Chef Moves Out Of South Park

South Park has been on Comedy Central since 1997, and it keeps going strong. Even after all this time it’s still the network’s top rated show, and shows no signs of letting up.

The half-hour animated show is best known for attacking everything and anything in sight. Most recently South Park caused an uproar in the Catholic community for menses riddled depictions of the Virgin Mary. Religion is always a hot topic, hot enough to cause wars throughout the centuries - like knights crusading their balls off in the name of Christianity, and hot enough to keep making wars today - like inspiring Muslim extremists to pimp C4 suicide as a sure ticket to mud-hut heaven. 

Having your name attached to a television show that gets people impassioned and angry, as South Park can and does, could be both uncomfortable and career endangering.  As such, Isaac Hayes wants out of South Park - you’re damn right.

Isaac Hayes (CDs) has decided he wants out of his South Park contract. He’s played the part of Chef
since the show started, and he’s been good at it. Chef worked as the
school cook at South Park Elementary, and was often the voice of reason
for the troubled kids. 

Hayes had a sense of humour too, he sang songs about his Chocolate
Salty Balls, prostitutes, and where babies come from. But Isaac has a
limit, he has a line he will not cross - and the show’s creators have
recently sprinted past it. Hayes talked about his reasons for leaving:

"There is a place in
this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and
intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.
Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be
respected and honoured. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years,
I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practises."

The show’s creators say it isn’t so cut and dry. Matt Stone ripped into him with the following comment to The Associated Press:

"This is 100% having to do with his faith of Scientology… He has no problem - and he’s cashed plenty of checks - with our show making fun of Christians. [We] never
heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants
a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that
is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

In a November ‘05 episode one of the South Park boys joined
Scientology, where the other members of the church thought him to be L. Ron Hubbard reincarnated. It seems to be thought by Stone and Parker that it was the straw that broke Chef’s back.

South Park has had an extensive history of mocking non-Scientology religions as well. The list includes Jew, Mormon, Islam, Catholic, Buddhist, Voodoo and a blanket statement that the Japanese have no souls. 

hecklerspray takes a different stand on religion.  We are both kind
and polite to them all. Atheists on the other hand, have nipples for
brains - the tiny kind, not the giant pink saucers.

Read more:

Singer Isaac Hayes quits "South Park" - Reuters 

[story by Shawn Lindseth]