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• Sunday, February 18, 2007 01:07 PM

  Surely no one thinks they were genuinely offended

  Has anyone seen Megan Basham's blog responding to Marcotte's leaving on The American Spectator site, called "Blogging with Bile"? (I read the enemy.) A strangely fey attempt to seem offended because Marcotte satirized her religious beliefs. Predictably, Basham rapidly uses Marcotte as evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy against Christianity. An astonishingly cynical, jaded diatribe put forward in an innocent, damaged tone.

  I don't see how any adult with a seventh grade education can be genuinely offended by religious satire in a private blog that they chose to read. Religious views are by their very nature irrational. If you think that believing a child was born without a father through divine agency, allowing you to reside in paradise forever, while everyone else goes to hell,is above criticism, you only invite more laughter. And why read Marcotte and pretend to be shocked if you hold the beliefs she often satirizes? That's like walking into a locker room and being offended by the nudity.

  But the Right knows how to rally its troops at the first sniff of anyone who doesn't think Norman Rockwell painted masterpieces. Gosh, Ms. Marcotte, it's a good thing you didn't say that you thought Forrest Gump was a dumb movie. They'd have hunted you down and burned you at the stake.

  —Jake Johnson
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