[sloppy journalism]

Topic: Culture

I am endlessly amazed by the continuing afterlife of P.A.R.O.D.Y., a joke anti-Goth website I created back in the late 1990s.

I was horrified to learn from a reader today that one Marlene Gantt, in an article for the Moline (Illinois) Dispatch, quoted from the P.A.R.O.D.Y. website to support her arguments that Goth culture is a danger to today’s youth:

“The Goth culture is not isolated and it is certainly not harmless,” according to Benjamin Covelo [Palaverist’s alter ego], on the website of the Parent’s American Religious Organizations Defending Youth. “In fact it’s is [sic] fast becoming the dominant youth culture in America,” he said. “It is led by such so-called ‘artists’ as Marilyn Manson, Elton John and the Gothic television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and South Park.” Goth is featured in “The Crow” horror movies. The [sic] P.A.R.O.D.Y. claims that Goth subculture includes Satanism, drugs, violence, homosexuality, and witchcraft.

On the same page, P.A.R.O.D.Y. also claims that Goth subculture includes heat exhaustion.

Does no one know what a parody is?