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Isaac Hayes has quit South Park, stating that he is unhappy with jokes about religion in episodes of the hit cartoon.
Hayes, who has provided the voice of Chef since the show first started, has asked to be let out of his South Park contract and has criticised the show’s producers for including jokes about religion in recent episodes. "There is a place in this world for satire,” said Hayes in a statement, “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," he added. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."
Although Hayes has not pointed to one particular episode, it would seem that the jokes about Scientology – the legendary soul star’s religion – are what caused him to quit, as stated by South Park’s co-creator Matt Stone. "[b:a2a90d2ab1]This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology[/b:a2a90d2ab1]," said Stone.
"[b:a2a90d2ab1]He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of cheques - with our show making fun of Christians.[/b:a2a90d2ab1]"
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Chef Quits South ParkI added the bold to the Matt Stone's comment at the end. It's very true, they've ripped Christianity this way and that for years, and Isaac Hayes has never had a problem with "cashing cheques" from those episodes. So with him talking about respecting religion all of a sudden -- it's total hypocrisy, and I'm glad that was mentioned in the article.
Here's an earlier article on this before he quit:
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SOUTH PARK creators TREY PARKER and MATT STONE avoided poking fun at Scientology for years because they didn't want to upset show regular ISAAC HAYES.
The outrageous animators recently took a swing at the controversial religious movement in an episode, which found humour in TOM CRUISE and his sexuality - after growing tired of being told they couldn't attack Scientology by TV executives.
Parker explains, "To be honest, what kept us from doing it before was Isaac Hayes. We knew he was a Scientologist and he's an awesome guy. We're like, 'Let's just avoid that for now.'"
But, after hearing how comedy illusionist pal PENN JILLETTE was banned from poking fun at the controversial religion on his cable show BULLS**T, Stone and Parker decided it was time to point their comedy fingers at Scientology and it's most famous convert.
Parker adds, "Finally, we just had to tell Isaac, 'Dude, we totally love working with you, and this is nothing personal, it's just we're South Park, and if we don't do this, we're belittling everything else we've ripped on.'"
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Hayes kept South Park Creators Away From ScientologyInteresting hearing that Penn & Teller were banned from covering Scientology in their show, and that that's what inspired South Park into finally covering it.