What the *bleep*?!

The latest episode of South Park has once again sparked controversy, but this time, it's not over what Matt Stone and Trey Parker have done.  Rather, it's what Comedy Central did that's got people up in arms.  The 201st episode (the 200th was the week previous and ended on a cliffhanger) concluded the bizarre story they had started by basically bringing back everybody that the show has ever mocked for one more round.  Central to the premise of the storyline was the attempt by Hollywood celebrities to steal the power of "not being able to be mocked" from the Prophet Mohammed.  At the end of the episode, as usual, Kyle launched into a soliloquy about what he'd learned from the whole affair.  What was different this time was that it was essentially two straight minutes of nothing but a single very long "bleep," with a tiny break from Stan before continuing to cover the end of Kyle's soliloquy and a rejoinder from Santa Claus that was also bleeped out.

I'll be the first to admit, I did laugh when I heard it, but I was also kind of irritated because I kind of figured that it couldn't possibly be two minutes of nothing but Kyle cursing since the "bleep" was continuous as opposed to being broken up like it normally is when a character goes on a blue streak.  After the show aired, Stone and Parker came out and expressed considerable disappointment that Comedy Central would make such a radical effort in censorship.  It came out that a group calling themselves Revolution Muslim issued a death threat against the pair and against the network, being about as subtle as a chainsaw by putting a picture of murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh up with their statement.  Comedy Central caved, not only obscuring Mohammed with a giant "Censored" sign (apparently another thing that I had assumed was originally part of the script) but bleeping out Mohammed's name as well as the monologue at the end which didn't even MENTION Mohammed or Islam.  I do not always agree with Jon Stewart, but on this particular topic I find myself in considerable agreement with him.

Consider, for a moment, the fact that South Park already got away with showing Mohammed years ago when they came out with the episode "Super Best Friends."  While the show might have been partially spoofing the 70's cartoon series "SuperFriends," they nonetheless did show Mohammed just as they showed Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, and Joseph Smith.  Horrors!  They made the Prophet a superhero!  I don't seem to recall there being a hue and a cry over that, much less death threats.  Most likely because there was nothing mocking nor disrespectful about Islam or Mohammed in that episode.  In the years since that episode, we've had the murder of Theo Van Gogh as well as the Danish cartoon controversy, incidents which have apparently cemented in the minds of a very small number of Muslims that it's perfectly acceptable to issue death threats for something that they find offensive, and in the case of Van Gogh to carry those threats out.  I find it highly disturbing that it is only now, nine years after the fact, that there's such a fracas over this.  The cat's been out of the bag for a long time now.  It seems foolish and petty to be giving Stone and Parker any grief over something that they did once before without any previous complaint.

I can certainly understand the arguments that are usually employed when dealing with the visual depiction of Mohammed.  Islam, just as with Judaism and Christianity, forbids idolatry.  That prohibition stems from the concern that people will be more interested in worshipping the image than what the image is representing and, by extension, the larger ideas connected to that representation.  Considering that the Christian Church split into Catholic and Orthodox branches over just such an issue, it's not that surprising that it should remain out there, and to some extent it's still alive and well even in some modern Protestant churches.  The fact that I can understand those arguments doesn't mean I agree with them.  For myself, religiously themed art has never been an object of worship.  Admiration, to be sure.  Aesthetically pleasing, quite often.  But worship?  Never.

This whole affair is contemptible and there are only two parties that deserve my scorn.  The first is quite obviously Comedy Central.  You guys have known since you first put South Park on the air that it was satirical, which means that it's going to offend somebody somewhere at some point in time, and it has been proven over the years to be an equal opportunity satire.  Nothing is sacred, everything is fair game, and while the writers may have devoted more attention to some targets than others, they have never pulled punches over the larger issues that they put into their crosshairs.  Sure, they cuss a lot.  Yes, they delve into some seriously gross humor in order to make a point.  THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN PAYING THEM FOR ALL THIS TIME!  When you censored the final scene of "Cartoon Wars," they took it with a lot more grace than you probably deserved.  This time, you stabbed them in the back.  Worse, you made it look like it was part of the show, trying to create a meta-joke that didn't exist and quite frankly never should have existed in the first place.  If you can't or won't shoulder the responsibility of artistic integrity for a show that you know is going to be pissing people off at some time, cut them loose and let somebody with more sack pick them up.  Pious platitudes about "safety concerns" be damned.  You knew the risks then, you know them now, and to continue to air the show is a tacit acceptance of those risks.  Anything less than unflinching support for the show and its crew is a gutless renunciation of principle.  Not to mention that it makes you look chickenshit.  Somebody makes a death threat?  Call the cops and let the show go on.  Laugh while making the call.

The other target of my scorn, and quite a lot of fury in the bargain, is not just Revolution Muslim, but every outfit like them, no matter how big.  There are, by most counts, some 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.  Groups like Revolution Muslim make up less than one very tiny fraction of one percent, yet their actions will have a tremendously disproportionate effect on the Muslim community, not only here in America but around the world.  And believe me, the effect is not going to be anything even remotely positive.  To put it bluntly, they're fucking it all up for every other Muslim out there.  First, they are continuing the disturbing and morally abhorrent trend of countering even the slightest thing they don't personally agree with by threatening death and violence instead of any kind of effort at reasoned debate.  Second, they are helping to perpetuate the stereotypes that motivate and justify atrocious behavior by non-Muslims towards Muslims.  Third, they are not merely undermining efforts at fostering understanding and tolerance of Muslims, they're actively sabotaging those efforts with their thuggish shenanigans.  If these self-proclaimed defenders of the Faith bothered to actually read their Korans, and take a trip through the Hadith while they were at it, they might find something terribly surprising.

There is no explicit prohibition on depictions of Mohammed.  Not in the Koran.  Not in the Hadith.  Nowhere.

To be sure, the Hadith does make several references to Mohammed's pronouncement that "painters of pictures" would be sent to Hell, but does not specifically instruct or suggest Muslims take action against such people.  The judgment of "painters" is solely in the hands of God.  The Koran does not make prohibitions against the creation of pictures, but does prohibit worshipping the pictures, as that would clearly be idolatry.  The prohibition against depicting Mohammed is most likely a prophylactic measure to avoid the potential or the appearance of idolatry.  Yet there are numerous examples dating back to the medieval period that do depict Mohammed (primarily Persian in origin), which seems to support some contemporary fatwas indicating that, as long as the depiction is respectful, it is permissible to create figurative representations of the Prophet, particularly in film and television.  It should also be pointed out that the Hadith relating to Muslims and images only forbids looking at them.  It does not demand their removal or destruction, and as was mentioned before, it certainly doesn't advocate the destruction of their creators.  More importantly, it applies only to Muslims, not to non-Muslims.  As a final thought, while it is a generally bad idea to take any religious text too literally, one could certain take the position that the admonishment in the Hadith, "Breathe soul into what you have created," has actually been satisfied in the case of South Park, as it is not a static image of the Prophet but rather an animated figure.

Stone and Parker have stated that the show will go on, that a new episode will be delivered to Comedy Central, and that we'll all just have to wait and see what happens.  For myself, I more than willing to support the show, but I'm beginning to reconsider if I should be supporting the network, since it seems clear they haven't got the backbone needed to support their creatives when they truly do need it.

O'er The LAN of The Free

Last Saturday, I went to a LAN party for the first time in ages.  How long has it been, you ask?  It's been too damn long.  Particularly since this LAN promised all sort of good deathmatching action.  An old and trusted friend of mine turned me on to a mod for Half-Life 2 titled Empires, which is a neat little mashup of class-based shooter and realtime strategy with a little bit of RPG customization thrown in for flavor.  I downloaded and installed the mod, then fired it up a few days before the actual LAN party, joining a couple public servers and getting my feet wet.

The shooter element was butter smooth, as you might well imagine for an HL2 mod.  Picking a class was pretty easy.  As long as you remembered to fall back to a barracks or armory if you wanted to change your class, it was a straightforward affair.  Years of target shooting, I fear, have predisposed me towards a sniper's role.  As an engineer, I felt kinda useless, even though I was racking up advancement points pretty quickly in that capacity.  As a regular run of the mill soldier, I felt even more useless.  As a rocket toting, mortar chucking, big explosion making grenadier, I was proven useless.  While I wasn't too awful bad taking on the role of commander, it wasn't exactly awe inspiring, either.  Robert Browning certainly had a point when he said "a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or else what's a Heaven for?", but I felt I was doing more good sitting out in the weeds, hunkered down, driving tacks at long range through enemy domes.  Yeah, I got killed a lot, and I did miss out on some of the big tank battles, but I still did good.  Somebody's got to go out, find the enemy, mark him, and cause a little havoc along the way.  That was me.  The lone gunman, putting steel on target, sneer and be damned.

Alas, the gaming goodness ended long before it had been scheduled to end.  For one reason or another, over half the players bailed out unexpectedly.  This left us with a population far below sustainable gaming levels, which meant that the party was over and the LAN had to be dismantled.  It was kind of a shame, since there had been some other mods that folks wanted to play but we never got around to.  As I'm still in pretty tight financial restrictions, the usual summer activities like camping and airsoft games up in the woods are not happening, which is why the LAN party is such an effective little get together and time waster, or avenue for entertainment if you prefer to get fancy about it.  Most gamers I know have the games that can be played over and over again, whether through the original content or through third party mods.  It's a no-brainer.  Free mods beats out large amounts of burned gas, airsoft pellets, food, drink, and other camping paraphernalia.  Mind you, it's a lot of fun going camping, and I have designs on introducing the joys of it to Otaku Girl here at some point.  I just can't do it right now.

For now, I'll content myself with the abbreviated LAN party, the nice folks who I shot and killed (sometimes in particularly embarrassing fashion), and who returned the favor numerous times over.  And I'll be looking forward to doing it again at some point in the near future.

What Goes Around

Tuesday wasn't exactly a banner day for the FCC as a federal appeals court unanimously decided that the agency had overreached itself when ordering broadband provider Comcast not to block its customers from using BitTorrent.  Comcast's spokesman was clearly pleased with the ruling when relaying the company's official statement: "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."  And yes, I just threw up a little in my mouth typing that.

This particular case has me feeling highly ambivalent.  On the one hand, I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the expansion of government power, and the FCC has demonstrated that when they use their power, they're about as subtle as a sequoia falling down, and not nearly as intelligent.  One slipped nipple and the Super Bowl halftime shows have largely suffered for it for the last several years (though I did like it when Tom Petty went on).  On the other hand, I'm not exactly a firm believer in the inherent goodness of the average American corporation either, particularly not one who's in the position to dictate how a measurable percentage of Americans access the Internet.  The old saw about being between the Devil and the deep blue sea certainly comes to mind.

So, what exactly happened on Tuesday and how is this going to affect the country?  To begin with, while I am not at all happy about the ruling, I do have to tip my hat to the judges for at least recognizing that the stated goal of the FCC in attempting to keep the Internet "free and open" wasn't at issue, merely their efforts to go about making it happen.  In a nutshell, the court ruled that the FCC's policies did not have the force of law.  By and large, this is a quite reasonable position to take, since the ruling doesn't just prohibit sound policies from being applied as law, but it also prohibits stupid policies from being applied as law.  If the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality, they have a few options available to them.  The first option would be to go to Congress and tell them to give the FCC the necessary power to make Comcast stop blocking subscribers.  This is probably the least likely to happen, mainly because it could possibly be years before such a bill got out of committee and up for a vote.  Moreover, Congress isn't exactly beloved of the people right at the moment, and all it would take to kill any bill would be a few whispers placed in the right ears of the right talking heads.  "Look!" the heads would say with gravity and outrage, "Look how Congress is trying to ram more government down our throats!"  The second option would be to appeal up to the Supreme Court.  This one might actually take longer than having to deal with Congress.  With Congress, you can always reintroduce a bill.  If the Supremes decide to take a case, or decline to take it, that's it.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Probably as we speak, Comcast technicians are putting the port blocking in place for BitTorrent and other file sharing programs, and probably other programs that it feels "unfairly competes" (read: free) with their subscription services, all while the suits are chortling and thinking that they showed the FCC who's boss.  That would be a fatally foolish attitude to be adopting, because there is a third option, one that is not only the most expeditious but also potentially the most troublesome.  The FCC could decide that that broadband services are to fall under the same rules as phone lines, with all of the attending "common carrier" regulations.  It's less of a "nuclear option" and more of a "neutron bomb option," meaning that all the infrastructure will still be there, but nobody will be around to use it.  Why will nobody be around to use it?  Because once those regulations are in place, the broadband ISPs like Comcast and Cox will not be lowering prices, they will be raising them. Purely for "administrative costs" to defray "traffic generated by other networks."  The increase in prices, particularly in a recessionary climate, will cause people to cut back or even abandon their broadband connections, as much as it will pain them to do so.  This will cause the ISPs to raise prices further, to cover the costs of "maintaining our award winning broadband services."  In turn, more people abandon their broadband.  When it's all said and done, ISPs won't be offering broadband anymore because they'll claim that "there's no interest in the product."  Nevermind the fact that people once had broadband and were quite happy with it as a general rule.  The difference between a ripple effect and a blast wave is a matter of perspective.

It's not going to be just the average American consumer who's going to get hit by this.  The earliest victims will be bandwidth-intensive but incredibly popular sites and services.  YouTube?  Reduced to a shell of its former self.  Skype?  Gone.  Hulu?  The biggest disappointment for NBC Universal since they screwed Conan O'Brien.  From there, the carnage spreads out into other areas, predominantly into the game sector.  The twelve million plus players on World of WarCraft will suddenly find themselves brought down by a foe more terrible than Onyxia or The Lich King.  Microsoft's XBox Live and Sony's Playstation Network will become shadows of their former glory, reduced to branded patch servers.  Steam and Impulse will collapse as gamers are cut off from the virtual marketplaces.  All those stupid bastards who went and bought the PC version of Assassin's Creed II will howl at the money wasted because Ubisoft wasn't smart enough to foresee the possible amputation of broadband, and the guys at Blizzard will probably be living out of their cubicles to try and change Diablo III to avoid that same mistake.  Would there be any survivors of this apocalypse?  Twitter might well survive, despite some people's desire to the contrary, since anybody with a cell phone could update on that.  Facebook and MySpace will probably take a hit, but continue on as before.

I can hear somebody out in the Peanut Gallery saying, "The world will not end because you stupid Americans don't have broadband!"  Whoever that is, you're right.  The world will not end.  But it will change.  If the last fifteen years or so have been any indicator, what happens on the Internet and to the Internet in one geographic area can have almost incalculable changes to the rest of the world.  And there is no guarantee that those changes will be good for any other part of the world.  It would be a sorry state of affairs that America entered the Information Age equivalent of a Dark Age simply because one ISP went and sued the FCC because of a spat over the use of bandwidth for a program that competed with the ISP's non-Internet products.  Some will doubtlessly argue that such a nightmare scenario could never possibly happen.  Perhaps not to the degree that I've outlined here, but don't think for one instant that the blowback from this case won't touch anybody beyond Comcast and the FCC.

Even today, karma is a vital and active force within the Internet.  What goes around does come around.  And I don't like to think what will happen when it finally comes around.

I Sense A Disturbance In The Farce

Whilst checking out news bits on Yahoo's movie section, I stumbled across an item in the gossip section that George Lucas was teaming up with Seth Green and Matt Senreich (creators of Robot Chicken) to do a Star Wars comedy series.  The suspicion was that it would likely end up on Cartoon Network, very likely during their "Adult Swim" block of programming.

Like any geek who was young and impressionable, I ate up Star Wars as a kid.  Like any geek who is currently older, wiser, and stuffed full of pop culture, I dig on Robot Chicken.  Even when a sketch doesn't make a pop culture reference, it's still a damn sight funnier than that moronic clot of wasted tape known as Tim & Eric Awesome Show! Great Job! or the even more painful predecessor Tom Goes To The Mayor.  Robot Chicken has elevated Star Wars spoofs almost to an art form.  Probably the only guy who's in the same league is Seth McFarlane with the various Family Guy spoofs, and he's a semi-regular voice actor on Robot Chicken.  So why does the idea of an entire series of Star Wars comedy make me feel like a plate of Mutandan porf* just went bad right in front of me?

I can't really argue with Green's point that the Star Wars universe is so expansive that there has to be plenty of opportunity for comedy.  "What do these characters do when they're not overthrowing empires?" he asked.  To answer semi-rhetorically, they're not doing anything that's meaty enough to make a whole series out of, Seth.  There have always been moments of comedy to be found even in Star Wars but the nature of spoofs is to take the familiar and stretch it wildly out of proportion.  The spoofs work because they're something that deliberately warps the established knowledge of existing characters.  A more conventional situational comedy based off the Star Wars universe is a tough concept, but possibly doable if it doesn't involve existing characters.  A show based off the idea of the most incompetent stormtrooper legion in the galaxy might be good for a laugh, though it also might make for a short show, given the established nature of Emperor Palpatine to pretty much send Darth Vader to clean up problem spots.  Somehow, I can't quite see a Friends-style show where characters hang around a cantina all day listening to synth-jazz, complain about how badly their job with the Empire or the Rebel Alliance sucks, and have screwed up personal lives where the Rodian pilot breaks up with the Twi'lek dancer which causes her to go over to the Dark Side.

For all the fondness I have for both Star Wars and Robot Chicken, I gotta say, I've got a very bad feeling about this.

(*bonus geek points for anybody that knows the really obscure reference)

A Tale of Three Cities

Earlier this week, I was sent out on assignment to San Mateo, CA to cover an event hosted by Capcom to show off the multiplayer component of their upcoming title Lost Planet 2.

This is not about that event.

This is something of a "behind the scenes" look at what a roving (or even raving) reporter goes through when their editor hands them an assignment that takes them out of town.  I spent a good chunk of two days sitting in airports or up in the air trying to get to San Mateo and back home.  I know there are some folks who went to the same event who had their own trials and tribulations getting there.  This is not meant to belittle or diminish their suffering.  Just as every family is unhappy in its own unique way, every traveler is inconvenienced in their own unique way.

For those of you that have never flown into or through Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport, it's not a bad experience by any stretch of the imagination.  For a town that gets disparaging looks and upturned noses from folks in Tucson, Sky Harbor could very nicely serve as an art gallery, if not for the fact that you'd have to hop from terminal to terminal to see all the pieces collected there.  I felt particularly fortunate on this trip that one of the gallery sections in Terminal 4 had an exhibition of artwork from legendary animator Chuck Jones.  While there were some animation cells and sketches from various Warner Brothers cartoons, there were some original pieces of his work that were completely unrelated to his animation career but were still quite impressive.  Once I was through the TSA checkpoint, I found my gate and hunkered down with my laptop to while away a couple hours.  Sky Harbor is particularly nice for the Wi-Fi equipped traveler because the only thing between you and the Internet is a brief warning message about all the myriad dangers the Internet poses and a disclaimer of liability if you get hacked or infected with a virus.  I had considered writing a blog post from Sky Harbor but decided I didn't really have the material yet.  In retrospect, that was probably a mistake.

The booking of my tickets for the event was not handled by myself, or even by Armchair Empire, but rather through a PR firm.  Even PR firms can't guarantee direct flights.  Which is how I found myself in Las Vegas' McCarran Airport early Monday afternoon.  I haven't been in Vegas since I was a year and a half old and was inhaling the prime rib from the plates of various family members.  Part of me would have liked to be able to bum around for a day or so, maybe even check out Konami and see what they were cooking up.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be.  Originally, I was projected to have a one hour layover.  This was pushed back to almost two hours.  I didn't get a chance to hop on the Internet at McCarran.  The gate area had a marked lack of free outlets, and the ones that it did have were taken up.  I should also point out that the presence of slot machines, and such a considerable number of them, was decidedly different than what I've seen in other airports, though it is by no means totally unexpected.

San Francisco International had something of the inverse problem from McCarran.  There were plenty of places to plug in, but their Wi-Fi was provided by T-Mobile, which meant that you weren't going to be getting on unless you were willing to shell out $8 for a "day pass" or $50 to start a monthly subscription.  Given the hippie nature of the city, you'd think they'd be all about peace, love, and free Wi-Fi.  Apparently, it is not to be.  Admittedly, getting a chance to get on when I arrived at SFO was not in the cards, but with a two hour delay on my return flight, finding a socket and a comfy chair was definitely a priority.  So, no Facebook, no email, no chat.  Good thing I had those Baen e-books saved to my hard drive.  It would have been a long time sitting around otherwise.

But  I am now home, back from the event, and hopefully back on a quasi-regular writing schedule again.