It seems that no disaster is too grave for Facebook's large population of assholes to say offensive things about. The newest thing is that people are taking to their Facebook statuses to say that Japan "deserves" yesterday's tragic earthquake because it's "karma" for Pearl Harbor. It's happening on Twitter too!

These small-minded jingoists are forgetting two things: 1) The U.S. actually dropped two atom bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, killing up to 150,000 people, and 2) There is no such thing as "karmic payback" when it comes to devastating natural disasters. Via BuzzFeed, I've learned that if you go to this site called Openbook.org and search for Pearl Harbor statuses, you'll find a shocking number of them. Click through for some examples.

And on Twitter:

This is a "Top Tweet," by the way.

The kicker is that Pearl Harbor is actually trending in some places. Like New York, for example:

Of course, there's a simultaneous backlash going on. This stuff has given people around the world a new reason to hate on America:

More hearteningly, there are a lot of people tweeting something to the effect of, "People saying the earthquake is payback for Pearl Harbor, go die." But that's pretty much the only heartening thing to be found here.

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]