.For lovers of satire, the website Christwire.org is one of the Internet's true gems. The site has all the trappings of a far-right conservative news outlet. It hosts banner ads for real Christian colleges and has a mission statement of spreading the "guiding principles of conservatism and Christianity." However, if one reads the articles hosted on the site ("Mexican Zombie Flu Raises Black Rapper 'Tupac' From the Dead" or "Japanese Create New Scary Robot Baby") it's readily apparent that it's all a big joke. Well, unless you happen to be NBC's Los Angeles affiliate.
On Tuesday, NBC Los Angeles published an article with the screaming headline "Christian Website Calls for Bill Murray Boycott." The writer, Drew Magary, was referring to a ChristWire article that calls Bill Murray a "fatal disease" infecting our children:
What this man symbolizes is far more ruinous than California’s buffet dinner of liberal socialist philosophies, homosexual lifestyles and pre-teen consumerism. No, what Bill Murray means to America is the acceptance and celebration of an ultimate apathy. He is a weak man, a murderer of lambs, a despicable hedonist who waves the white flag welcoming the end of American moral and economic primacy. He is a harbinger of our death as a culture, the death of that preëminent philosophy of faith married to capitalism that has saved the world countless times from repression and annihilation.
Amusingly, Magary apparently fails to realize it's a work of satire. He spends the beginning of his article deriding Christian conservatives for attacking everything from Islamic fundamentalism to President Obama to environmental extremists. "You would think that would be enough to keep any major American voting bloc busy," he says. Even more amusingly, Magary wasn't the only one who got duped. Tony Hicks, a writer at a daily San Francisco Bay area newspaper, earnestly addresses the ChristWire article.
What's really troubling about piece is not that it's on an otherwise functional-looking site called Christwire.com. I'm all for Jesus being on the Internet — everyone else is. And of course we should not analyze the religious right based on one loon, or even one website. But it is sort of frightening that nearly 3,000 people on Facebook say they like an article that accuses Murray of being "a murderer of lambs."
...Billings repeatedly compares Murray to child rapists... Apparently his investigative skills didn't uncover that Murray and his brothers worked as a caddies to pay for Jesuit school and their older sister is a Dominican nun who spreads the good word by performing religious drama... I wonder if he even tried contacting Murray before comparing him to Jeffrey Dahmer.
For future notice: bloggers looking for a quick faux-controversy to comment on—beware ChristWire.org. For anyone else looking for some great satire—click away.