You just can't make this up. Well, the satirical website "The Onion" did and the Iranian regime just fell hook, line and sinker for it!
Earlier today, Fars News Agency, the regime's media propaganda machine, ran a front page story, claiming that according to a recent Gallup Poll in the United States, "rural whites prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama."
Only problem is, Fars quoted the story almost verbatim from "The Onion" (without attributing credit to them). The Onion, as most people on planet Earth know, is a notoriously funny satirical website that doesn't proclaim in the slightest to be anything different.
Just in case someone alerts the Ayatollah to this, here is the full text of the Fars story, as lifted from "The Onion":
"Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama"
TEHRAN (FNA)- According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday, the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama.
"I like him better," said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Ahmadinejad than spend time with Obama."He takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does."
According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn't try to hide the fact that he's Muslim.
Surely you would have thought that even the Iranians would have realized that something was not quite, ahmm ... halal with the original "sourc"'? Guess not.
Ironically, the only quote Fars left out from the original Onion piece was a reference to Ahmadinejad as "a man who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and has had numerous political prisoners executed."
Guess you can't get just anything past those razor sharp eyes of the Iranian propaganda machine. Well, almost anything!
Follow Arsen Ostrovsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@ArsenOstrovsky
NEW YORK—Following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Friday that he is “pretty satisfied” with his trip to the U.S. to instigate World War III. “All in all, I think I accomplished my goal of pushing humanity toward the brink of complete and utter annihilation,” said Netanyahu, adding that his implicit calls for international military action against Iran, which would ultimately escalate the conflict to an Armageddon-level of death and destruction, went “fairly well.” “I think I did a good job laying the groundwork for a nuclear holocaust that will kill billions of people and eventually end the world as we know it. Sounded like everyone really liked it, too.” When reached for comment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters that he was “equally happy” with his own efforts to nudge the world slightly closer to a full-blown apocalypse.