Not having time to maintain or update this site, I have disabled comments and created a Twitter account, beyondsatire, where you can follow me.

FYI, the recent I haven't been doing much with this blog in the past year is I'm a new mother, and my new responsibilities, combined with my preexisting ones, don't leave me with much spare time. Sorry, loyal readers and spammers. Anyone interested in providing content should contact me by email.

This cartoon is funny. This story is not. It is, however, beyond satire.

According to the [UK] Daily Mail Online:

A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly whipping women for wearing bras that they claim violate Islam as they are 'deceptive'.

The insurgent group Al Shabaab has sent gunmen into the streets of Mogadishu to round up any women who appear to have a firm bust, residents claimed yesterday.

The women are then inspected to see if the firmness is natural, or if it is the result of wearing a bra.

If they are found wearing a bra, they are ordered to remove it and shake their breasts, residents said....

'Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of full veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,' a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.

'They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.'...

Via the Associated Press:

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said....

Add to the list of not a racists Georgia businessman Patrick Lanzo, who put up a large sign outside of his bar, reading: "OBAMAS HEALTH CARE PLAN - NIGGER RIG IT". Lanzo explained:

"I've used the N-word most of my life and there is different ways to put your opinion up, but that's just the words I choose to use."...

Despite the presence of a mannequin clad in a Ku Klux Klan outfit standing amid the pool tables, Lanzo maintained he's not a racist.

Anyone know where I can get an uncensored version of the sign?

Source: New York Daily News

• Customers invited to fight diabetes while getting diabetes
• Froot loops, mayonnaise, cocoa puffs now good for you
• Google's twenty funniest suggestions

Boston police officer Justin Barrett sent an email [1] to the Boston Globe and his National Guard colleagues saying that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates behaved like a "banana-eating jungle monkey" and that, had he been the arresting officer, he would have sprayed him in the face with OC (pepper spray). Don't worry, though, Barrett isn't a racist, as he later explained: "I regret that I used such words. I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist." [2]

Barrett isn't the only not-a-racist. British National Party (BNP) nominee Clifford Le May urged the London mayor: "Stop ruining our community by stuffing New Addington with violent immigrants who have no right to live among decent civilised white people". He also called his white opponent a "traitor to his race and nation". Le May has refused to apologize for his remarks and insists: "I'm not a racist -- I'm a British patriot." He went on to explain that a New Scientist article said "there's evidence that people in gangs are predisposed to violence. They didn't bring race into the equation, but you can read between the lines." [3]

Le May has plenty of company in the BNP, whose constitution is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948". [4] After posting racist slurs publicly online, BNP candidate Charlotte Lewis explained: "I am not a racist, I am a racial survivalist and anyone who calls me a racist is a genocideist." [5]

The phrase "not a racist" has become so common that it is now appearing in satire. After an anonymous French Tour de France rider accused British rider Mark Cavendish of complaining about "Fucking Frenchies", Cavendish explained that he wasn't a racist, just an "asshole". The next day:

On the Garmin team bus before the start, there's movement behind the curtain in the doorway. We turn to look just as a booming, disembodied voice announces: "Mark Cavendish is not a racist. He just doesn't like French people." [6]

Sources:

• Justin Barrett's email in question
• Cop apologizes for "jungle monkey" e-mail
• Croydon BNP election candidate investigated over immigrants rant
• Constitution of the British National Party
• Croydon BNP candidate leaves offensive messages on web
• Tour de France diary

I came across the above Google ads on Snopes today. If you don't understand why I was amused, just read the ad headlines.

It reminds me of a Frank and Ernest cartoon I like to include on electronics tests.

• Teen Girl Falls in Open Manhole While Texting: The family may sue the city.
• "Orgasm A Day" Campaign Directed At British Schoolchildren Sparks Controversy: The leaflet for high school students includes the slogan "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away".
• Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself: "Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium [and as] holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including ... itself."