Isaac Hayes played the character “Chef” on the Comedy Central TV Show South Park for about ten years. Despite infrequent appearances (it must have taken him only an hour or so to finish a whole year’s work, I imagine), he is noted on the show as being a celebrity voice, at least at some level. And now Hayes is quitting the show in protest of its denigration of religion:

“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. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.”

Apparently, Hayes was completely unaware of the content of the show for the entire ten years he worked on it. Never watched it, I suppose. The very first episode made fun of Jesus. If you watch the show at all, you know that they disrespect everybody. Get a sense of humor, Isaac.

Of course, Hayes isn’t quitting for his stated reason, that the show is disrespectful of religion. He’s upset because they disrespected Scientology, of which Hayes is a member. The Huffington Post actually has the offending episode on their site, via YouTube. Another episode two and a half years ago did a job on Mormons in a somewhat similar fashion to the recent skewering of Scientology. Hayes didn’t quit then.

Heck, South Park’s Parker and Stone skewer liberals far more often than conservatives, but that doesn’t offend me. These guys are immature jerk-offs who love toilet humor and being as offensive as humanly possible to as many people as they can conceivably manage. And I can’t wait until the next episode comes out.

Also, you gotta figure they’re not just going to let the Hayes thing drop without doing something with the chef character. That’s practically begging for them to have a go at it. Maybe they’ll show some respect for Hayes, maybe out of friendship. But it would be a first.