South Park's Stan Marsh joined a cartoonized Paul Watson last night in a parodied version of "Whale Wars."
(SOUTH PARK STUDIOS screengrab)Photos (1 of 1)
South Park puts spotlight on Paul Watson and his “Whale Wars”
Paul Watson, a self-described "Earth Warrior," is set for another round of Whale Wars against the Japanese fleet as South Park takes aim.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer 10.29.09
If mockery is more damaging than direct criticism, Paul Watson is in big trouble.
For 30 years, Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been the most feared eco-vigilantes on the high seas, steaming out in their black ships, jolly rogers hoisted, to ram and sometimes successfully sink Japanese and Norwegian whaling ships. The Law of the Sea? That’s for sissies, Mr. Watson sneers, claiming he and his companions have the right to disrupt what they consider to be illegal and unethical whale hunts.
He’s persona non-grata in Iceland, spent 80 days in a Norwegian prison in the 1990s and is even too extreme for Greenpeace, which shuns him, notwithstanding that he helped found that organization. One of his ships carries a tally of whalers sunk – including one ship disabled while in Lisbon port by a limpet mine in 1980 – on its side, the way fighter aces used to tally their kills on their fuselages.
Whale Wars
But since Watson and his merry band became the stars of Whale Wars, their own reality show on Animal Planet, their profile has gone through the roof. Movie star Daryl Hannah briefly crewed on the organization’s Steve Irwin (named for Australian entertainer/conservationist who was killed by a stingray in 2006) last December as it hunted Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. Their roster of celebrity supporters also include Uma Thurman, Mick Jagger, and Sean Penn.
The wave of attention has left Sea Shepherd’s coffers more flush and on Oct. 17 the organization formally unveiled it’s new weapon: The Ady Gil. The $2.5 million space-age trimaran is all speed; under the moniker Earthrace, it set the world circumnavigation record in just over 60 days (crushing the old record by nearly two weeks) in 2008. It’s been renamed for the Hollywood benefactor who paid for its acquisition and given Sea Shepherds’ characteristic black paint job. Watson has told reporters that it will be deployed in this year’s anti-whaling (and TV shooting) mission in frigid waters south of Australia.
Amy Baird, Sea Shepherd’s media director, says the group’s other ships don’t have the speed to keep up with Japanese harpoon boats and says the Gil will be used as an “interceptor vessel” to speed along with the harpooners as they seek minke and fin whales, and then dart in between them and their prey as they get set to take their shot. She says the group will depart Australia in early December and hopes to shadow the Japanese whaling fleet until it returns home.
But more money, more problems, as The Notorious B.I.G. once said.
This year, Watson’s visa for Australia, where the organization bases its Southern Ocean operations, was briefly held up by the government, something that Watson charged in an open letter was due to pressure from the Japanese government, which licenses a hunt for about 1,000 whales annually. Japan insists the hunt is for scientific research programs, but the meat invariably ends up in Japanese sushi bars and school lunches.
South Park takes aim
But that was nothing compared to the drubbing on US television. On Wednesday night, the satirists from the cartoon show South Park took aim at the group (and Japanese whalers and, typcially, everyone else) in an episode that they named, in their inevitably “classy” fashion, “Whale Whores.” In the story, the Japanese are filled with a burning hatred for whales and dolphins, and Stan (one of the South Park kids) teams up with Watson to fight back. Watson is dispatched by a harpoon early in the episode, and Stan ends up captaining the ship, adopting more aggressive tactics that send “Whale Wars” ratings through the roof.
But what might sting Watson, an action-man environmentalist who scorns mere protests in favor of throwing stink bombs at whalers and ramming their ships, is one of South Park’s fictional headlines praising Captain Stan and skewering Whale Wars penchant for trying to squeeze drama out of rather mundane ship-board activities: ““Whale Wars Gets Better: Things Actually Happen!”
The episode also touches on one of the things that has made Watson so controversial – his frank willingness to bend the truth. South Park’s fictional Larry King calls Watson “an unorganized, incompetent… who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause.”
That Watson isn’t particularly concerned with the truth isn’t a smear – it’s a tactic, according to one of his own books, in which he wrote that “all confrontation is based on deception.”
More confrontation is what’s in the offing when Watson and the rest of his Sea Shepherds depart Australia in December to try to intercept Japan’s whalers. They’re armed with not only a faster ship this go around, but with water cannons of their own (Japanese whalers have taken to using the canons - which are also used by merchant marines to repel pirate borders – to keep Watson’s people away).
The group’s intent, Watson has said in recent interviews, is to make whaling commercially unviable for the Japanese, an approach he argues is working.
“We’re speaking the language that the Japanese whaler understands: profit and loss,” Watson said at the unveiling of the Ady Gil. “For the last few years, they’ve made no money. Give us one more year and we can bankrupt them.”
You can watch the video here.
See also:
Scientists warn of unregulated whaling in Asia
Whales, Navy clash in high court
PETA comes up with some really lame superheroes
<< Russians to ride a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars | MainComments
2. Jason O’Neill | 10.29.09
I was very interested in this piece literally until you used “But more money, more problems, as The Notorious B.I.G. once said”. . . . . . . . .
3. Maureen B | 10.29.09
I think the episode was far more anti-whling than you pertain, in fact the Japanese whalers were shown as cruel and stupid.
4. Ethan G. | 10.29.09
Don’t get me wrong, what the Japanese whaling fleets are doing is wrong and technically illegal, but I find that what Watson and his crew are doing to be more objectionable. They are ecoterrorists. The people that should be doing something are the various Coast Guards and Navies that patrol Antarctic waters. That said, I really want to see that South Park. It looks awesome.
6. Benjamin C | 10.29.09
Ecoterrorists is right Ethan, check out the episode at southparkstudios.com
7. jimbo | 10.29.09
That episode was awesome. The South Park writers are great at mocking people haha.
PS: Christian Science, isnt that an oxymoron?
8. Tom | 10.29.09
One of the best ‘jokes’ comes at the end of the episode after the Japanese switch from killing dolphins/whales to cows/chickens. Randy Marsh observes something to the effect of “now the japanese are normal people, just like us”; meaning of course that most of us who cringe at dolphin/whale killing have no problem with the hundreds of millions of chickens/cows that are slaughtered every year.
9. Annie | 10.30.09
A water canon is a super high powered water ‘hose’ that is used to knock people down or off balance by ’shooting’ them with intense streams of water. You may have seen it used in old footage of the civil rights movement when protesters were shot with water canons to discourage them from marching or entering ‘whites only’ businesses or public venues.
Eco-terrorism is a large question and can’t be judged too simply. It is arguable that destruction of property and even loss of life is “worth it” in order to save and preserve an entire species. Even the anti-abortion crusaders can’t say that if the “killing” doesn’t stop a species will be irrevocably wiped out, never to return to Earth. The Japanese continue to hunt and kill whales in spite of ‘intense’ international pressure and it is clear that few, if any, meaningful political or cultural pressure from within the country is at work when whale meat is served to school children.
While some may say the nations of the world ’should’ do something, they are not doing anything and if private enterprises choose to take action and can earn money support, garner attention and are willing to take their legal lumps, using lawyers and taking full advantage of their rights, I believe they are right to do as their conscience dictates.
Most people believe murder is wrong but if they could go back and kill Hitler at the onset of WWII would not hesitate to do so. The people who fight these “illegal” battles feel the same way. I haven’t seen the show, and don’t profess to know all there is know about the laws and the tactics they employ, but I hope they win the war, however badly they may be fighting the battles….
10. cramnitram | 10.30.09
Spell checker out to lunch today, is it? I would have thought that the Christian Science Monitor would know the difference between canon and cannon!
11. international_editor | 10.30.09
@Cramnitram. Well, you’re right. As we say in the business “type in haste, repent at leisure.” Should be fixed now.
12. ADiff | 10.30.09
There’s nothing wrong with harvesting whales ‘per se’. The problem is unregulated harvesting, which is always the challenge in utilizing natural resources and especially wildlife resources.
What Watson’s doing is piracy. It’s trendy yuppie approved ideological piracy, but plain old piracy nonetheless.
If I were the Japanese, I’d send military escorts and sink his ships the next time they interfered with their citizen’s economic activities on the high seas.
14. Julie Van Ness | 10.30.09
The Japanese whalers are criminals engaged in the criminal conduct of illegal whaling and the entire rest of the world does nothing about it. Go Paul Watson!!! Take them down!!!
15. endecoterror | 10.30.09
The Sea Shepherds are criminals engaged in the criminal conduct of illegal terrorism and the entire rest of the world does nothing about it. Go Japanese Military!!! Take them down!!! Protect your citizens!!!
17. Malcolm J. Brenner | 10.31.09
Nobody who comprehends the agony a dying whale endures can accept whaling as in some way equivalent to the minimal requirements for a slaughterhouse. We can’t kill whales with blunt-force brain trauma like domestic cattle or by bleeding them (Kosher), or by decapitation (fowl).
We kill them by shooting 50-lb. fragmentation bombs into their guts and letting them die slowly, while we haul them backward through the water. If the whalers can get close enough they may try to fatally shoot it with a .50-caliber rifle, but that’s for their convenience, not to end the whale’s suffering.
Whaling isn’t slaughter, it’s prolonged torture. If anyone contributing to this forum saw a cow with a harpoon in its guts being dragged backward down the street by a truck, they’d call the police, and they’d be right to do so.
If it’s torture on a city street, it’s torture on the high seas, regardless of the fact that we know vastly more about dead whales than live ones. That in itself is an indictment of our research methodology.
20. imforthewhales | 10.31.09
If I were the Japanese, I’d send military escorts and sink his ships the next time they interfered with their citizen’s economic activities on the high seas.
ADiff…you must surely know that the japanese are not commercialy whaling for profit, rather they are whaling for research purposes. Therefore the economic activity is not taking place.
Are you suggesting that the japanese are lying to us and whaling commercialy in disgiuse?
22. TS | 11.01.09
I am Japanese, who does not often eat whale meat. Actually, whale meat is not so popular in Japan. However, I hope to sustain a diversity of food culture. Sea Shepard are noting but a pressure group and lobby such as Greenpeace. We have to consider who is behind Sea Shepard about the Whale hunting problem.
23. W.Jackson | 11.01.09
It seems to me that the episode focused directly on Watson and the Sea Shepherds; the Japanese characters were simply a reflection of how the Sea Shepherds constantly try to define Japanese whalers while conveniently forgetting that several Caucasian countries also whale. What is all too often lost in the hyperbole is the fact that there are two issues involved; Japanese (ONLY) whaling and the illegal and dangerous acts being committed by the Sea Shepherd Society.
24. Julie Van Ness | 11.06.09
The Japanese whalers are criminals. endecoterror is a front for them. So is imforthewhales.
25. Grumpiestoldman | 11.06.09
But does it taste good? Calamari ain’t bad.
Also, are shrimp killed more humanely, or should I avoid Red Lobster?
I mean, I’m Catholic, so Fridays in Lent I can’t have beef, so I need shrimp.
26. crankatorium | 11.11.09
imforthewhales,
economic activities are involved in the “research” since the whalers don’t perform their study then dump the whale carcass overboard. they can’t let “any part of the whale go to waste,” so after harpooning the whales they package and process it on another ship.
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1. Scott | 10.29.09
Such a funny episode.