Thursday, November 17, 2005

South Park takes on Scientology®

Comedy Central's South Park series boasts about its ability to offend everyone. Kikes, Limeys, cripples, Gooks, Canucks, Token Black People, daytime talk shows, gun nuts, idiot cops, terrorists, guidance counselors, fat people, movie stars, rich people, poor people, and even space aliens from the planet Marklar.

Wednesday night, the new episode of South Park took on the Church of Scientology®, shedding some rather unflattering light upon the actual beliefs of the Church, according to sooper-seekrit church documents that have been made public in lawsuits over the years. Scientology® was founded by science fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard, who revealed the saga of the Thetans from another galaxy who were imprisoned on earth by Lord Xenu until they figured out that they could inhabit human bodies, creating much of our suffering and unhappiness. If it sounds like cheesy second-rate sci-fi, that's because it was created by a cheesy second-rate sci-fi writer. I'm not saying that makes Scientology® an utterly ridiculous farce of a cult masquerading as a religion; I leave that judgment up to the individual. All I'm saying is that it sounds like cheesy science fiction, just like the Book of Mormon sounds like a high school dropout's drug-fueled random choo-choo train of thought. I remain somehow a bit skeptical of either the notion that a several-hundred-dollar plastic gizmo with dials and meters will help me purge my body of evil alien spirits, or that Jesus buried a secret gold tablet written in a lost language somewhere in upstate New York.

Please keep in mind that Scientology® is a registered trademark of the Church of Scientology, Inc. It's not a freakishly bizarre cult, it's a freakishly bizarre religious corporation.

South Park practically begged the CoS (along with Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and R. Kelly) to sue; we'll see if they rise to the bait, but in the mean time, The Third Path does not share South Park's desire to appear in a lawsuit.

However, here is a quick synopsis of the truths of Scientology® as revealed by South Park: 75 million years ago, the evil Lord Xenu thought his galaxy was overpopulated, so he had excess population from many different planets frozen and loaded onto spaceships so they could be dumped into volcanoes in Hawai'i. Eventually, human beings came onto the scene, and the disembodied souls of the aliens dumped into the Hawai'ian volcanoes were brainwashed until they attached to humans, causing all manner of bad things, but probably not directly killing any furry kittens. We have to pay lots of money and hook up to special plastic E-meters to help us purge these spirits of 75-million-year-old dead aliens so we can be happy. At least, that's more or less how South Park portrayed it. Having never been involved in Scientology®, I am unable to confirm or deny that report, thank the goddesses.