc Hayes quitting that they'd keep chef and replace his voice.

And if I didn't predict it before, I'll predict it now...the new voice will be a different popular male black singer. George Clinton or Snoop Dogg would both be good choices. I can't wait to find out who it is. This would even be a great fun if they made chef possessed or something and cycled in guest spots. Who wouldn't want to be chef's voice for one episode? They could even raffle it off and give the money to a charity that irritates scientologists.

Wanna bet that tonight's episode is Isaac Hayes' voice? Courtesy of archive-mining? :-)

Parker and Stone are merciless. Oh my.

Darth Chef!

I was way off. So far. Bummer. Not a very funny episode.

I thought it was funny. Really really vicious, but funny...and if you didn't see the money line coming ten minutes ahead of time, you need a tuneup. :-)

YOU BASTARDS!

Revenge is sweet. I always thought South Park was humor for the excluded middle. I wonder if they will have Darth Vader take on Mohammed in an episode in Dutch with English subtitles.

I just saw it. That was hilarious!! Arise, Lord Chef, and now the power of the dark side.

Vicious indeed.

Clearly, the ep attempts to say more about the religious right than it does about Hayes. Just listen closely to Stan's (or was it Kyle?) commentary at the end.

The religious right, Steven, or scientologists? It would seem terribly unfair if they picked on the religious right in response to scientologists like Tom Cruise getting agitated.

IMO the digs were at religion in general to whatever extent that a religion rigidly insists on the literal truth of their dogma. South Park is such a funny litmus test, because I've seen it from the beginning as a "no sacred cows, it's all grist for the mill" satire. It savages the left every bit as hard as the right, and if anything it's a small L libertarian viewpoint with maybe a little bit of secular bias. My experience is that many who lean liberal don't notice this, because even many who are liberal think that say PETA are loonies and Barbara Streisand is a ridiculous figure. By contrast, since some on the right have had several more decades as a minority fringe to grow their rabbit ears, you tend to see more complaints about SP from the right.

But either Parker or Stone said something very close to "well we hate conservatives, but we REALLY F^&$%&ckin hate liberals." ...there's a subset of both the right and the left that wants to embrace SP as their own tribe, but SP is inherently independent of party dogma. So I view SP fans as potential centrists. Because you have to laugh. The "choose between a douche and a turd sandwich" episode is IMO quintessentially centrist/independent.

You know what I saw? A rather blatant message to Isaac Hayes that running away from the show will not stop them from continuing to do what they have done so well for a decade--mercilessly skewer everything pompous and fugnutty.

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun. But mama, that's where the fun is!

And they'll keep doing it with Hayes' voice. "All your lines is belong to us!" By dropping him in the Darth suit, they can now explain future vocal variations, and they WILL keep the cult theme front-and-center. Wicked! If we get really lucky maybe they'll sign James Earl Jones for the expanded Darth Chef vocals. :-)

I wonder if they will have Darth Vader take on Mohammed in an episode in Dutch with English subtitles.

Yeah! Santa can referee, and Jesus and Satan can do the pay-per-view. :-)

You forgot the HBO special with Mr. Hanky.

I often remind those on the Left that Mr. Hanky was the South Park's Christmas Spirit and Jesus died rescuing Santa from the Iraqis. Were is the self-censorship in that? LOL