At the height of TV’s reality show craze, Comedy Central’s “Drawn Together” spoofed the genre by cramming several animated archetypes into a living situation straight out of MTV’s “The Real World.” For three seasons, a square-jawed superhero, a Disney princess, a yellow SpongeBob thing, a musician babe with constantly erect nipples named Foxxy Love, an over-the-hill Betty Boop, a cigar-chomping pig, a gay elf and a subtitled Pikachu substitute all tried to stab each other in the back as if they were vying for the hand of Flavor Flav on VH1. The show was canceled in 2007, but now through the magic of this straight-to-DVD release, our crude cast is finally able to cut loose without any hassle from those meddlesome Viacom censors.

In less than 2 minutes, there’s a lesbian make-out scene between a preggers Betty Boop and Foxxy. By minute 6, the gang stomps kittens and puppies into piles of blood and bone for no reason whatsoever. At the 10-minute mark, the SpongeBob creature whips out his big, black dick. Adding an extra dimension of yuck, said dick is both pulsating and photo-realistic. Barely a minute later, the subject of the necrophiliac hand job is broached as our caped superhero professes his love for a blond corpse. There’s really nowhere to go after trotting out postmortem finger action, but that doesn’t stop the makers of “The Drawn Together Movie” from trying. Their solution to this dilemma is to give us even more necro-smut as the corpse is shown in a three-way with the Wonder Twins and gang-banged by multiple Doctors Manhattan from “Watchmen.” After a half-hour, cartoon upskirt shots seem like mere innuendo.

As profanity goes un-bleeped and genitals remain un-blurred, the gang realizes that their show (aka, their very reason for existence) has been canceled and replaced by “The Suck My Taint Show,” a “South Park” send-up where a lady Cartman laces her odes to cunnilingus with libertarian bromides about “personal responsibility.” “Drawn Together” creators Dave Jesser and Matt Silverstein’s broadside against their former network’s most popular show tastes of sour grapes, but is still audacious enough to provide some of the best jibes of the movie. Soon, Jew Producer, a Sabbath-observant humanoid with an intercom for a head, is forced by the network brass to dispatch a robot called ISRAEL to erase the “Drawn Together” crew from televised existence. I couldn’t help wondering if all this Jews-making-fun-of-Jews wasn’t sending out the wrong message to the bulk of this movie’s loutish target audience. Then I realized that I was giving it way too much thought and took another shot of Cazadores.

Where the “Drawn Together” series was made using traditional cel animation in a South Korean sweatshop, the movie was produced at L.A.’s Six Point Harness Studios using Adobe Flash, a program best known for generating annoying pop-up ads and busy Web intros. The player component of this program suite has also come under fire from Apple chief Steve Jobs recently. But while the iPad impresario rails against Flash, remember that the besieged video manipulation tool allows rock-ribbed, American pixel pushers to earn their livings by rendering affordable dildo gags with little drop in quality from traditional methods. In fact, the cartooning of director Greg Franklin (who directed the animated sequences in “Black Dynamite” and “Eurotrip”) and company is an improvement over the original TV show, if my agave-impaired vision can be trusted to make such aesthetic judgments.

“The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie’s” rapid-fire barrage of bad taste did elicit a decent amount of involuntary chuckles from me throughout its merciful 70-minute run time. However, like many things I’ve done while consuming too much tequila, I wasn’t exactly proud of this when I woke up the next morning. Since attempting a sober (literally) reassessment of this disc seems unwise, I’m giving this movie a SHITE meter rating of H for “Hey, it’s really not that bad.” But be forewarned, this rating could easily bypass the I for interesting and sink to a T for torturous if viewed without the aid of mind-altering substances.

This movie contains a 3-D sequence, but no 3-D glasses. Before rifling through your junk drawer for some stereoscopic specs, please ask yourself if you really want this stuff popping out of the screen at you.

KKKARTMAN: Order! Order! By the power vested in me. By myself and all freedom-loving, patriotic, deodorant-wearing, one-true-God-fearing citizens of East Park, I hereby declare moral outrage! Outrage, I say! Why, you ask? WHY?! Because the godless, liberal Benedict Arnolds at Comedy Central have prostrated to the altar of political correctness! They have succumbed to the demands of a legion of intolerant, extremist, Islamist, Muslim fundamentalists whose only logical response to a satirical cartoon lampooning their Prophet is violence, reactionary rhetoric and bad hygiene! Ha! This is what happens when you elect a Muslim president!

Three schoolchildren are seated in the audience. They are friends of KKKartman. They are EVERYMAN STAN, IBN KYLE and COMMON SENSE KENNY. Everyman Stan gets up to speak.

EVERYMAN STAN: KKKartman, dude, I totally understand why you’re pissed off. Comedy Central acted like cowardly tools by censoring artistic expression and betraying the power and value of freedom of speech. But, don’t you think you’re exaggerating the threat and the problem? It wasn’t a legion of Muslims who got upset. Just two nutjobs, called DEVOS, who posted something on their website, De-volution Islam. Most Muslim Americans, like our buddy Ibn Kyle here, understand that art is often used as a necessary vehicle to promote healthy national discussions about culture and politics.

IBN KYLE, the token Muslim, gets up to speak.

IBN KYLE: Thanks, Stan, I just wanted to say –

KKKARTMAN furiously slams the gavel.

KKKARTMAN: Silence! In America — unlike those other places like Falafel-Stan — we tolerate criticism and differing opinions! To prove my point, I’ve invited a world famous expert on Islamism who is thoroughly America-holic! Hearsay Sally!

HEARSAY SALLY: As the unofficial ambassador of 1.5 billion Muslims and an unofficial expert on their complex and diverse 1,400 year history, allow me to officially conclude that most Muslims are unable to understand the concept of free speech. They cannot comprehend that in a democracy it’s a two-way street, buddy! Like the illegal immigrants in Arizona, they just take, take, take! And what do they give in return? Death threats, tyranny, terrorism, assassination plots and bad shwarmas! In order for them to truly understand the meaning of a freedom-loving, tolerant Western democracy, we must force them to abandon their tyrannical religion and embrace respect for the law!

The two members of De-volution Islam, a couple of white men wearing long, fake beards and traditional Middle Eastern clothing, bum rush the stage.

DEVOS: As official representatives of all real, hardcore, non-sellout Muslims, we hereby declare a fatwah against the citizens of East Park for your war against Islam! Someone … somewhere … at some time … might try to harm you for your trespasses against Allah … maybe … perhaps … we’re just saying … not really … but kinda. However! This much is certain: Your disrespect of the Prophet in a harmless cartoon is clear evidence of a global Western campaign of systematic oppression against all Muslims!

KKKARTMAN: You two gays should be tried under military tribunal for your unilateral criticism!

DEVOS: There are no gays in Islam!

Enter BIG GAY ALADDIN sporting a flamboyant pink keffiyah and high heels.

BIG GAY ALADDIN: (Singing a song) Bombs are flying! People are dying! Children are crying! Politicians are lying! The whole world’s gone to hell! And you’re all wasting our time talking about a stupid cartoon! But, how are you? I’m SUPER! Thanks for asking!

DEVOS stare with disgust, shake their head, rub and yank on their fake beards.

DEVOS: See the fruits of your Western decadence? What, with your Western mongering of godless stilettos, affordable Girls Gone Wild DVD sets, enticing late-night Cinemax softcore pornography, and voluptuous breasts no wonder the world is besieged with natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes!

EVERYMAN STAN: Dude, he did not just make the boob-quake argument?!

IBN KYLE: I think he just did!

HEARSAY SALLY: Now, wait just a minute, Al Qaida –

DEVOS: Quiet, harlot!

KKKARTMAN: Enough! Let the lady speak. In our culture, we let women have a voice –

HEARSAY SALLY: Thank you –

KKKARTMAN puts his hand in front of her mouth and muffles it.

KKKARTMAN: As sugar tits was saying, we cannot let this belligerence abide! The first stop for Islamists: censoring Comedy Central! The next stop: Sharia law in the U.S.A.!

EVERYMAN STAN: Enough! This is Madness!

EVERYONE ON STAGE: (yelling) No! This is East Park!

EVERYMAN STAN: You know what? You guys are what’s wrong with this country. All of you! (Points to the speakers on the stage) Instead of — God forbid — acting as voices of reason and moderation, you’re more interested in peddling your selfish agendas. You’re not interested in protecting anyone’s right to free speech or defending artistic expression — except your own! You cynically manipulate and use moments of crisis like this to further your own political propaganda!

All the speakers make frowning faces and look sad and ashamed.

KKKARTMAN: Everyman Stan — you’re right! I think we should hear a new perspective on this issue; a voice of reason. I think we should finally let Common Sense Kenny speak!

Common Sense Kenny hops onstage and approaches the dais. As he’s walking, DEVOS stick out their feet, trip him and violently push him to the floor. SALLY stabs him in the head with her stiletto heel and KKKARTMAN strangles him with the microphone wire.

EVERYMAN STAN: Oh, my God! They killed Common Sense Kenny!

Wajahat Ali is a journalist, attorney, humorist and the playwright of “The Domestic Crusaders.” He blogs at Goatsmilk: An Intellectual Playground.

One thing about Islam: It isn’t exactly known for its rollicking sense of humor about itself. Sure enough, in a post on Revolution Muslim’s website last week, writer Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee published Parker and Stone’s studio’s address and warned that “what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like [slain Dutch filmmaker] Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.” (The group, based in New York, has since taken down the site.)  

For its brave depiction of a hallowed religious figure dressed like a cuddly mascot, the show has won itself some unlikely defenders. Anderson Cooper said on his “360″ program Tuesday that “You might not like ‘South Park’ the cartoon, you might think it’s offensive, you might decide it’s not something you want to watch — that’s up to you. But the notion that some radical Islamic group in America would make a threat, even a veiled one, against two men’s lives because of it is chilling. And for the people making this threat, that is precisely the point — to chill discussion, to chill debate.” And none other than noted microphone cutter Bill O’Reilly has called Parker and Stone’s outspokenness “courageous.”

As if O’Reilly’s championing the show that gave us a talking poo (takes one to know one?) wasn’t bizarre enough, the story took an even weirder turn when Wednesday night’s new episode aired. Mohammed was still in the storyline, but his name was bleeped, and his image was blotted out with the word “Censored.”  On the show’s website Thursday, a message went up that read, “After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.” The episode is not available on the Comedy Central website, although, oddly, an earlier episode depicting Mohammed is. So was Wednesday’s episode another nose-thumbing “South Park” parody of corporate hysteria, or an exercise in genuine bleep-happy hysteria? One can imagine Parker and Stone wanting to create something that vividly illustrated how absurd it looks when we blot out ideas and images, but one can likewise see how Comedy Central might have decided it would be in its employees’ best interests if they reduced their odds of getting blown up.

It’s genuinely scary to see how one incredibly sophomoric cartoon can incite such strong feelings and even violence. This is the show, after all, we can thank for Kick a Ginger Day. But it’s not Parker and Stone’s fault if people are psycho. And it’s laudable that they keep going in spite of the havoc they wreak, even when threatened with lawsuits, death and bad reviews. They don’t have to. Their show’s raison d’être, first and foremost, is to just be funny — which it frequently still is. (The recent Facebook-themed episode was a spot-on takedown of social media.) And you’ve almost got to hand it to anybody Parker and Stone’s age who can still come up with jokes about “pube stew.”

But “South Park’s” creators aren’t just another pair of television potty mouths. They’ve got an impressive history of sticking their flies into the ointments of every powerful institution on the planet. Theirs is a show that makes cracks about abortion addiction and whose recurring characters include Jesus Christ, created by two guys who are currently developing a Broadway musical about Mormons. Which makes “South Park,” pube stews and all, an ongoing testament to that beautiful ideal of free speech. Free speech isn’t just “Give me liberty or give me death”; it’s not just “I have a dream.” It’s also the prophet in a bear suit.

That’s why Bill O’Reilly is right when he calls Parker and Stone courageous. And the fact that I just wrote that Bill O’Reilly is correct either means that the earth has gone off its axis or that “South Park” is bigger than the left or the right, conservative or radical, or Christian or Muslim. It’s American.

Assuming they don’t get martyred in the process, Parker and Stone’s greatest triumph is that they actually have a chance to wrest the notion of patriotism from the kooks spitting outside the White House and remind us all what it really means. These are two guys quite literally now putting their lives on the line for the ideal that this country was founded on: the right to say whatever the fuck you want without fear of retribution — but with the acceptance of responsibility for your words and ideas. Patriotism, like comedy, isn’t supposed to make anybody comfortable. It doesn’t promise not to offend. It’s dangerous and scary and it makes people mad because it questions authority. It’s powerful stuff. One might even call it revolutionary.