Studio 60: Shooting at Soft Targets

"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" premiered on NBC tonight, and it looks like more of the same old, same old. Judd Hirsch's character, in charge of the Saturday Night Live-like show flew into a snit when the network standards and practices exec forced him to pull a skit called "Crazy Christians".

He marched onto the set and raged to the cameras against the "candy-assed" network execs who quiver at "...every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the thought of a boycott." The delicious irony, of course, is that Studio 60 is doing in reality exactly what Hirsch's fictional character claims the networks are too afraid to do: mock and debase Christians.

Of course, courage in the face of boycotts is small potatoes compared to courage in the face of beheadings.

Studio 60 could have really impressed, if Hirsch's character had been irate about a pulled skit mocking say, Muslim extremists protesting the Pope's implication that their religion is violent - by being violent.

Or the skit might have been about the real-life comedy of network news anchors discussing the Cartoon Wars over Jyllands-Posten's printing of cartoons depicting Allah...without ever showing any of the cartoons. If you wanted to see the cartoons, well, you had to find them on blogs, the professional journalists were being "respectful of Islam."

The entertainment division folks are following suit.