Does WordPress.com understand the meaning of “irony?”

Five Public Opinions - April 21, 2008 - 2:31pm

If so, why did it take seriously the claim that the (former) title of this post was defamatory?

Of course I wasn’t claiming that Council Nedd molests children, beats his wife or manages to perform both activities simultaneously. I was simply trying to make a point about the slanderous and presumptious nature of the question his organization sees fit to plaster on billboards across the US: “Why Do Atheists Hate America?” And I simply can’t believe that I have to spell this out.

Replace the word “Atheists” with “Gays” or “Blacks” or “Jews,” and anyone with the barest semblance of intelligence ought to be able to identify the problems with Nedd’s billboard, <i>the least of which</i> being that it falls into the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” category of loaded questions.

Is this a Hanlon’s Razor issue? It takes a particularly potent brand of stupid not to be able to distinguish between a personal attack on Nedd and an ironic attack on the content of his anti-atheist billboard. On the other hand, perhaps the gang at In God We Trust is sufficiently thin-skinned to do what they can in order to stifle any criticism of the organisation’s activities, even as they feel justified in shouting their bigotry from the rooftops.

In any case, I altered the title of the post in accordance with the wishes of WordPress, even though the suggestion that the original title was defamatory (given the content of the post) is just ludicrous. Hopefully that will be that.

[OT: I've added a link to Expelled Exposed in the sidebar.]

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