Iran fooled by US satirical website The Onion

Iran's state media has fallen for a made-up poll from a satirical US website claiming that a majority of rural white Americans would vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Barack Obama.

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."

The Telegraph

To be fair, the Irnanians are not the first foreign news agency to miss the sarcasm of the 'the onion'.

Many news organisations have fallen victim to the Onion's mock-serious news style. In 2004, a Beijing paper reported on an Onion piece which claimed that members of Congress were threatening to move out of Washington unless their lavatories were upgraded.

The Telegraph

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Barack Obama? I don't think I would vote for either of them.

Both of them, to a greater or lesser degree, have someone behind the curtains pulling their levers.

reply to post by ollncasino

claiming that a majority of rural white Americans would vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Barack Obama.

I would

Sad thing is that the Onion spoof has a lot of truth in it.
I would rather have a beer with Mahmoud, wait... Muslims don't drink alcohol.
Oh well, I'll probably have beer anyway.

Yeah, vote this dude into office so you can have your head lopped off for being an infidel..makes TOTAL sense..Maybe you can join in the stoning of women while your at it..dumbasses

I'd goof on them-except I also was once burned by an Onion article. I'd tell you about except I'm too embarrassed.

reply to post by TheLonewolf

Maybe you can join in the stoning of women while your at it..dumbasses

As long as my x wife is first

They were mad at Ahmadinejad and take revenge of FNA ?

Makes sense

Originally posted by JimmyJagov
I'd goof on them-except I also was once burned by an Onion article. I'd tell you about except I'm too embarrassed.

Sir or ma'am, you have to spill the beans now, you've made some of us curious. I think I've done it too. :-P

LOL, made me smile.. have had a few beers with Muslims in the ME (although they drank soft drinks) and certainly would prefer to have a beer with Ahmadinejad than Obama.. certainly would be an interesting conversation.

As for falling for these stories, I feel for them, I fell for a BBC spoof news on the Radio, the news reader reported that France was giving up the Euro and moving to Stirling.. which I faithfully reported to anyone that would listen, and I nearly died of shame at my own gullibility later when I realised I'd been scammed by the Beeb...

I did however really hope their breaking news that they'd found a colony of flying penguins was real... I know a lot of people who fell for that one..

At the rate the country is going, we should go vote in one of the Animatronic Presidents from the Hall of Presidents.

At least it'd be a REAL puppet- and a lot more animated! And, robots are cool.

reply to post by ollncasino


Now thats funny.

id vote for him, screw obama, hell he cant do any worse really lol, and at least we wouldnt get roped in with israel anymore ^^ im pretty sure all funding would be cut off real fast lol.

reply to post by thoughtsfull


That's a really funny video. Pretty, but awfully goofy all the same. So people fell for that one, huh?
Lady Cottington's Fairy Album was taken seriously at one point too. I thought shameless gullibility was a characteristic of the far past. "This is the 21st Century now!" and all that...

I really don't see the difference between the Onion news and any other news outlet. They all make up stories to suit their owners or the CIA disinformation task squad.

Now that we have state sponsored propaganda the onion might end up being the "Real News".

Originally posted by JimmyJagov
I'd goof on them-except I also was once burned by an Onion article. I'd tell you about except I'm too embarrassed.

Now we HAVE to know

I remember the first time I stumbled on to an onion article. I can't remember what it was about, but I fell for it too...Then after having a look around the site finally caught on that it was just a satirical/joke news site.

That said, I wonder how many people in Iran are currently taking the article seriously and I wonder what those who took it seriously were thinking....