Paper Falls for Gag in Humor Tabloid 
Fri Jun 7,10:01 AM ET 

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly 
republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for 
Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol 
building with a retractable dome. 

  
The source? America's celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion.

The Beijing Evening News, which claims a circulation of 1.25 million, 
translated portions of the Onion's tall tale word-for-word in the 
international news page of its June 3 edition. 

The reprinted version of the May 29 article, which parodies Congress as 
a Major League Baseball squad, also copied the Onion's would-be 
blueprint for a new legislative home that resembles a ballpark. "Don't 
get us wrong: We love the drafty old building," the Onion quoted House 
Speaker Dennis Hastert as saying. 

"But the hard reality is, it's no longer suitable for a world-class 
legislative branch. The sight lines are bad, there aren't enough 
concession stands or bathrooms, and the parking is miserable." 

The spoof from the brazen entertainment tabloid, which dubs 
itself "America's finest news source," apparently took in the Evening 
News. 

"The story was written by one of our freelance writers," an editor at 
the Evening News told Reuters on Friday. "His stuff has been pretty 
much reliable before." 

The editor said he had received other calls from readers about the 
article. "They were also suspicious of the contents." 

Told the story came from the Onion and was not true, the editor 
said, "We would first have to check that out. If it's indeed fake, I'm 
sure there will be some form of correction." 

24 responses total.

This was great.  I wanted to post it on mnet myself, but of course it 
was down.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHALOLOLOOOJejejejEJEjeJEEJjeEJEEhjj3j3j#J#J#J.

thats awesome.

too fucking funny!

So far, the only people stupid enough to get taken in by The Onion have been
the Beijing Evening News... and some moron fundamentalists who thought The
Onion's parody article on Harry Potter, complete with quotes about how it was
designed to recruit kids into Satanic cults, was a legit article and spammed
about it all over the net.

At least the Chinese have the excuse that the Onion story depends on a 
phenomenon (primadonna behavior of U.S. sports franchises) that is way 
below the level of what you'd expect anyone other than an American to 
know or care about.

hey joe, you'll be happy to hear that dave sim got incendiary in a relatively
recent issue of cerebus about an onion article. something to do with fags
marching in chicago. cerebus: what began as an experiment in storytelling
wound up a 26 year-long documentation of a single man succumbing to his own
delusional paranoia.

Man, I have to get back into the habit of reading The Onion more 
regularly.

that was pretty much my thought as well.

I wonder if anyone was shot over this story being published?
(This is a serious question.)

not surprised considering the Onion is often more insightful than the regular
"trustworthy" press of the US.

i need to read more onion too. been a while ..

Re #5:  Oh, those fundies weren't necessarily that dumb.  On the other
hand, if they weren't it's obvious that they *knew* that a whole bunch
of their co-religionists were.  How cynical can you possibly be?

Re #6:  That's a good point, but keep in mind that to read that article,
        the Chinese reporters had to see at least a few other Onion pieces
        too.

Re #7:  Cerebus started out so great.  It's a shame, really.

Re #12:  Possible, but I kind of doubt it.

someone might have just forwarded a "competent journalist" a url.

Could be.  Or a "competent journalist" knew it was a bad source to use, but
ran it anyway to be subversive.  Or the journalist said it was a bad source,
but a US-hating ideologically stupid PRC editor had them run it anyway because
it makes the US look dumb.  Or...

or it wasn't a competent journalist

No way.  In the PRC?

13: with the wacko behind the wheel, a better comic book has been churned out,
over all. the story stopped being interesting a hundred issues ago, but
somehow it remains interesting. mysterioso!

I dunno.  I plowed through Jaka's Story, but lost interest at some point after
that.

Are you kidding me?
Melmoth, Minds, Reads, Guys, (well...forget I said guys) all came after Jaka!
And they're. Granted, reads is like trying to get to the tootsie roll center
of a tootsie pop...
but damn!

I saw a video where a girl took a tootsie pop, and turned it in to a tootsie
roll. It was vile, yet, delightfully erotic.

Re #20:  Okay, Melmoth was good.

melmoth WAS good. everything BEFORE melmoth was good. after melmoth, eh, well.
lots of shining moments, and after issue 200 the layout of text + image leapt
forward, that was cool. but sim started telling stories about real characters
which had behavioral consistency to themselves and to the social along with
actual character development at the expense of parabolic-paranoiac plotmaking
told with thick, obvious strokes, and it was there that sim lost readers from
the lamer sci-fi crowd, like Joseph M Saul.

Spare me.  Incoherent rants just aren't my thing.

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