South Park creators on Tom Cruise "Trapped in the Closet" controversy...

For some reason, I got on the mailing list for Reason magazine. Just what I need, ANOTHER magazine. But the cover of the Dec. 2006 issue got my attention: "10 Years of South Park: Trey Parker & Matt Stone on censorship, politics, and staying funny."

The portion of the interview that I was most interested in was about the infamous "Trapped in the Closet" one that lampoons Tom Cruise and Scientology and makes thinly-veiled remarks about the actor's much-speculated-about sexuality. (Cruise is due to marry actress Katie Holmes, the mother of his daughter, Suri, this weekend ). The "South Park" episode shows Cruise's ex-wife Nicole Kidman and fellow Scientologist John Travolta attempting to coax a fictional Tom Cruise character out of a closet, with Kidman saying: "Don't you think this has gone on long enough? It's time for you to come out of the closet. You're not fooling anyone."

The episode aired once in 2005 but was pulled from the rerun schedule which caused a storm of controversy. Here is some of what Stone had to say about it:

Q: How did the network respond to pressure from the Church of Scientology about the episode?
Stone: They blew it off. To be fair, it wasn't really at the Comedy Central level. It was way up at the [Comedy Central owner] Viacom level. It wasn't a choice or anything we had any say in. The only thing that we got was a phone call saying that the producers of "Mission Impossible 3" (released by Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures) want this show off the air. The rerun was supposed to air that night. So we bitched and moaned and yelled at them on the phone...But then we realized - and luckily it came true - that you can't just pull an episode off the air anymore. People are going to find out. Sure enough, it was all over the press. The Internet makes those backroom deals a lot harder to do."