For the past week, a Facebook group dedicated to praying for President Obama’s death has been arousing both condemnations and demands that it be taken down. Now MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has made the group one of his Worst Persons in the World.

“It has a million Facebook friends,” Olbermann began. “It is filled with doctored photos of the president. And it is dedicated to what one of the lunatic fringe Bible-thumpers called ‘imprecatory prayer’ for President Obama to die.”

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After noting the complaints, which include a Facebook petition to have the page removed, Olbermann remarked, “I’d like to suggest a better idea. These people evidently believe imprecatory prayer works — that you can pray another person to death. History would suggest otherwise.”

“But if they believe it,” he continued, smiling slyly, “what would their lives be like if they knew everybody else was making imprecatory prayers for God to kill them?”

“They’d crap their pants,” Olbermann concluded with a wide grin. “And it wouldn’t even work — but keep your site, and the rest of us will, you know, keep you in our prayers.”

The Facebook page begins with a common email “joke,” reading, “DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE [sic]. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN.”

The most offensive aspects of the page, however, are the racist images and the many approving comments, some saying things like “I will now pray more often and this will be my focus,” and other merely crude and insulting.

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Facebook has declined to take the page down, saying that although it “may be considered distasteful and objectionable to some,” it doesn’t violate their policies.

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast April 29, 2010.



