Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.
Now, sadly, I am often the one whose print sarcasm meter is maladjusted, and so it sometimes takes me a minute to get the jokes. “AGH–oh, hah!” that’s me. As you can imagine, a site like Christwire would be a good place to keep Pam away from, with ropes and duct tape if necessary. And even worse, I get the feeling (yeah, I slipped my bonds) that the commenters are somewhat divided between parodic and serious. “People can really think this sort of shit up?” goes through my mind, with a sort of horrified reverence if it’s parodic, and with plain horror if they sound serious, and a small prayer that it’s not serious. There are people with worse-functioning parody detectors than mine.
That’s why there’s Poe’s corollary:
It is impossible for an act of Fundamentalism to be made that someone won’t mistake for a parody.
So, the WTF-ery level here has me going @_@ : what’s a poor gullible girl to think? Harry Potter and yoga?
I wish I believed that was a parody. O.o
Me, too. I hear the arguments on HP, sort of, and still think it’s malarkey, but yoga? AGH
I’m less concerned about the yoga and Harry Potter drivel than I am about the sex abuse scandals comment. He’s blaming the Antichrist instead of the priests who made the choice which is the fundamental problem with the Church. Not to get too serious of course.