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Monday, June 15, 2009

Today's fake: a troubled pregnancy

A Chicago area blogger who kept readers spellbound with reports on her "pregnancy with a terminally ill baby" was faking the whole thing, local media reported yesterday. Faced with the problem of finally coming up with a baby, the 26-year-old woman, Beccah Beushausen of Oak Park, furnished a picture of herself cradling a swaddled doll. Readers quickly noticed the deception:

"I have that exact doll in my house," said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. "As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."

By Monday, outraged followers on dozens of Christian parenting Web sites unmasked "April's Mom" as a hoaxer, and hundreds more vented their anger.

Notice who got upset. The only problem with this was that it was not intentionally designed to punk the anti-abortionists, but was merely a symptom of a sick mind.

"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.

"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

There goes the book deal!

technorati: Beushausen, April's mom, abortion

Labels: abortion, bloggers, fakes, Focus on the Fundies, hoaxes, over-reactions

Monday, February 09, 2009

Focus on the Fundies: Evangelist tries to profit from Australian fire disaster

An Australian fundamentalist is claiming that the Australian fire disaster is God's punishment for the state of Victoria allowing abortion.

Pastor Danny Nalliah says he had a dream that God's "conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb." Of course, this is exactly what American fundies said after Sept. 11 and after Katrina: that the disasters were holy retribution for New York or New Orleans allowing whatever it is they don't like. Of course, when floods hammer the Mississippi valley, or tornadoes decimate a Southern town, they don't have much to say.

It's always been like this: preachers said the same thing when San Francisco was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. After a distiller paid firefighters to save his warehouse, a local wag wrote:

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over-frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And spare Hotaling's whiskey?

technorati: Australia, wildfires, abortion

Labels: abortion, Australia, Focus on the Fundies

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Focus on the Fundies: Congressman, two others 'anoint' Capitol doorway

As workers readied the inauguration stage in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, a right-wing Georgia congressman and two evangelical ministers prayed over and anointed with oil the Capitol doorway that President-elect Barack Obama and other dignitaries will pass through on Inauguration Day.

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, who introduced an anti-abortion bill days later after Congress convened for the first time, was accompanied by two far-right ministers: Rev. Rob Schenk, a long-time anti-abortion activist and head of something called Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, and Rev. Patrick Mahoney, also an anti-abortion activist and director of something called the Christian Defense Coalition.

An aside: clearly, the thing to do if you're a right-wing Christianist "activist" and all-around media whore is not to have your own church, but to have your own non-profit foundation in Washington DC, so you can do things like anoint the Capitol and appear on Pat Robertson's CBN.

Don't invite Mahoney to any inaugration parties, as he is fasting until Inauguration Day in solidarity with poor people "as well as the 50 million innocent victims of abortion."

technorati: Congress, Schenk, Republicans

Labels: abortion, Focus on the Fundies, Obama, Republicans