Breaking News: America Loses It's Mind!!!

I was really hoping that I could avoid this story, but it appears that everyone in America - and the media and blogosphere specifically - has come down with a sudden and serious case of the stupids.

As I'm sure that you've all heard that Pastor Terry Jones, a Florida Fred Phelps wannabe that has a slightly larger congregation than I do, has spent the week threatening to burn a bunch of Korans. The blogs started raving about it, which brought the traditional media in, officially making it what the more media-savvy of us call "a thing."

Once that happened, the President of the United States, the secretaries of state and defence, a wartime theatre commander, and former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, all had to weigh in. As of today, it became a perfect clusterfuck of both media and government. When that happens, everybody gets really stupid really fast.

At five o'clock, Jones announced that he had reached an agreement with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to stop the Koran burning in exchange for moving the Cordoba House development in Lower Manhattan. Everyone on TV - with the odd exception of Fox News, who stayed with a Glenn Beck re-run, promptly went into their "breathlessly hysterical mode". Okay, more breathlessly hysterical than normal.

Then, at six, Rauf released a "not so fast" press release.

"I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans. However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones," the statement said. "I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony."

Congratulations, America! You've just made a complete an utter nut the most influential person in your country. A genuine psychopath now controls the agenda of both the media and the government, and has for a week.

More than anything, I blame the moron blogosphere and the Goddamned Liberal Media for making this mess a story in the first fucking place. For future reference, I'd just like to remind everybody that crazy people threaten to do stupid shit all the time. Until this week, they just didn't get wall-to-wall cable news coverage and unlimited bandwidth. And they sure as hell didn't get the personal attention of the president of the United States.

Now they do, which is going to make governing the world's only superpower so much more entertaining to watch. All anyone with a bug up their ass about anything is going to have to do is threaten to burn a holy book, and they'll have they press at their feet and the Pentagon on the phone.

Good work, everybody!