Straight from the You-Have-Got-To-Be-Fucking-Kidding-Me department comes a news item from the wacky folks of WingNutDaily suggesting AOL is guilty of blasphemy:
When Ian Millar opened up his AOL Instant Messenger program yesterday and linked to the new AIM Triton site, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
“I have been an AIM customer for many years, and although I do not use AOL for my mail client, I have recommended it for relatives and friends,” he said in a letter to top executives of the company. “In general, I appreciate AOL and your business savvy.”
But when Millar saw the company’s new slogan, he was shocked and disgusted. He was not alone.
OMFG! What could it be? Is AOL’s new slogan “God loves teh buttsekz” or perhaps “God raped Mary” or maybe the eternal sin “Jesus was possessed by demons”? No my friend, AOL’s blasphemy was MUCH worse than any of those mere trifles!
America Online is now acting like God – using what some consider to be His very name in a marketing pitch for e-mail, voice chat, video chat, instant messaging, text messaging and other forms of communication.
AIM’s new slogan is “I AM.”
That’s it? That’s the horrible blasphemy AOL is engaging in? I AM? They’re kidding, right?
Nope.
Millar wonders if any of AOL’s marketing and planning directors ever went to Christian Sunday school or attended Jewish services.
He points out to AOL executives that “I AM” is the English translation of YaHWeH, the self-proclaimed name of God.
“He is the Creator and Savior of the world,” explains Millar. “He alone is to be worshipped. To take His name in vain, or use as a common thing is blasphemy, a vulgar sin of offense. Perhaps you have not read the Third Commandment, since they have removed it from so many public monuments in the last decade. But breaking it as a means of marketing your products offends the mind of everyone who worships Him.”
Pardon me while I engage in a prolonged laughing fit interrupted occasionally by coughs because I’m choking on my own spittle. I’ve engaged in worse blasphemy several times over here. Perhaps I should change the SEB tagline to just I AM!
Millar suggests that perhaps AOL is in need of more religious diversity in its corporate ranks. But he suggests that such oversights would seem implausible in a country “where the Judeo-Christian culture has been pervasive for 300 years.”
Which is pretty damned impressive considering the country hasn’t been around for 300 years yet. I’m actually surprised he didn’t try to claim that it was too much religious diversity that caused this so-called oversight.
“You must immediately change the name of your program,” he told Jonathan Miller, the chief executive officer of America Online, and John Buckley, corporate communications officer for the company, in a pointed letter. I can assure you that you will lose business over this marketing tactic from people who worship the Almighty. But worse, you have offended Him by your actions; whether they are deliberate or ignorant. To treat as common the name of God is wicked. God is patient, but mankind is today making an error of epic proportions by the deliberate actions of mocking the Almighty; particularly in the technologically advanced society. His patience with the mockery of mankind will come to an end.”
Look! It’s another thinly veiled you’ve-pissed-off-god-and-now-he’s-gonna-getcha threat from someone who apparently has a hot line to the Almighty.
It’s hard to say what aspect of this I find more laughable: The fact that some nutcase thinks every use of “I AM” is an affront to God or the fact that WingNutDaily devoted so much attention to him. I mean, yeah, it’s WingNutDaily and you have to expect them to be, well, nutty, but this is amazing even for them. I’ll have to chalk it up to the fact that I try not to read WND too often because I usually end up hurting myself by laughing too hard so perhaps I just don’t see it often enough to realize that this is par for the course over there.
Posted on 01/31/2006 at 05:02 PM 
I AM Canadian! And god said, “Let there be beer”, and there was beer. And god smelt the back bacon, and smelt that it was good.