On Facebook, Some Pray for Obama’s Death

On Thursday, which was the United States National Day of Prayer, we logged into Facebook, the last place where there‘s any use of praying, to realize that more than a million users are calling on god to kill President Obama. Here is the prayer that they recite: “Dear Lord, this year you took my favorite actor, Patrick Swayzie. 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.” On Thursday evening, 1,188,463 Facebook users had already confirmed that they “like” this prayer.

According to CNN, similar imprecations had already circulated last year targeting New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And according to the initiators of this prayer on Facebook, it is not a matter of actually wishing for Obama’s death, instead: “it is just some humor to show our disapproval of our current president.”

Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes, interviewed by CNN, acknowledges that this page “may be considered distasteful and objectionable to some,” but that it does not violate the network’s content policies. Facebook assures that it is attentive to “hate speech and actionable threats of violence” and that it removes any content that takes it too far.

This freedom of prayer on Facebook resulted in a page entitled “5 million against the frivolous Obama’s death prayer page.” But instead of 5 million, this page had only 7116 supporters last night. Facebook also has another group called “people praying for the death of people praying for the death of Obama.” This initiative is supported by MSNBC journalist Keith Olbermann who suggests making the bigots who pray for Obama’s death “crap their pants.”

Despite this, there is always hope in the United States (even if this is unrelated to the events): a Wisconsin judge has just declared as “unconstitutional” the national day of prayer that dates back to the founding fathers, and was institutionalized in 1952 by Harry S. Truman. Judge Barbara B. Crabb stated that by insisting in such a way on prayer, “The government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”

The head of the Justice department has already called on to honor the “tradition” that this day represents. And Facebook reminds us that the United States still has much to pray for.