I have to admit, I enjoy surfing all those kooky fan pages and groups on Facebook. Some are hokey, like the “Powerful Blood of Jesus Christ” group (which displays a picture of a dove whose wings have been dipped in Christ’s blood). Some are hokie, like the “Happy Muslim Husband and Wife” fan page . And some are just plain stupid, like “Can This Goat Get More Fans than Barack Obama?”

The types of groups and pages are wide-ranging, but one thing they all have in common is that they crack me the hell up, usually unintentionally. Take the hilarious, “Dear Lord, Kill Obama” page. The real title is much longer and more laughable, but, yes, there actually is a Facebook page that prays for God to kill President Obama, and it has 1,185,299 fans—my sister being one of them! Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. During the campaign, she totally bought into all that “Obama the America-hating, Muslim, socialist, grandmother-murdering, turban-wearing Kenyan” business. Ah, don’t sweat it, Sis. It’s not your fault Mom accidentally put you in the microwave when you were a baby.

I imagine a lot of those fans are also fans of the “People Who Believe In The Power Of Prayer” page (407,854 fans), which means, since those people believe in the power of prayer, they are literally subcontracting God as their own personal presidential assassin.

Of course, the “Dear Lord, Kill Obama” page doesn’t make me guffaw nearly as much as the response group that wants the “Kill Obama” page deleted. That group is called “Petition to Remove Facebook Group Praying for President Obama’s Death” (875,365 members) and wants you to sign the petition to “make Facebook accountable for what they implicitly endorse.”

Yeah, dammit! We’re going to hold Facebook accountable by, um, asking them to remove a page they aren’t affiliated with. That’ll show Facebook!

Oh, you kooky Anti-”Kill Obama” Page members, just because someone has a fan page doesn’t mean Facebook endorses it. If the mere act of allowing a page to exist constitutes endorsement, then, by that logic, Facebook endorses your group as well, which means they are endorsing the Kill Obama page and the Anti-Kill Obama page—a paradox so blatant, so powerful, it would cause the Facebook universe to collapse on itself and vanish, leaving behind only a tiny little “Like” button.

Another page I find utterly amusing is “Take Off Your Damn Hat During the National Anthem” (181,981 fans).  “The United States is the greatest country on Earth!” writes the moderator. “I’m tired of people not… taking off their hat for our National Anthem!”

Then there’s this bit of perfect comedy from fan Ellen Odom: “All of us born of this soil should show complete respect, all others can get the hell off of it.”

Question: If I don’t respect the National Anthem, what’s it to you? Isn’t it enough that you respect it? Because, guess what? Some people might not think this country is all that great. Take homosexuals. What has this country ever done for them except marginalize, dehumanize and criminalize their lifestyle? If I were queer and attending a ballgame, not only would I not remove my lid during “The Star Spangled Banner”—I’d make sure the hat I wore had a giant, foam donkey dick on top, which I would stroke with both hands during the entire anthem, as if to say, “Got your ‘land of the free’ right here, bitches!”

Then there’s the “Ban the R Word” group (3,422 members), which is described as, “a group for everyone who is tired of constantly hearing the word ‘retard’ used as a derogatory term and would like to do something about it.”

OK, fine, do something about it. In the meantime, I’m going to start a response group called “Ban the ‘B’ Word”—a group for everyone who is tired of constantly hearing the word “ban” whenever somebody says something somebody else doesn’t like. Sign my petition to ban the “Ban the ‘R’ Word” group on the grounds that it’s not anyone’s business what words I use!

Here’s one that makes no sense. It’s the “Check American” page. The mission statement reads, “Check American is a national campaign to encourage citizens to write in ‘American’ as their race on the 2010 U.S. Census Form.”

I guess this group is for people who are agitated by words like “African-American” or “Mexican American.”

“Stand against hyphenated Americanism,” writes the moderator.

Yeah man, take a stand against those low-down dirty hyphenators. Write in American as your race on the census form. Only one problem. “America” is not a race, dipshit.

Then there is the hilariously bigoted protest group against the stated plans to build a Mosque near the former World Trade Center. It’s called “People Who Disapprove of Building a Mosque at Ground Zero!” (59,566 members).

“This mosque is a symbol of conquering America,” says the mission statement, after which it has the deliciously comic ’nads to add, “This group is NOT about attacking Islam or Muslims.”

No, no—of course it’s not about attacking Muslims. It’s about attacking their places of worship, sillies.

A quick scan of the page reveals that the members are all retarded.

“If we let them build a mosque then we have the right to wipe out their country,” writes Michelle Feldbauer, who apparently thinks the Nation of Islam is a country.

“This is the land of the free,” explains Marie Montalto, adding, “A mosque at ground zero? Never!”

Ah, Marie, spoken like a true radical racist Facebook fan-page fan. Forget that not all Muslims are terrorists; forget that Muslims also died on 9/11—what’s funny about your post is that the exact same sentence in which you mention a free America, you tell a minority religious group that they have the freedom to take a hike.

Oh, you kooky “People Who Disapprove of Building a Mosque at Ground Zero,” I have to ask. If the 9/11 terrorists had been, say, a gang of disgruntled barbers, would you prohibit hair salons from opening near ground zero?

And last but not least is a fan page that intentionally cracks me the hell up. It’s called “Stupid Fucking Facebook Fan Pages . . . Fuck Off.” All it does is mock fan pages. At the time of this writing it has 970 fans. Actually, make that 971.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat

Ed Decker
05.21.10

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 1:42 pm and is filed under (rants). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.