Seventeen Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonists have issued a statement condemning alleged threats against South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker after their 200th episode aired depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a bear suit. The cartoonists write:
“We, the undersigned, condemn the recent threats against the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, by the extremist organization, Muslim Revolution. Freedom of express is a universal right and we reject any group that seeks to silence people by violence or intimidation. In the United States we have a proud tradition of political satire and believe in the right to speak or draw freely without censorship.”
The statement is signed by:
Nick Anderson
Tony Auth
Clay Bennett
Steve Benson
Matt Davies
Mark Fiore
Jack Higgins
David Horsey
Jim Morin
Mike Peters
Joel Pett
Michael Ramirez
Ben Sargent
Paul Szep
Ann Telnaes
Garry Trudeau
Signe Wilkinson
UPDATE: As pointed out there are 17, not 14 signatures as I reported earlier. An initial communication lead me to believe there were 14 participants; when the final statement was made they had increased in numbers, but I failed to recount. The text above has been updated to reflect the true number.
Good for them! *applause*
Alan…
Hope i didn’t miscount, but i was getting 17 cartoonists sted “14”:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/04/17_pulitzer-winning_cartoonist.html#comments
and indeed: huzzahs to signees.
Yes!
Thanks to all.
Mike Luckovich and Jim Borgman are both in FAVOR of the threats, then? %^)
The movie Baseketball may have been worthy of such threats. But not their 200th South Park episode.
I applaud the gesture. Somehow it strikes me as funny though. Fight fire with cartoons? Could be on to something 😉
Are there any Pulitzer-prize winners who would condemn South Park and its ilk for general lack of taste?
Nice. It should have about as much impact as a protest letter sent to Bin Laden.
Being threatened by a bunch of doodlers swinging a bronze Pulitzer medal in your face you could care less about,if you even know what it is, isn’t going to have much impact with zealots who believe they have the power and authority of Mohammed behind them.
@Jeff: I am pretty sure the signed statement was more to publicly show support of the South Park creators than to threaten or otherwise address the zealots.
We have so much to learn from the Pulitzer Prize winners if only we are willing to listen.
This is ironic…does anyone else see the similarity between this sternly worded Pulitzer letter and the sternly worded letter Hans Blix gave Kim Jong Il in ‘Team America’, Parker & Stone’s own film?
Yeah, it’ll probably have the same effect, too.
I preemptively condemn any threats made against the cartoonists who recently condemned the threats to the creators of the cartoon that satirized the threatening of cartoonists who depicted a dude that should be powerful enough to do his own threatening if he cared to.