What’s scary about the satirical website Christwire
is imagining how many people who ran its page views up to 27 million in
August actually take it seriously. “A close reader of ChristWire will
soon figure out (one hopes) that the site is not serious,” Mark
Oppenheimer wrote in his New York Times “Beliefs” column
Saturday. “But many of the columns are deft enough, just plausible
enough, to fool the casual reader. Even–or perhaps especially–a reader
whose beliefs are being mocked.”

Sure, the Christwire “riposte”
to Oppenheimer, “Satire, Poe’s Law and the New York Times Campaign to
Discredit the Evangelical Message of Christwire,” attributes to the Gray
Lady “a recklessly pro-Zionist, anti-Christian agenda.” Pro-Zionist is
hardly a term of opprobrium in conservative evangelical circles these
days. Such missteps notwithstanding, it’s clear from Oppenheimer’s
reporting that plenty of people who should know better take Christwire
at face value.

And why shouldn’t they? Head over to Doveworld,
the website of the World Outreach Center, the tiny church in
Gaineville, FL, that has generated worldwide attention for announcing
its intention to burn a pile of Korans on 9/11. There you’ll find a
blogpost on “Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran,” which is comparable to
Christwire’s viral “Is My Husband Gay” post (with its 15-point checklist)–except that it’s no satire.

David Petraeus has informed
the AP that that images of burning Korans could be exploited by Muslim
extremists to inflame popular passions in Afghanistan and endanger
American troops. From which Bryan Fischer of the American Family
Association, blogging
on the Renew America website, deduces that Gen. Petraeus is making the
case that Islam is a religion of violence. Not that Fischer is himself
advocating the burning of Korans. No satire there either.