Every once in a while, a story comes along that I feel completely unqualified to make fun of. A story whose inherent stupidity would seem to require a response above my pay grade; one that could only be properly addressed by digging up Mark Twain or putting a few thousand volts through the late George Carlin and asking one of them to weigh in.
For this particular Daily Caller story on where the presidential family has decided to park themselves for a bit after Barack Obama's term of office has expired, however, I'd really love to have a few moments of Sir Patrick Stewart's time. I feel this requires a facepalm that only the finest sort of actor could pull off.
The mammoth, multi-million-dollar mansion where President Barack Obama and his family will reportedly live after the first family exits the White House is located 1,096 feet from the Islamic Center of Washington — one of the largest mosques in the Western Hemisphere.
As an aside, 1,024 feet away would represent a perfect power of 2 feet, and this is 72 feet more than that, and math was invented by brown people so you can't trust any of it anyway.
This is the entire premise of the article, by the way. That the new Obama abode is, and this is indisputable, near a place that likely contains Muslims.
Both Obama’s new digs and the Islamic Center are located in the fancypants northwest Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Kalorama.
Fancypants being the preferred real estate term. Also, Kalorama sounds like kale-o-rama, so it's got that going for it too. A nod to the vegans, we can be sure.
The Islamic Center is a tremendous resource for the District’s Muslim community. “It provides Qur’an and Islamic Literature and distribution of such publications that would create awareness and knowledge of Islamic Truth,” according to the center’s website.
That is a fine use of the internets for research. Without this part of the story, we would not know that the center distributes literature and creates awareness. I feel my own awareness has been significantly heightened by this Daily Caller literature.
The Islamic Center in our nation’s capital also provides help for families in need, holds wedding ceremonies, organizes language courses, offers counseling and makes available ample significant research material related to Islam.
Again, a fine inclusion. But it requires too fine a response: For this part, I'm envisioning our rebuttal being a dramatic, sweeping animation sequence hand-drawn by the best artists of our generation. Above the swelling music, as the animated sun breaks through animated clouds to illuminate a sweeping green landscape below, the voices of th' little children of South Park would burst in to provide our needed context:
"They organized language courses!"
"You Bastards!"
Fade to black.
In addition to the Islamic Center of Washington, the embassy of Oman and the former embassy of Iran are very close to Obama’s new mansion.
This is an underused tool of journalism. I can envision an entire series of articles based on this premise—nay, an entire journalistic website. ThingsNearOtherThings.com would provide the very latest breaking news on which things, in America, were near other things.
For example, the above piece was published by the Daily Caller, whose Washington office is located approximately 1,096 feet away from Archibald's Gentlemen's Club, which is a club for gentlemen. Other suspicious influences within 1,096 feet include the AFL-CIO offices, La Raza, the Order of Malta, the Wilderness Society, Aljazeera, Victoria's Secret and the American Islamic Congress.
We cannot discern, from this, whether or not the Daily Caller offices are riddled with Muslim-Hispanic-environmentalists who alternate distributing their literature with partaking of unionized Roman Catholic lap dances. But if we could borrow Morgan Freeman for just a moment, I am sure we could narrate that possibility in such a convincing manner as to make it Wikipedia-valid in the span of a day.
That is the problem, for stories like this. Making fun of it is above our pay grade. We are unqualified; we do not have the connections required. We may be obliged to accept that Barack Obama is nearly a Muslim—nearly being 1,096 feet, in this case—merely because Patrick Stewart is currently busy with other projects.