I seriously doubt this is any help, but I recall reading about the real-life incident in Esquire magazine years ago.
wrong thread, please ignore (or delete)
I’m surprised anyone thought they were attacking the Simpsons just by having Bart in the show.
They were showing love for the Simpsons by having Bart there and having him be cool with getting Family Guy of the air. It was clearly only Family Guy they were bashing, and only them as a second to bashing Censorship.
Which was a jab at the hypocrisy of Comedy Central executives. They’re obviously not really concerned about offending someone’s faith. If they were, they would have censored the Jesus scene, too. They are just scared to show Mohammed. (Or “successfully terrorized,” if you will.)
Successfully terrorized indeed. Fuck comedy central.
Overall, a bit “meh” for me – but with some great moments. Loved the Terrance & Phillip opening.
Loved the SP’d Bart. Mostly, the “Family Guy isn’t funny” gags just irritated me, because the writing of that show just seems several orders of magnitude better than South Park. Yeah, there are plenty of non sequiturs, but they’re funny as hell. Just like South Park often relies on gratuitous taboo flouting, usually to good effect. Inviting comparison of the level of sophistication between the two shows seems like a bad idea; it’s not as though South Park is popular because it’s dazzling and brilliant. It’s outrageous. (When it’s good.)
Also, I was really distracted by the new direction they’re taking the art in. It seems like they’re hammering away at the taint. Soft shading, no drop shadow, added material values for reflection and specular highlights – shiny, shiny 3D features, which look “wrong” to me.
Maybe I’ll get used to it – if they get of their loathsome spotty behinds and bang out an episode that’s as funny as “Woodland Critter Christmas” was sometime in the next little while, and I keep watching.
Liked the slap-fight, though. Can’t go wrong with the basics! 
That was the whole point of the Jesus scene. They completely took away Comedy Central’s ability to say, “We don’t want to offend ANY religious groups,” and exposed them for exactly what they are doing - giving in to threats of violence. I think it was brilliant.
I’m continually reminded of an episode of either the colbert report or the daily show where they comment on the Cartoon thing and say:
“We’re not going to show this, because of our deep respect for Islam…and because we don’t want our heads to be cut off”
Cuts rather to the point.
Actually, something that came to mind.
Look at the people defending Family Guy: Kyle and the guy who drives him to LA.
And the people attacking it: Cartman and the Terrorists, niether exactly wonderful people or great paragons of intelligence or virtue. And both are willing to go to extreme lengths over some bullshit reason.
Family guy comes out looking pretty good in that context.
Disclaimer: I am a fan of both series, own DVD sets of both, etc etc.
I don’t think Family Guy is particularly more sophisticated, dazzling, or brilliant, either; I think it’s random and obscure, and that has humor all on its own, sometimes. On the other hand, that just makes the whole manatee thing all that more hilarious - some of the best (and funniest) jokes in Family Guy could well have been put together just like that, and the nature of Family Guy’s “misses” (where even the best episodes tend to have one completely random, not-funny joke that makes you go “huh?!”) fits in with it too.
I watched this episode again tonight with a few friends who missed it last night, and it actually grew on me, which is rare for SP re-watchings of the last couple of seasons. I am happy with the way season 10 has started, though I hope they get in a “non-issue” episode or two fairly soon.
Kinda funny. I love the BBC article about it though.
Gee, somehow that doesn’t quite capture the moment.
A couple minor things i noticed in the opening montage for the series…
They’re using a clip of Tom Cruise going into Stan’s closet…
Darth Chef appears in the group shot around the logo (lower left hand corner)
in the lower right hand corner there’s a small “lobster-y” looking alien, is that “Xenu”? it looks vaguely familiar…
It’s one of the crab people, actually 
(taste like crab, talk like people!)