So many levels

Here's the story:

1) The Raving Atheist learns from the news media that the trapped miners in West Virginia have been found alive.

2) The Raving Atheist immediately writes one of his parody news stories, which pretends that the Raving Atheist himself was originally cold-heartedly planning to publish a parody news story "highlighting the futility of prayer"--but that the parody had to be cancelled when the miners disappointingly survived. (In reality, TRA was not planning to write any such story.)

3) Then the false media information about the miners was corrected, and TRA learns along with everyone else that the miners actually died. So he publishes a blog entry about the aborted story about a parody story about a parody story about a false story.

So many levels.

Naturally, some enraged people just can't keep up.

My favorite comment:

The blame for this tragedy should not be placed on the coal mine owner or the miners themselves but on those people who didn’t pray hard enough. Next time, those Americans who as our great President declared, “all across our country were praying for the miners" need to pray much, much harder.

It's hard to argue with that. Unless prayer is always useless.

But the president believes prayer works. So I'm sure he'll be on the air in no time, castigating the American people for failing to pray hard enough. Hmmm....

President Blames American People for Miners' Deaths
Washington D.C., January 5, 2006
Special to Brian Flemming's Weblog

President Bush blamed the American people for the deaths of 12 West Virginia coal miners today, asserting that the tragic turn of events could only be explained by "a lack of the proper prayerfulnessitude."

"I believe prayer works," the President said. "But you have to do the job right. I mean, to get 12 miners alive out of a deep hole--that requires some top-notch praying. Clearly the American people were not up to the task. They let these miners and their families down with their cut-rate sky-begging."

To bolster his case against the American people, the President revealed that his top-secret domestic spying program includes eavesdropping on the prayers of U.S. citizens. He presented transcripts of some of the prayers.

"Look at this woman here," the President said, holding up a prayer transcript from the National Security Agency. "She says, 'Dear God, I'll do anything if you'll please save those miners.' There's no specifics. 'Anything'? What does that mean? She'll give up Twinkies? She'll sacrifice her children? This is a lazy, unfocussed prayer. If I were God and I got this, I wouldn't save any miners, either. In fact, I'd kill a few extra just to send a message."

Responding to criticism from congressional Democrats, the President's spokesman later said the President believes the prayer-tapping was legal without warrants because one party to the communications, God, "resides outside the borders of the United States."

Responding to criticism of that statement from congressional Republicans and Pat Robertson, the spokesman later issued a clarification, stating, "The President believes that God is everywhere, including within the United States, which is His favorite country. But prayer communications are generally directed skyward to Heaven, which is not currently a U.S. territory."