Comedy Central considers series about Jesus Christ!

[Newsbot]

NEW YORK – Having already caused a fuss this spring with the depiction of the prophet Muhammad on "South Park," Comedy Central said Thursday that it has a cartoon series about Jesus Christ in the works.

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"JC" is one of 23 potential series the network said it has in development. It depicts Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

His father is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life, according to Comedy Central's thumbnail sketch of the idea. Reveille, the production company behind "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "The Biggest Loser," is making "JC."

It wouldn't be the first time Jesus Christ has been on a Comedy Central cartoon; he's a recurring character on the long-running "South Park."

Comedy Central was the target last month of an Internet threat for a "South Park" episode that supposedly showed Islam's prophet in a bear costume.

Whenever "South Park" features Muhammad in an episode, Comedy Central obscures the character with a black box; Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. Following the Internet threat, Comedy Central angered "South Park" producers by editing out a character's speech about intimidation in a subsequent episode.

"It's not certain what is more despicable: the nonstop Christian bashing featured on the network, or Comedy Central's decision to censor all depictions of Muhammad," said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights.

Comedy Central wouldn't comment on Donohue's statement, said network spokesman Tony Fox, who declined to give further details about "JC."

A development deal is a couple of steps ahead of a series making it to air and, in fact, most such deals don't result in series. The network would have to like the scripts enough to produce a test episode, then like that enough to put it on the air.

This reporter is a devout Catholic robot from the future, and, as such, feels the need to insert some common sense here. There is no problem with this show. God will not get angry. Chances are, it will suck as much ass as "Ugly Americans" and every other piece of shit they try to wedge between "South Park" and "The Daily Show," and God wouldn't waste His time watching.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Why would God be okay with satirization of himself, but Mohammed would be really offended, when in essence they are the same "person"?

[Senor JabbaJohnL]

You're confusing Muhammed with Allah.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Shows you how much I care about (or pay attention to) organized religion.

The Bible is fiction.

[vynsane]

The Bible is boring fiction.

fixed.

[anarky]

I see no problem at all with the Bible, so long as one realizes that, even if you think it's the word of God, it was still written by humans. Ban on pork? That's because trichinosis is bad for you. Pre-marital sex grounds for stoning? Because taking a single woman's virginity was seen as rendering untradeable a good that belonged to her father, essentially vandalism (even for the woman, because she didn't "own" herself). But now we know how to cook pork until it's safe, and women have at least the most basic human rights in most western countries. (Still working on some, particularly in the Middle East.)

My problem with the Bible isn't with the Bible itself, but that so many people, in most cases the loudest, believe every word they're told about the Bible, not necessarily what's actually in it. Or they pick and choose what to live by (and try to force others to live by) in ways other than what the Bible actually says you can do. Jesus basically said that the law, as given in the Old Testament, was replaced by his law (which implicitly, if not explicitly, includes the Ten Commandments). There's nothing in the Bible that prohibits swearing. You're not supposed to say anything bad to anyone, since Jesus's teachings are, I think, understood to be something one strives for, knowing that few, if any, can actually reach them. The single thing that bugs me the most about this is that most Christians condemn homosexuality, which isn't a choice, but are okay with divorce. Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, but divorce was one of the very few things he explicitly condemned. (Probably for a woman's protection; a divorced woman was seen as an adulteress, unmarriable and therefore pretty much with no way to support herself except by begging or prostitution.)

And Revelation? Nothing but a big old "fuck you" to Nero, the first Emperor to persecute Christians on a grand scale (most likely because he was an insane dickhole), told as an allegory about the end of the world. (You ever notice that the number of the Beast is either 616 or 666, depending on the original source? Hebrew numerology translated names into numbers... Nero (the Latin name) was 666, and Neron (the Hebrew equivalent) was 616. Coincidence? I think not.) Seven-headed beast? The seven hills of Rome. Armageddon? One of the most commonly contested battlegrounds of the time. It was the most challenged book when it came to being included in the Bible about 1,000 years back, and I think the world would be so much better if it hadn't been included. Too many Christians get this self-righteous "I'm saved, and you're going to burn in Hell because Jesus is coming back soon" attitude, which is the direct opposite of what Jesus taught. The whole of Revelation is this spiteful "fuck you people" story; why would an omnipotent deity who became human and sacrificed his life in the most painful way possible to save humanity come back and gleefully chop people into bits? (Never mind that, if the Rapture were to occur, every single person left on Earth would see absolute proof of the infallibility of the Bible and convert on the spot. Kinda a cheap shot to say, "Okay, you believe in me, but you didn't believe in me a little while ago, so... HASTA LA VISTA BABY!!")

By the way... the "Rapture"? Not even in the Bible. Paul makes reference in one letter to being reunited with Jesus "in the air," but it's not explicit what that means; it could just be saying that Christians go to Heaven. That whole theory came about from a "vision" experienced by a farmer girl in the 19th century. As in about a hundred years ago.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Yes thank you. Thats what I meant.

People who think the Bible is like some encyclopedia of fact about the history of religion. When, in fact, it is a hundred different FOLKTALES passed down from generation to generation for THOUSANDS of YEARS (ever heard the game "Telephone"?) and then somebody gathered them all together in print (finally), then began translating by hand over the course of several more centuries. I'm sure there was no error there going to and from different languages in different eras, not to mention all the stuff the Church was deliberately censoring on the whim of each and every Pope the came along, up until modern times.

And yet, every time I get into a "discussion" with some bibble thumper from OhiO, he quotes it like it's yesterday's CNN. You could be more convincing to me with a piece of Swiss Cheese.