The death of parody

After I picked myself up off the floor and contained my gales of laughter, I briefly considered creating a parody of Michelle Malkin's bizarre performance as a cheerleader, but then I realized that (a) nobody really wants to see me in a cheer outfit, and (b) why parodize something that's already a complete parody of itself?

Really, as conservatives begin to see the doom of their looming irrelevance descending upon them, they're getting more and more frantic, further and further extreme, weirder and more absurd by the day. It's kind of pathetic, but it is also well deserved.

Now comes a report that Fox News picked up a parody story and ran it as news:

On Tuesday, Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends" aired at least eight segments on a purported "news" story that was actually a parody article written by a publication similar to The Onion.

The original news report also demonstrated the way Fox's audience of flying monkeys is trained to descend upon command:

Following the Fox broadcast, Levesque's office received dozens of angry phone calls and profanity-laced e-mails, made and sent by people all over the country, who charge the school district overreacted to what they believed from news reports to be a ham sandwich tossed at a Somali student. […]

"Fox has figured out, from the calls we've gotten, that they’ve made a big mistake," Wessler said.

"This is a wake-up call that the level of hate and anger, among a small population, is vibrant," he added.

Levesque said he was bothered not only that the parody took aim at a sensitive issue in Lewiston, but also that Fox and others reported the information as fact without checking. The national media, Levesque said, sees information posted online and "uses it as gospel."

Unless, of course, it is written by a dirty fucking hippie.

There's no further need for parody with the conservative movement. It's becoming one all of its own.