South Park Creators: You Bleeped Us, You Bastards!

Matt Stone and Trey Parker confirm that Comedy Central censored parts of Wednesday's Muhammad-mentioning episode

Matt Stone and Trey Parker want us to remember that they're not the ones owned by Viacom.

The South Park creators said today that they had nothing to do with Comedy Central's decision to bleep out the parts of Wednesday's business-as-usual, aka controversial, episode, which included one of their signature depictions of a religious figure, this time the Islamic prophet Mohammad.

But according to Stone and Parker, the network went a little overboard with the bleeping.

"In the 14 years we've been doing South Park, we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind," the regular line-crossers said in a joint statement.

"We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn't mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We'll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we'll see what happens to it."

So apparently Stone and Parker weren't fazed by what amounted to a death threat against them that was posted on the website of a Brooklyn-based Islamic extremist group in response to their satirical depiction of Muhammad.

Comedy Central has heeded on the side of caution in the past, as well. The network kept the Tom Cruise-Scientology ep, "Trapped in the Closet," off the air for four months after Cruise's camp and the big bosses at parent company Viacom objected because they were trying to peddle a film called Mission: Impossible III at the same time.

Or so the story goes.

(Originally published April 22, 2010, at 7:26 p.m. PT)