Poe’s Law: without a winking, smiley, or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that some won’t mistake for the real thing.

I just about fell out of my chair last night when I caught this segment on Rachel Maddow, practically yelling at the screen (“Nooooooooo!”) when I heard the name ChristWire.org invoked. Yes, our girl Maddow fell into the satire pitfall that Liberal culture at large is increasingly finding itself having to treacherously navigate.

Even the name of she whom I’ve personally placed a moratorium on mentioning because I can’t bear the thought of even giving her bad press was mentioned thanks to the brilliant is-it-or-isn’t? parody from the writers at ChristWire — her reference, let’s face it, succeeded in making its veracity that much more plausible (?) — who are today basking in their tricky bastard persuasiveness.

The Right sees zebras, never horses, in post-Dubya ‘merica, and I can frankly say that I have a helluva time trying to differentiate the Right Wing outrage that’s rooted in pure psychosis, results from ginned-up corporate astroturfing, or is being spoofed by canny scribes masquerading as members of the herd. Many, many is the time that I’ve corresponded with other members of the Nightcharm staff, only to have to query, “Um, is this for real?” when they email me a de rigueur hyperbolic link. In Looking Glass Land, you’re never sure of your footing, and nothing is what it seems.

Hey, I’ve very nearly been burned in my duties here. Imagine my initial glee in encountering the bounty that is The Landover Baptist Church, only discover its true mission statement after I’d penned a cutting piece. Maddow’s reporting on the uprisings in Egypt has been uniformly excellent and riveting, so I have no qualms about forgiving this minor misstep, which she retracted in good sport spirit. Let’s not forget the previous four lid-flippers she chronicled were real — in the sense that some gadfly uttered them for some murky purpose — so if all of us evil, secular Liberals have faltered a bit in adapting to the new political landscape, it’s because we’re sifting through a Sahara of crazy with a teaspoon.

OK, so I have zero interest in athletics of any kind, but I’ll do my best with this one:

So there’s this game called football, sort of a toned-down bloodsport in which genetic freaks are paid inordinate amounts of money to wear heavy padding and run for a whole three seconds before stopping. This football is often employed as a ham-fisted form of propaganda in which country singers who are little more than mouthpieces for the Right Wing perform unlistenable music in front of a green screen projecting the image of the White House, a galaxy of star-spangled fireworks, and suited-up behemoths looming over the capitol like Talos from Jason & The Argonauts.

There’s a big ultimate death match called the Superbowl that takes place every year and is really just an excuse for an aggressive corporate advertising blitz, and this year a website called ChurchXXX is seizing the opportunity to coordinate with this event in order to address a problem plaguing steepled, tax-exempt buildings everywhere: namely, members of the flock loving barely legal babes, nasty nymphos, and the bad boys of All Anal Action. You see, porn is as addictive as heroin, and even the most pious congregations are full of lost men of all ages who just can’t stop crankin’ shaft — no matter how many times they think of grandma under a tractor or Jesus giving them the side-eye. (read the full article)

The Singing Porn Star.

It sounds like the concept for a great show on cable, but it’s actually a curious state of being. All blue movie stars deep down crave legitimacy, and I really wouldn’t mind at all if mainstream Hollywood actors and porn stars could move fluidly between worlds. It’d be great to see Tom Hardy getting scissor fucked while sucking a mean dick (it’s what he does at home anyway) and Arpad Miklos playing a bar tender on a nighttime soap.

Still, it’s a music career that’s the well-traveled — if frequently dead-ended — path to legit acceptance, and as many crooning smut idols as we’ve borne witness to, Zeb Atlas doing a handbag house cover of Diana Ross has got to be the most incongruous. It’s like something you dream after drinking a bottle of banana-flavored vodka and watching True Blood with the lights off. Conceptually, this sounds like HAL cut a single and looks like The Hulk opted for skin bleach and joined the cast of The A-List. I’m also thrown by the dearth of male singers in club music, and why it’s so compulsory for them to do duets with female thrushes for moral support. Can’t producers just pull a Black Box and overdub the men with Martha Wash or Lolleata Holloway? (read the full article)

Spidey’s leading lady is down! Is Kraven the culprit — or Green Goblin?:

“It was only a matter of time before one of the endangered cast members of ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’ finally escaped, and that time is now. The New York Times is reporting that Natalie Mendoza, who was concussed last month when a piece of rigging hit her in the head while she wasn’t even on stage, is in the process of exiting the beleaguered Broadway musical. Mendoza played the part of Arachne, a new Spider-Man villain created by ‘Turn Off the Dark’ director Julie Taymor.

Citing anonymous sources, NYT’s Arts Beat suggests that Mendoza’s departure from ‘Turn Off the Dark’ was hastened by the terrible injuries suffered by her friend and castmate Christopher Tierney, who is recovering in hospital from a hairline fracture in his skull, a broken scapula, a broken bone close to his elbow, four broken ribs, a bruised lung and three fractured vertebrae.” (read the full article)

Never take nutritional advice from dipwad celebs who require armies of personal assistants and can’t even feed themselves:

“Sprinkling charcoal on your food, a diet of maple syrup or ‘reabsorbing’ your sperm are just some of the health tips celebrities have espoused this year.

‘Alex, sperm can’t be reabsorbed once they have formed in the testes! In fact sperm die after a few days and the nutritional content of ejaculate is really rather small. And it’s worth remembering that unprotected sex might result in pregnancy or passing on of a sexually-transmitted infection.’”

Because all gays are middle-aged men with male pattern baldness, tweed suits, and psycho black rimmed glasses, and all kids are perfectly safe with their parents, teachers, and other pillars of the community.

How little the Family Research Council’s scripts have adapted since the ’50s.

And clearly, Jimmy was cruising.

The continuing saga of how to shoehorn product placements into daytime dramas:

“Oh, Bo, remember that time that the masked villain kidnapped our friends and held them hostage on the secret island of Melaswen — and only we could save them?”

“Yes, Hope. Fortunately, the wholesome, heart-healthy goodness of Cheerios sustained our love through that turmoil.”

The Republicans’ quest to find their perfect, white alternate universe President continues, with the latest Great White Hope arriving in the form of John Thune — notable for following the party’s all-purpose “What would Jesus do?”
model of governing, standing in the background of GOP press conferences looking tall, and most imporantly, for being brown-skinned in the right way:

“’Polls reflect the current state of knowledge of the electorate, where things like name recognition are a huge issue. But there are people you feel will run a strong campaign, and name recognition won’t be a problem come 2012, so it’s not uncommon to see a very large divergence a long way out between polls and markets,’ said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who has extensively studied political markets.

‘There is a whole body of literature that says snap judgments matter,’ Wolfers said. ‘If you show people 30-second clips of candidates with the volume off on TV, you can do a better job forecasting the outcome than you can if you know the state of the economy. Looking presidential is important.’”

With facets like sophistication, nuance, eloquence, and poise as handicaps — and with trophy himbo hubby Scott Brown getting all lippy and empowered as of late — the male variation on the Palin formula is now the official litmus test for candidates:

Do men want to bromance him, and do women want to spread for him?

If you didn’t catch last night’s knee-slappingly hilarious Televangelist Infidelity Matrix segment on Rachel Maddow, do yourself and watch it now.

It all culminates with the batshit mea culpa from Daystar televangelist Marcus Lamb, who dragged not only the wife but his marriage counselor before the cameras in order to cut an extortion attempt — regarding his “emotional relationship” with another women — off at the pass.

Experience the power of faith as the involved parties hold hands, pat themselves on the back for saving 8 million dollars by sharing their plight, cast themselves as courageous martyrs, chastise the wicked blackmailers, let Satan off the hook, and smile like your drunk-ass mom at Christmas.

Why is Lamb just a good man who lost his way and is now finding the path back to the light?

Take a memo:

“He had one inappropriate period of misbehavior, with one person and it wasn’t a man,” the couple’s marriage counselor and close friend Fred Kendall said. “It wasn’t a transvestite. It was with a woman; a Christian woman.”

It’s the new standard in delusional, hypocritical Christian self-mitigation.