"Come, chillun, sit at my knee..." Brokeback, you gave me a laugh! I see myself as Chef from South Park saying that line. "Be good, chillun! LRH is watching!" ***(see below)***
Ah... but BungiBill protested, "How would you feel if..."
It seems one difference between you and I, BB, is that I neither expect nor desire people 12,000 miles to work their knickers into a twist over my circumstances, while you, BB, seem to feel it is your due.
Yeah, I'm TERRIBLE, compared to you. "To what shall I compare thee? The summer sky at 2 AM?.."
***Oh gee, I brought up Isaac Hayes and Chef and Scientology and LRH...
What am I talking about this time???
Well, chilluns, here's a summary of how Wikipedia explains it...
Isaac Hayes was the voice of Chef on South Park from 1997 to 2006. During the late 1990s, Hayes gained popularity as the voice of Chef on the animated television series South Park. Chef was a soul-singing cafeteria worker for South Park Elementary.
Scientology episode
In the South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet", a satire of Scientology which aired on November 16, 2005, Hayes did not appear in his role as Chef. While appearing on the Opie and Anthony radio show about a month after the episode aired, Hayes was asked, "What did you think about when Matt and Trey did that episode on Scientology?", he replied, "One thing about Matt and Trey, they lampoon everybody, and if you take that serious, I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge for two dollars. That's what they do."
(About three weeks after that) In an interview for The A.V. Club on January 4, 2006, Hayes was again asked about the episode. He said that he told the creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, "Guys, you have it all wrong. We're not like that. I know that's your thing, but get your information correct, because somebody might believe that shit, you know?" He then told them to take a couple of Scientology courses to understand what they do. In the interview, Hayes defended South Park's style of controversial humor, noting that he was not pleased with the show's treatment of Scientology, but saying that he "understands what Matt and Trey are doing."
Departure from South Park
(Just over two months after that) On March 13, 2006, a statement was issued in Hayes's name, indicating that he was asking to be released from his contract with Comedy Central, citing recent episodes which satirized religious beliefs as being intolerant. "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," he was quoted in the press statement. However, the statement did not directly mention Scientology. A response from Matt Stone said that Hayes' complaints stemmed from the show's criticism of Scientology and that he "has no problem – and he's cashed plenty of checks – with our show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons or Jews." Stone adds, "[We] never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin." Stone and Parker agreed to release Hayes from his contract by his request. In 2007, Hayes said he had quit because "they [Parker and Stone] didn't pay me enough... They weren't that nice."
The South Park season 10 premiere (aired March 22, 2006) featured "The Return of Chef", a thinly veiled telling of the affair from Parker and Stone's point of view. Using sound clips from past episodes, it depicts Chef as having been brainwashed and urges viewers (via Kyle talking to the town) to "remember Chef as the jolly old guy who always broke into song" and not to blame Chef for his defection, but rather, as Kyle states, "be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains." In the episode, the cult that brainwashed Chef is named the "Super Adventure Club" and is depicted as a group of child molesters who travel the world to have sex with prepubescent children from exotic places. In the end, Chef is unable to break free from his brainwashing and dies an extremely gruesome death, falling off a cliff, being mutilated by wild animals and shot several times. At the end of the episode, he is shown as being resurrected as a cyborg in the style of the resurrection of Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
On March 20, 2006, two days before "The Return of Chef" aired, Roger Friedman of Fox News reported having been told that the March 13 statement was made in Hayes's name, but not by Hayes himself. He wrote: "Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park. My sources say that someone quit it for him. ... Friends in Memphis tell me that Hayes did not issue any statements on his own about South Park. They are mystified." In a 2016 oral history of South Park in The Hollywood Reporter, Isaac Hayes III confirmed that the decision to leave the show was made by Hayes' entourage, all of whom were ardent Scientologists. The decision was made after Hayes suffered a stroke leaving him vulnerable to outside influence and unable to make such decisions on his own.
