Punk’d: Iran’s News Agency Runs Onion Story Claiming ‘Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama’

Satire can be hard to wrap your head around sometimes, and we can only imagine that the misunderstanding increases when language barriers are thrown into the mix. Case in point: Iranian news agency FNA just published a news story titled “Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama.” The gag? This is an Onion News story. FNA was punk’d.

Here’s the FNA story:

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.

No such Gallup poll exists, and any Westerner can probably see the humor in this. For heavens sake, “rural whites” (read: country boys) prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama? Get out of town! In all fairness they probably prefer neither, but if they had to make a choice, pigs would fly before conservative America would favor the Iranian despot.

But we should go easy on FNA, despite a long tradition of questionable reporting. After all, this isn’t the first time an Onion News story was taken seriously and circulated as legitimate news, even here at home. Remember Abortionplex?

In any case, FNA has realized their mistake and removed the story. Now a mere “Error For Your Request. Not Exist This Story,” appears instead.

So here’s a screencap of FNA’s Onion re-run: