Satire - that was the word I was looking for earlier - Cheers Bobby (had any good meals lately?) :)

Also re. fundamentalism - we have a situation at our local Church of England primary school where parents are understandably upset and calling for the removal of the Headteacher after 6 years of officially recognised (Government) incompetence resulting in the school being on failing/special measures with pupils failing to receive the education they should be. What I'd term yer-average Christian parent is taking pragmatic measures through the Local Education Office, etc and then there are the "fundamentalists" who are berating petition organisers about turning the other cheek, nothing in the Bible that says, etc and PRAYING against the "wicked" un-Christian parents.

I think satire plays an important role in unveiling deeper issues. In both these situations, global and local, blind adherence to perceived creed is fudging a wider issue that religion shouldn't necessarily be playing a part in. Incompetence is incompetence - kids are not getting an education; extremist terrorism is extremist terrorism and people are getting hurt. I think it is very easy to snarled up in PC-ness and miss the whole point. I mean I worked amongst some the World's top academics at the School of African and Asian studies here in the UK, who were so busy researching/debating/theorising (and getting mega-bucks funding to do so) on cultural and religious diversity, etc that they couldn't differentiate between satire (or joke) and an academic theory - very very depressing and pointless ultimately because it never seemed to get to the (or a) point,i.e, after all that money and effort - the effect on the ground for the people effected was still the same.