It takes practice


You know how Islamists say that jokes are unIslamic? Apparently one result of that is that Islamists don’t get practice in knowing when a joke is present. That means that sometimes they think a joke is actually a serious news item.

Fars News Agency, a semi-official mouth piece of the Iranian regime, earnestly published a word-for-word duplicate of an article from the Onion, a spoof news organisation based in Chicago.

The satirical article cited a fake Gallup poll which found that 77 per cent of white, rural voters would rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Mr Ahmadinejad than with the US president.

It went on to cite a made-up West Virginian named Dale Swiderski, who said that he preferred the Iranian to Mr Obama because: “He takes national defense seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does.”

We’re lucky: we know when something is funny!

 

Comments

  1. says

    Yeah, I was also laughing when Paul Krugman mistook the spoofed articles about Ryan referring to Romney as “Stench” behind his back. People make mistakes due to translation or misreading attempts at humor. I don’t think that’s an islamic trait any more than it is anyone else’s – though if a misreading motivates someone to act, that can fall anywhere on a spectrum from embarrassing to tragic.

  2. simonsays says

    lol and it’s called the “Fars News Agency”…for a sec I thought this was a euphemism for Fox News.

  3. PierreM says

    Let’s hope it’s not pronouned “Farce News Agency”… 😉 It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.

    P.

  4. stewart says

    Will the real Dale Swiderski please stand up?

    This probably explains why they haven’t yet twigged that the Koran was a joke.

  5. Mira says

    I’ve been reading FtB for a year now. It has been really wonderful.

    But your 2 posts in a row have made me sad.

    🙁

  6. Southern Cross says

    In fairness, given the state of US political discourse I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid had this appeared anywhere as a ‘straight’ news item.

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