The Peabodys are finally respecting Cartman's authority.

The foul-mouthed cartoon cutouts of Comedy Central's South Park earned their first Peabody Award Wednesday.

The folks handing out television's most esteemed prize heralded the boundary-pushing 'toon's' brain trust, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, for continuing to poke fun of all "that is self-important and hypocritical in the American life, regardless of race, creed, color or celebrity status." ('Tis true, as Tom Cruise, the Virgin Mary and the dearly departed Chef can attest.)

"We see it as a bold show that deals with issues of censorship and social and cultural topics," Peabody Awards director Horace Newcomb told E! Online. "My line on South Park is that it properly offends everybody by design and by doing so it reminds us all that it's probably a good idea to be tolerant. It's also a very inventive and clever show."

Meanwhile, Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, a hit reimagining of the campy 1970s series about a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest to start life anew on Earth, also brought home its first Peabody--something the original never did.

"It treats contemporary issues from an angle that really make you think about those issues?issues of race, gender, all those things are dealt with in that context," said Newcomb. "In a way it's almost a counterpart to South Park which just throws everything up there, while Battlestar considers them in a dramatic narrative."

Those two shows weren't the only Peabody virgins. FX scored a trophy for its Emmy-winning cop drama, The Shield, while the Sundance Channel won for The Staircase, an eight-part documentary by French filmmaker Jean Xavier de Lestrade about a North Carolina murder case.

Also Peabody'd were ABC's genre-bending Boston Legal and Fox's cantankerous House. The David E. Kelley series about the tribulations of a Beantown law firm "somersaults from comedy to drama to stinging political commentary with acrobatic assurance and undisguised glee," per its citation, while the Hugh Laurie-led series was lauded for being the "most distinctive new doctor drama in a decade."

HBO won for three programs: Yesterday, a South African-produced film about a young mother diagnosed with AIDS; Children of Beslan, a documentary coproduced by the BBC focusing on the aftermath of a terrorist takeover of a Russian elementary school in September 2004; and Classical Baby, which was singled out as "an inventive, whimsical marriage of animation to classical music."

Showtime earned an award for Edge of America, a telefilm inspired by real events about an African-American teacher-coach who takes a job at an Indian reservation school in Utah.

Another notable documentary to garner a Peabody was No Direction Home--Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese's four-hour exploration of the legendary folk-rocker using archival interviews, home-movie footage and concert film that was coproduced by the BBC and PBS' American Masters series.

On the news side, with Katrina dominating the headlines for months on end, the judges showered both NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and CNN with kudos for their multifaceted efforts to cover the story. They also honored several Gulf Coast stations for coverage of the storm and its aftermath.

Now in its 65th year, the Peabodys are presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and recognize excellent in broadcasting and cable. Unlike the Emmys, there are no categories, just a list of winners picked by a 15-member advisory board comprised of journalists and academics.

Hosted by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, this year's awards ceremony is scheduled for June 5 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. For a complete list of winners go to www.peabody.uga.edu.