July 05, 2007 04:45 PM UTC

The Trouble with Spoof Blogs

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports this morning, there are blogs out there in big, bad cyberspace who indulge in Jonathan Swift-style satire. And there are other blogs who never seem to get the joke:

Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback is a self-described social conservative. The Kansas senator does not believe in evolution, supports prayer in schools and opposes abortion rights, even in the case of rape.

And if you peruse some of the blogs supposedly authored by his supporters, such as baptistsforbrownback (baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com), you’ll see that he believes in lots of other things too.

Like that the Earth is flat – and does not revolve around the sun. And that rape should be referred to as an “unplanned sexual event” in order to “eliminate the excuses given by many women” for getting an abortion.

It appears these so-called supporters – who also run the site Blogs 4 Brownback (blogs4brownback.wordpress.com) – are really using the sites to parody the senator’s conservative political and religious beliefs, and perhaps make it appear that he is aligned with people who hold some, well, extraordinary notions…

Of course, it didn’t take long for the Post to figure out that the “anti-heliocentrism” position at Blogs 4 Brownback wasn’t exactly legitimate. We saw it months ago and found it hilarious. You’d think it wouldn’t take anyone long to realize this, but apparently B4BB’s rapier-like wit was a little too dry for several conservative Colorado blogs. We see the post at ToTheRight.org asserting proof that B4BB was an official arm of Brownback’s campaign has been deleted, though others buying this rather obvious satire hook, line and sinker remain.

It just goes to show you, things that set off “this has to be a joke” alarms in your head…usually are.