Konspiracy Korner - Did Chef Really Quit South Park?

[Color me bumped!  Scroll for updates...]

According to Roger Friedman, writing at FoxNews.com, something is rotten in South Park.

Isaac Hayes did not quit "South Park." My sources say that someone quit it for him.

I can tell you that Hayes is in no position to have quit anything. Contrary to news reports, the great writer, singer and musician suffered a stroke on Jan. 17. At the time it was said that he was hospitalized and suffering from exhaustion.

Friedman also referenced an interview Hayes did for The Onion's AV Club just this past January, which seems to suggest he was a fairly good sport about the whole situation.

AV Club: They did just do an episode that made fun of your religion, Scientology. Did that bother you?

Hayes: Well, I talked to Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] about that. They didn't let me know until it was done. I said, '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 [expletive], you know?' But I understand what they're doing. I told them to take a couple of Scientology courses and understand what we do. [Laughs.]

That's obviously quite sad if Hayes truly has suffered a debilitating stroke (and fairly odd that it's been so well hushed).  A news search doesn't pull up any other sources suggesting that to be the case, but as Friedman notes...

...[I]t’s hard to know anything since Hayes, like Katie Holmes, is constantly monitored by a Scientologist representative most of the time. ... Friends in Memphis tell me that Hayes did not issue any statements on his own about South Park. They are mystified.

That certainly begs the question of who issued the statement that Hayes was quitting "South Park" now because it mocked Scientology four months ago. If it wasn’t Hayes, then who would have done such a thing?

Who indeed?

If you haven't seen the "Trapped In the Closet" episode that sparked the whole Scientological kerfuffle, have at it.

Further:

• For a primer on the impossibly wacky beliefs of Scientologists, check out Wikipedia.
• Some truly disturbing first-hand accounts of the church's cult's brainwashing sessions (dubbed "training" or "auditing" routines) are available here, here, and here.
• A list of many of your favorite celebrities that have fallen victim to the church cult is here.

Previously:
Goodbye, Children!
South Park Conservatives

Elsewhere:
The Hollywood Reporter
Professor Bainbridge

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Update:  Flexing their mastery of the short development timeline, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are kicking off the show's new season this Wednesday with a premiere entitled "The Return of Chef" in which the boys "notice that something about Chef seems different".  From FoxLife:

On Wednesday's ninth-season debut, Hayes' character, Chef, pops up in an episode which creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are devoting to his mysterious return to "South Park." They are expected to poke fun at his religion, Scientology.

While details are scarce, Comedy Central officials say the duo are putting the finishing touches on the episode (Wednesday, 10 p.m.) -- which, like many others, is being written and animated in less than a week.

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3/22 Update:  According to Friedman's March 22nd installment of Fox Life, Hayes definitively did not quit South Park and needs the income stream the show provides to support his new wife and expected new baby.

Here’s the problem: Hayes is no longer managed by Bruce Garfield at Avenue Management. All of the communication from him comes through a woman named Christina "Kumi" Kimball, a fashion executive for designer Craig Taylor, another Scientologist.

Kimball herself is a devoted member of the Church of Scientology. She even maintains a Web site extolling its virtues. If any announcement was made about Hayes and "South Park," it came from her.

Here is Kimball's Scientology virtue-extolling site.

On the topic of Hayes' reported stroke, Friedman delivers encouraging news:

The only good news in this story is that Isaac, according to friends, is doing very well. He’s attending to business and getting back on his feet. Hopefully, he’ll be dishing up Chef like a gourmet again in no time.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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3/23 Update:  Looking for a transcript or authoritative recap of last night's premiere...

Suffice it to say it was stellar.  Rapid response "South Park" at its finest.  It pulled no punches in going after not Chef per se, but his "fruity little club" that brainwashed him.  While the show unabashedly went after Scientology and its nutso beliefs in the original "Trapped in the Closet" episode, this time the fruity little club in question was the "Super Adventure Club", a society of intrepid child molesters who hypnotize otherwise normal individuals into a state of insatiable child lust (exhibited in the Chef character via [intentionally sloppy] remixing of Hayes' lines from earlier episodes).

As vulgar as the bulk of the show was therefore bound to be, it actually turned out to be one of the most touching, honest episodes in the long history of the series.  In the inevitable "what we learned" speech at the end of the ep, the children say a tearful goodbye to Chef.

"A lot of us don't agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days," one of the children eulogizes him at a funeral. "Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can't let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile.

"We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us," the eulogy concludes. "We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."

(For good measure, in addition to their pedophilic leanings, the Super Adventure Club also believes in mystical inner-beings, much like Scientology's thetans (or the Star Wars midichlorians for that matter, but more on that later) and their club jet looks suspiciously like the DC-8, famous prehistoric equipment of choice for L. Ron Hubbard.)

Giving closure to Chef's migration to the dark side, yet leaving the door open to a possible return for Hayes (in case someone should manage to deprogram him down the line), the show ends by semi-killing him off in a gruesome eaten-alive-by-wild-animals-while-on-fire scene, only to be scavenged by the leader of his fruity little club, who manages to coax him back to health and gives him a Darth Vader style makeover (eh, midichlorians?), complete with Light Spatula.

Bravo, Trey and Matt.
Ankle Biting Pundits has more.

Transcripts, screenshots, further reaction from Roger Friedman, Kumi Kimball, etc., as it becomes available...