South Park “Whale Whores”: Captain Paul Watson Responds!
"I'm in good company along with Tom Cruise and Sean Penn."
Filed under: Featured, animals, campaigns, web — Michael d'Estries @ 10:35 am
October 30th 2009
Wednesday night’s airing of the latest South Park episode Whale Whores created quite the conversation in our early morning recap. While some praised the message of the show, others felt that it went a little too far in playing Wack-A-Mole with Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson.
Not one to shy away from controversy, Watson stopped by the comments to share his feelings on the show — and explain why South Park’s exposure was worth the satirical abuse. In his own words,
I have to say that being lampooned on South Park is hardly something to complain about. They spelt Sea Shepherd right and they brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed personally, I’m in good company along with Tom Cruise and Sean Penn.”
It’s a tough situation we are in. We can’t hurt the whalers and we have to stay within the boundaries of the law in opposing illegal whaling operations. If that makes us pussies so be it, it’s better than being portrayed as killers. The point however that was missed is that we have cut the Japanese kill quotas in half over the last three years and cost them their profits. Our objective is to bankrupt them and we are doing just that.
South Park has however linked Japan to the horrific and senseless slaughter of dolphins and whales and all in all that’s a damn good message in our opinion.
What the Whale Whores episode also achieved was to highlight just how successful Whale Wars has been as a television show and how Sea Shepherd is out on the high seas actually trying to do something about the problem.
Captain Paul Watson
Captain – The Steve Irwin
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Tagged: paul watson
South Park is my favorite show – always has been. And the spoof on the Sea Shepherd crew was great (loved the look of the 1st mate with the glasses and teeth). But this is a GREAT response by the captain. Perfect in tone and message. I personally don’t think I could have taken such a haymaker as graciously as Captain Watson. Great South Park episode and great, measured response.
I wonder what Japan will say in response to the South Park episode? The portrayal of Sea Shepherd might have been a tad exaggerated but not so much for Japan. Will they ever realize that tuna, whales, and elephant ivory doesn’t only belong to them?
“… not so much for Japan. ” WTF? How racist are you?
“They spelt Sea Shepherd right…” Can anybody find the irony in this? Maybe an editor, perhaps?
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Main Entry: spelt
Pronunciation: \?spelt\
Chiefly British past and past participle of spell.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spelt
I think the critique of the quote was more to the point of “They spelt Sea Shepher (correctly)” maybe?
“Spelt” is actually correct. According to this site, “spelled” and “spelt” can both be used interchangeably. http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/101-wrong-wrongly-spelled-spelt.html
I liked the way Captain Paul Watson responded to this episode. It’s nice to know he can laugh at himself and still see the true achievement here. Now more people know how crazy these Japanese whalers are AND they know how the Japanese government can make a fool of themselves by standing behind such a pointless act.
Spelt? Spelt? Are you fucking kidding me? What does the spelling of Sea Shepherd have to do with saving whales? I hope to hell that Paul’s statement was dictated over the phone and some fucking jackass intern is responsible for the misspelling of ’spelled’, otherwise the fate of the whales is grim at best in the hands of a man who talks like a fucking ‘gangsta’ and can’t spell.
And No – ’spelt’ is not correct. Just because someone ‘thinks it might be okay’ on usingenglish.com does not make it correct.
Dude, they have this thing, called American English, and they have this other thing, called British English, and then because the British were colonial bastards they also have these things called Australian and Canadian and New Zealand English and they DON’T ALL SPELL WORDS THE SAME WAY.
“Spelt” is a perfectly correct form of “spelled”, the same manner as dreamt/dreamed. Just because you’ve never come across it doesn’t mean it’s not correct.
It’s called ‘English’, you septics just bastardised it. Nevertheless, ’spelt’ is indeed the past participle of ’spell’, as any seven year English child could explain
Can you nit pickers stop yammering about spelling and stick to the topic of whale and dolphin slaughter?
The Japanese have been using a “research” loophole in the international law that bans whaling since 1986, in order to slaughter these animals for food.
Japan has also been campaigning for a return to commercial whaling. Our increasing (almost 7 billion) population has been devouring every kind of sea creature, but the Japanese are trying to blame the whales for the decline of fish in order to return to commercial whaling to “control” the whale population. This is outrageous!
This is one of many articles that I found on this topic:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/IWC_passes_pro-whaling_resolution_after_close_vote
Go and have a look in the Oxford English Dictionary then – if you want to be a successful pedant, you’ll have to aquaint yourself with the facts.
he was saying how since they spelt Sea Shepherd correctly, people will look at is as an actual organization rather than some spoof on a bunch of “vegan pussies.”
Spelled/spelt, while/whilst, color/colour… Paul Watson is not an American, nor is his message intended solely for Americans. Go read BBC Online and get yourself into a nice froth
you say ‘tomayto’ i say ‘tomato’, you say ‘go read BBC online’ i say ‘up your fookin fox news’.
Oldsven, you are wrong and better go back to school. I am a English teacher and it can be spelled or “spelt” either way. Spelled and spelt mean the exact same thing and both spellings are accepted in the English language. It is not slang either, such as “gangsta”. Get your facts straight before you go shooting your mouth off.
Nate M. . . . “I am ‘a’ English teacher”? The irony lies thick about the thread. =/
hahaha. yep, that was quite the typo I made. Can anyone say embarrassing?
when you give spelt,spell and spelled a spell [they are all ok cos we invented the laungage -you guys just bastardised it] lets get back to whale and dolphin killing.
Just stop buying Japanese stuff.
Shame on South Park for giving these moronic eco-terrorists more oxygen. The sooner Japan torpedos these assholes the better.
Hey, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the International Whaling Commission banned whaling in 1986.
All nations have committed atrocities in their past, but as our cultures mature and become more civilized, we let go of our savage past.
Why don’t you eat some more tofu instead of dolphin and whale meat?
& “why dont you” keep slaughtering cows & chickens SPViewer
Sure! Whatever… But I’m definitely going to boycott Japanese products!
I love South Park, but was surprised that Tre and Matt dogged Sea Shepherd like they did. I mean, have some respect guys for someone who deserves it. Paul saw the advantage of the episode -and that is true Watson nature. It’s NOT about him, it’s about the cause. He’s been fighting to protect animals and habitats with NO GLORY for decades. I urge those who are talking poop to look at the history of Paul Watson and how he walks his talk – and gives a damn.
If you do a portion, in your lifetime, of what he accomplished to help the planet by the time he was just
25 – you’d be lucky.
Stop with the criticism. I’ve talked with Paul. He is genius. The guy is heroic, thought provoking and fearless. One in a billion. Keep up the good work Pablo. The naysayers know not what they say.
Check out this uplifting and inspiring video on why people choose a peace promoting vegan lifestyle: http://veganvideo.org/
Watson can afford to be gracious – he’s winning! I wonder what the response was in Japan’s Institute for Cetacean Research? I’m sure it wasn’t half so gracious, but we’ll never know. If I thought for one minute I could serve under Watson, I’d go…
Paul Watson is indeed an ego-maniac food fascist. Nothing more.
Whales are food too.
Chickens and cows are domesticated. They are bred in large quantities in captivity, as are pigs and turkeys. I doubt that many of these domesticated animals in their current state of health (homogeneously bred condition, pumped with steroids and antibiotics) would survive long in the wild. Whales and dolphins are not domesticated. They have languages and cultures. They teach their young how to communicate and how to survive through each successive generation, as many other animals do, unbeknownst to most of humanity.
Everything could be food, up until our out of control population devours every other species and then we die of starvation. Just try to find a wild bird, or any other kind of wild animal in North Korean. They’ve long ago been eaten. The people have been starving, and rely on their limited farming and foreign imports of food. Ever hear of “moderation”?
Dude, seriously. Whales do not have a ‘language’ or a ‘culture’. In point of fact, they show much less intelligence than your average crow. I’m not saying that whales should be hunted, I just hate hearing repetition of fantasy as fact.
Sure, most people prefer to believe that the animals they eat are not intelligent. It’s unnerving for some people to learn that animals have feelings, or communicate with each other, or teach their young how to survive with their behavior and their language, or bond for life in pairs (like a marriage), but the only significant differences between us and many other animals are only our higher cortex functions, and the sophistication of our tools that have been enabled by our (opposable thumb) hands. These 2 differences allowed us to surpass the verbal tradition of cross generational knowledge transfer by writing down our knowledge and experience to build on the progress of each successive generation. This has led to a more sophisticated culture. Collectively, and considering our accumulated libraries and networks, humanity knows a great deal, but individually, the average person has a very limited memory capacity and can specialize at most on just a few areas of expertise that were developed by previous generations.
I’m not going to fill up this forum with everything I already know about brain size comparisons; or brain weight to body weight ratios; or encephalization quotients; or observed tool use; or discoveries on animal languages; or observed animal behavior; to justify the intelligence of any particular animal, because animal species develop the communication skills and other survival skills that they need in order to survive individually and collectively.
My opinions are informed and based on research and facts, which is more than I can say for the other people that fill up the internet forums and blogs with wishful thinking.
Denying animal languages is laughable. Even bees communicate detailed flying directions to their colony by vibrating their abdomens, and ants communicate to the rest of their colony through chemical signals, so consider THEIR brain size. The sperm whale has a brain 6 times the size of the human brain. Even these basic facts alone should lead you to conclude that a whale is not dumber than a crow. A whale doesn’t need to fly around and use twigs as tools for survival, like a crow does. Whales communicate over long distances via infrasound. They do use air bubbles as a type of net (tool), and work collectively in small groups to coral their prey.
Why don’t you google “whale language” and “whale culture” before expressing an uninformed opinion? Here are a couple of links to start with:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8886–whale-song-reveals-sophisticated-language-skills.html
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/whaleculture/
David….”..like uh Dude…like uh seriously man” Oyyyy Funny how you chose to use a crow as your example of ‘average’. Crows have proven to be one of the most intelligent birds. Study upon study of whales have proven you wrong. Educate yourself before you start ‘duding’ us.
Sorry, now-a-days, they aren’t. They’re nothing more that toxic waste items full of poisons.
One of the best South Park episodes ever! A hillarious show full of mock, hypocrisy, irony, and appropriately funny singing by cartman, as well as some reverse psychology… Do the Japanese really need to keep killing whales and dolphins to eat? Of course not. The Japanese are not starving. Their savage tradition is irrational and should be ended.
The real serious question is when will our increasing population devour enough of the other remaining species; destroy species diversity; change the climate; pollute; and migrate destructive and invasive species; to the point that the food chains collapse and humanity begins to starve? When will we reach our “Soylent Green” future?
For those of you not familiar with the movie Soylent Green, I think it is worth watching. The following is a SPOILER description, so do not read it if you want to see the movie:
“Soylent Green” portrays a bleak future for humanity. Having destroyed the ecosystem and eaten our way down the food chain, not even ocean plankton, is left to feed the massive human population, so governments and corporations have to conceal the fact that dead human bodies are being processed into food wafers and marketed as plankton. Google it!
The problem with this response is that they don’t acknoledge the past of the japanese or the correlation between the dolphins and wales to the chickans and cows… Whale are crazy cool but the things is that we americans can at times be so self righteous that we dont think beyond our own scope of view. The comments by captain butthole is pretty much how South Park portraited him. he couldn’t help but comment on how the the show is catching on, but he still managed to throw in a little actual feelings about the whales. either way I i can’t really agree with the show i’ve seen it before and couldn’t stop laughing about how stupid they look and acted, even the crying on the show made me sick man. If you can show that much emotion for a whale how about for a fellow man japanese or not thats the importance of the hiroshima reference. Go makes a show about chickan losers.
I’ve never seen the actual ‘Whale wars’ show, I don’t even know if its shown in England, but from what I’ve heard I can guess what its like. The episode WAS gross over exaggeration and it grouped the entirety of Japan together which was unfair, but that’s what made it worth watching! The spoof of the whole situation is what will make more people see it and become educated about whaling. Yes, its easy for us to be self-righteous when we ourselves have a good food supply, but come on, you expect us to believe that the Japanese couldn’t create the same for themselves? Just because they live in an oceanic area where Dolphins and Whales are available and we don’t (England) means that they have the right to hunt them? They should invest in the development of other, SUSTAINABLE meats if they’re so god damn stuck for food. And I know this is grouping together China and Japan, but in regards to different species as food sources, they’ve got it fucked up in the head. Seriously.
okay they have WAY MORE people, so food is a bit of a different issue for them, as is poverty so i would assume whaling would be the only source of income for alot of these people, now i do not condone the killing of whales or any living creature, and i DO think japan should implement policies to lessen their reliance on whales for food, but you cannot just stop an industry like that in a country like that, it takes time, and methods OTHER than throwing stinky butter at them and messing up their current quotas ( which only forces them to go after more whales)
What these guys are doing is dangerous to the whales their trying to protect and to PEOPLE , yes people, you havnt forgotten about them have you? i mean im all for saving the whales but if its a decision between a whale and a person i would pick the person.
And i wish you would stop assuming people are going to jump on the save the whales bandwagon after the south park episode because from what ive seen its alienating more people from it because of the show. i knew nothing about the sea shephard until the show and figured it must of been something amazingly stupid for matt and trey to attack them like they did and i was right. as soon as i saw the episode i started researching paul watson and the sea shepherd and everything ive seen just makes me think he’s a idiotic media whore thats endangering peoples lives by what he’s doing and if he thinks thats acceptable than i wont shed a tear when the japanese actually get pissed and fuck his boat over big time or he gets arrested.
this show is playing on your emotions for ratings. Haha i would like to see a ship full of black guys or middle eastern guys or even japanese guys doing the exact same thing, and i would bet any amount of money theyd be called terrorists and pirates.
Facka U dolaphin….and Facka U whaaallee
hahahaha
Southpark fullfilled my dreams of seeing Paul get Harpooned.
Brilliant! Now may we stop beating down a man for fulfilling his dream in actuality?
SUPERB RESPONSE, Paul; you’re right on the money. I like South Park and Whale Wars, both. South Park makes fun of everything and everyone; that’s just how they are.
You’re right: it will dramatically help the effort in educating more people about the situation. And the ones new to the situation who decide to heavily research Japanese poaching will discover an extremely, relentless whaling past run by Japan’s military right after WWII, which was a huge factor in pushing most whale species’ into endangerment.
Thanks, again.
I second this. Captain Paul is wonderful. I understand people have to eat, but they’re OVER doing the whole kill situation. For “research”. Research only needs so many bodies to be studied at a time. I remember one of the last episodes for this past Whale Wars season where blood and guts and things of that nature were coming out of the wholes of the Japanese whaling ships into the ocean. I could’ve puked. That could’ve been handled way better.
South Park always does a great job of making fun of big story news, such as Whale Wars. Even the Michael Jackson episodes were good.
Captain Paul, keep up the good work. There are many of us on your side and look forward to the day Whaling ends.
Thank you.
Paul Watson is a terrorist and a wannabe pirate. The man is a just a self serving egotistical whore. Back in the “good old days” pirates where drawn and quartered and had pieces of their remains put on display at various locations to serve as a warning to others. This would be a fitting end to Watson. what a douche-bag.
Replacing the Dolphin and Whale with Chicken and Cow left the impression that maybe we should look at our commercialized meat markets before we worry about the japanese killing machine. The episode was a big mirror pointed at you (unless your a vegetarian), The American Killing Machine (chicken and cow). People posting that this is bringing attention to stopping the japanese whale/dolphin hunt missed the point. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.
No, that WASN’T the point. It had nothing to do with the whole situation! The point of highlighting the cow and chicken killing was to say that BEFORE you automatically turn into self-righteous Eco-warrior’s after watching this show, remember that we too contribute to the death of millions of animals each year. We as Westerner’s are used to our own food sources as it has now become normal practice for us, and we are used to it. I’m not saying what the Japanese do is right because it’s not, its sick. All I’m saying is that they want you to think before you judge them, because we are not free of judgment ourselves!
Also I think it was probably 99% just a god damn funny ending to the show! You’re thinking waaay too much into it. It’s like stand up comedians use situations which the audience can relate to to draw humor – these guys know what will push our buttons as an audience. Obviously the highlight of the whaling situation was also a good thing to come out of it, but that’s probably not what they initially aimed for.
Depending on where you stand on the matter or if you just don’t care at all, the South Park episode can be taken under many interpretations. But if you ask me, the creators do not intend to spit out their viewpoints or side with anyone. They just want to create a show that is hilariously offending.
I admit the show did get me interested in Whale Wars and all of their nonsense. But I do not think the show should be used to make a statement in anyway.
And what Paul Watson did there in his response was nothing more than turning a few words around to support his own viewpoint. South Park is a hilarious show but cannot be taken seriously, Paul.
I have to say, I loved this episode. It was really sad though, no matter how hard they tried to make it humorous. Its gross overexaggeration was what made it funny, but at the same time you cannot take these things too seriously.
Its not fair for you guys to satirize what Whale Wars are doing, although it made a good show. As Stan said, Over 90% of the world population are against whaling, but what to most of these people do? Sit around at home, not happy about it, but perfectly happy to lampoon the people who do!
Paul Watson is right – they can’t do anything illegal! If they did they would get their butts pulled out of there in a second, and that would achieve nothing! They can’t endanger human life or damage the boats – how better would that make them than the whalers? Its a healthy balance between the irritating, self-righteous people in offices with their crappy underwhelming protest and the extremes of an organization such as PETA, which resorts of a type of violence that makes them no better than the people they protest about.
Good on South Park for yet again managing to highlight a serious situation in such a discreet way that people feel guilty, but not lectured. God I love this show.
The Whale Wh**es episode, like many South Park episodes, is about exposing hypocrisy. South Park is taking no position other than hypocrites are deserving of ridicule.
Paul Watson is a hypocrite for being an unethical liar. If anyone think Watson is not an opportunist and liar, they are delusional. He staged being shot. He is worse than Richard Heene in being a blatant media wh*re..
The USA is a hypocritical for meddling in the affairs of Japan when they have committed a far worse crime by dropping the atom bomb on Japan. Is it appropriate for the US to condemn Japan’s whaling policy when they are the only country to ever use the atomic bomb? What moral high ground does the USA have?
Perhaps most hypocritical are the average americans who oppose whaling, but nonchalantly kill millions of domesticated animals every year (cows and chickens). Again, what moral authority do we have to oppose Japanese whaling when we are responsible for the slaughter of millions of animals? Although cows and chickens are not as cute as whales and dolphins, they are both animals that humans exploit for their own end.
South Park is also commenting on our media obsessed culture where fame is more important than substance.
The only nation with the moral authority to oppose whaling would be a country of vegetarians who have not committed their own atrocities. I am not aware of any such nation.
fuck you whale-roo and fuck you doffiin
IT WAS JUST A SATIRE OF THE ***REALITY SHOW*** AND HOW RIDICULOUS IT IS
the actual sea shepherd group has been around since the 80s and does all sorts of illegal ship sinkings and other so-called ‘eco terrorist’ action you’ll never see on the show. also Paul Watson has never actually been a captain on their regular ships, he has minions to do that. and yes, he is hueg liar making up BS for the show to create ratings.
Watson of course doesn’t care he was parodied in south park because it’ll just mean more people checking out what sea shepherd are doing.
Many of you are missing the major points of the episode, which commenter Graham describes pretty well, despite one exceptional error: the A-bomb comparison is completely irrelevant and inapplicable in this context. The deployment of the A-bomb does not lessen the U.S.’s moral legitimacy on the world stage, and was used in South Park only as a humorously absurd plot device to parodically explain the Japanese motive for whale/dolphin slaughter.
The people who’re overly-concerned about whale slaughter need to wake up and see that it’s hypocritical of us in the Western world to condemn a culture that simply has a different dietary structure (i.e. more seafood) when we routinely kill a greater number of creatures that just happen to comprise a different food group. While the needless slaughter of any animal should be avoided if possible, and while our natural food resources should be conserved, it is downright unjust of us to demand that the Japanese curtail the food-harvesting operations that they are dependent on when we sit fat and happy with our Big Macs and buckets of KFC (Isn’t it convenient that our culture feeds on easily replenished, “guilt-free” animal stock like cows and chickens).
Also, these tree-hugging yuppies need to take a step back and prioritize their value system. When there is still so much human death, suffering, and injustice in the world, WHO THE HELL GIVES A FUCK ABOUT WHALES? The fact that so much time, energy, and so many resources are committed to a cause whose worthiness pales in comparison to those involving actual human beings is mind-blowingly absurd and borders on the downright reproachful.