A few years ago, my friend told me that he'd heard Westboro Baptist Church was an elaborate scam led by former civil-rights lawyer Fred Phelps to profit from filing lawsuits against those who violate their free-speech rights. Yet after watching the WBC spit on AIDS patients, picket soldiers' funerals, and generally behave like the biggest bag of dicks of all time for the past decade, it became clear that my friend was wrong, and that the WBC was all too real.
Today, however, for the first time in my adult life, I am looking toward the heavens and thanking God that Phelps and his merry band of hate-mongering, spluttering lamewads are the real McCoy. The church's recent remarks on Radiohead are so bizarre and outlandish that you'd think they were the brainchild of some mediocre SNL sketch-writer, and the fact that they aren't makes them all the more hilarious.
After picketing a Radiohead show in Topeka, Kansas last Sunday (which Radiohead cohort/tour organizer Nigel Godrich referred to as "the highlight of their tour"), one of the three or four literate WBC members took to the church's website (shout-out to GodHatesFags.com!) to express their views on the band. Suffice to say, they were not complimentary, describing them as "freak monkeys with mediocre tunes" (apparently, the Good Reverend Phelps shares the opinion of many indie college boys that King of Limbs was a total letdown). The WBC also added:
"Meanwhile, God is undoing this nation and effecting [sic] all of your lives, with the moth that quietly eats the very fabric of your national garment. Radiohead is just such an event."
Jeez, snark much? And we think the reviewers on Yelp are nasty.