"South Park" Spanks Scientology, and Vice-Versa

First came news that Scientologist, former soul god, and aging love-bomb Isaac Hayes, voice of Chef on still-hilarious-after-all-these-years "South Park," has split the show claiming religious bigotry on the part of writer/creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, despite how he's been on the show for 10 years and apparently never had a problem with the show repeatedly mocking the living hell out of fundamentalist Christians, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, aliens, Republicans, liberals, whores, gays, Mel Gibson, lesbians, the Japanese, Barbara Streisand, black people, rich people, the handicapped, dwarves, basketball players, plastic surgery, anal probes, John Edward, China and about a thousand others -- that is, until the show went after Scientology. Then, of course, Chef had a problem.

Now comes the delightful news that newly minted Hollywood religious nutjob and megalomaniac Tom Cruise has pressured execs at Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, to yank a second showing of the now-famous 'Trapped in the Closet" episode of "South Park" (the same episode that, presumably, sent Chef into a tizzy), in which Stan is declared the second coming of founder L. Ron Hubbard and is coerced into writing the next cheesy sci-fi episodes of the "religion's" history, and also in which a whiny Tom Cruise locks himself in Stan's closet and refuses to come out and a multitude of characters (including Nicole Kidman and John Travolta, the latter of whom also locks himself in the closet) spend the remainder of the show begging Tom to, you know, come out of the closet, while Tom sits behind the door and denies he is actually in the closet.

(Scientologists, remember, believe that there was a great alien battle 75 million years ago and evil warlord Xenu stuffed billions of frozen alien souls into Earth's volcanoes and then blew them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashed them with a giant propaganda movie and then... oh hell, read about the weirdness here, if you want. Or here. Plus there's a great Slate piece on Hubbard's general pill-popping hucksterism over here).

Upshot: Chef quit the show, the "Out of the Closet" episode got yanked, Tom got his way while growing numbers of people think he's become more obnoxious than Paris Hilton on a Bacardi bender, and Scientology continued on its merry way of being the singlemost annoying, litigious, bizarre, well-funded group in the modern world next to Mel Gibson's "Holy Family" and maybe Heaven's Gate.

Why should you care? Because it all prompted what might be the best public reply letter ever written, from Parker and Stone and sent to Daily Variety. It is thus:

So, Scientology, you may have won this battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!

Temporarily anozinizing our episode will not stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies.

Curses and drat! You have obstructed us now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu.
--Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants to the dark lord Xenu

Which might actually redeem them for the overall lameness of "Team America: World Police," no? (Original source)