IMAGINE A CARTOON CALLED ‘JEWTOWN’!

Aspers Distribute Anti-Catholic Cartoon “Popetown

Dear Free Speech Supporter:

Can you imagine the following animated cartoon series for television? It’s called Jewtown and it deals with a town of Hasidic Jews outside of New York City. A rabbi molests children and runs drugs. Others in the community abuse their wives. Some run fake diamond and other scams. The Jewish religion is regularly shown to be superstitious, foolish and hypocritical. It’s a real knee-slapper. Do you remember seeing that cartoon series? Of course, not. It wouldn’t get produced in Hollyweird. Even, if by some fluke it did, no one would dare distribute it. Any station daft enough to show it would be boycotted and probably charged under a variety of “hate” laws and human rights codes. If the station were in Canada, the CRTC would lift its licence to broadcast.

We all know that. Yet, such respect and decency does not apply to the Catholic Church. “New Zealand’s Roman Catholic church has asked its followers to boycott a Canadian-owned broadcaster for screening the cartoon Popetown which it says portrays greed, inappropriate sexuality and bestiality in the Vatican. The Pope, the church says, is ‘depicted as a cretinous, dirty, spoiled brat . It also implies a predilection on the part of one Vatican-based priest for exotic animals in a way that suggests moral degeneration of an appalling kind.’ CanWest Global Communications Corp, an international media company, is Canada’s largest media company. In addition to owning the Global Television Network, CanWest is Canada’s largest publisher of daily newspapers including The National Post, The Vancouver Sun and The Province.

In New Zealand, CanWest owns TV3 and C4, and the radio stations More FM, Kiwi FM, The Breeze, Radio Works, The Edge, The Rock and Solid Gold in New Zealand. C4 launched Popetown on June 8 despite the program’s developers, Britain’s BBC deciding it was too risky even for its more offbeat BBC3 station. … The premise of Popetown-life inside a bureaucratic fiefdom ruled by a hyperactive, infantile pope, is voiced by the acerbic American comedian Ruby Wax, who is Jewish.” (Asia-Pacific Post, July 22, 2005)

That’s right. CanWest Global controlled by the Jewish Asper family is distributing this violently anti-Catholic cartoon series in New Zealand. You’ll note that this report comes from the independent Vancouver-based Asian-Pacific Post. You didn’t read it in one of the Asper controlled papers, like the National Post, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, the Victoria Times Colonist, the Ottawa Citizen, the Windsor Star, etc. or hear about it on Asper-owned Global News. The hypocrisies here are stunning as the “visionaries” behind the-once-privately-subscribed-now-increasingly-tax-funded-Asper-Family-Museum-of-Tolerance in Winnipeg distribute an anti-Catholic screed so patently hateful that its own creators decline to air it. Oh, please, teach us more of this tolerance you speak of. We really want to learn.

Even the title reeks of insult and offensiveness. About a decade ago, U.S. Negro leader Jesse Jackson nearly destroyed his public career with an offhand reference to New York City as “Hymietown.”

If you find the hypocrisy of all this enough to gag a crocodile, you may want to register your protests thus: CanWest Global Communications Corp.

3100 CanWest Global Place, 201 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3B 3L7 Telephone: (204) 956-2025 Fax: (204) 947-9841

e-mail: viewerrelations@globaltv.ca

Paul Fromm Director CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION