Can you tell which clueless git comes from "The Onion," and which from Beckapalooza?

The right-wing looniness has reached the point where

it's almost impossible to tell what's satire and what's

honest-to-gosh reality. The above cartoon by the great

Pat Bagley is . . . well, kind of both at the same time.

"'I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear,' Gentries said. 'But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities.'"

-- imaginary interview subject Scott Gentries

of Salina, KS, in The Onion

by Ken

Fine catch by AlterNet's Joshua Holland. Eerie, creepy, chllling -- but fine.

In a post today, he's got a clip of "Glenn Beckapalooza attendees showing their utter cluelessness on a range of current affairs," in which "a fashionably attired gentleman says, in all seriousness, 'I learned everything I need to know about Islam on 9/11.'"

Did the Onion writer who wrote the following piece, dated Monday, catch this same fellow, or was he riffing on his own? These days satire and real life have merged so well that it's impossible to more than guess.

NEWS
Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims
AUGUST 30, 2010

Gentries made a conscious decision to stop learning anything new about the Muslim faith on May 22, 2005.

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."

Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."

Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.

"I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear," Gentries said. "But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities."

Added Gentries, "That really put things back into perspective."

The head on Joshua's AlterNet piece is: "On Mosque Madness, The Onion’s Satire Is Indistinguishable from Reality." In light of what I was just saying the other day about really talented people like Tom Tomorrow and Digby being able to find humor in utterly appalling reality, I want to stress that the Onion piece is satire.

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