Hilarious:

Add Iran’s news agency to the long list of those hoodwinked by the satire of The Onion.

Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency published a story Friday claiming that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans prefer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama.

Such a poll would indeed be big news in Iran (and the United States) — if it were true.

But the source was The Onion, the publication that presents the outlandish as real news.

The Onion article is a riot:

“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 beer with Ahmadinejad, a man who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and has had numerous political prisoners executed, 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.

The best part is their update at the end:

For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars.

Hahahahahahaha.

P.S. It’s a good thing nobody in the United States press ever gets fooled by satire.

Or . . . do they?

Drudge linked this video yesterday of an Obama voter explaining her support for the President — namely: Obama gave her a phone!!!!

The details of how people are getting free phones from the federal government, and how that came to be, are worthy of discussion. But in this post I want to focus on the fact that people are trying to call this video RAAAAACIST!! — or, at least, racially charged. Here is Elspeth Reeve from the Atlantic Wire, asking: Just How Racist Is the Obama Phone? Her answer is somewhat:

Is this video racist?

Let’s start by saying it’s racial. The Obama Phone video belongs to a genre popular on conservative blogs in which poor people, usually black, confirm conservatives’ worst 47-percent fears by saying they can get something for nothing because Obama’s in office. The message is, “Here’s what Obama’s supporters really look like.”

The standout in the category is “Obama money”: Back in October 2009, big lines formed formed for Detroit housing assistance applications after the city underestimated how many people would show up to apply. The scene was chaotic, and local TV reported there were rumors that $3,000 checks would be handed out.

The meme on rightwing blogs became that it was an angry mob in search of “Obama money.” A Detroit radio station interviewed people in line for “Obama money.” One woman says, “I don’t know where he got it from but he’s giving it to us. … O-BA-MA O-BA-MA!” Rush Limbaugh excerpted the audio, saying, “This is the model citizen in Barack Obama’s vision.” He continued:

“These are the people who would be wealthy and rich today were it not for the fact that the achievers of this society since this country was founded stole everything they had. And so Obama looks at these people as victims of an unjust and immoral country, and by God, he’s going to make sure that they think he’s making it all good for them. And they all do. Dumb, uninformed, shockingly, saddeningly stupid, the model citizen for Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.”

Drudge’s only commentary with the Obama Phone video is “OBAMA HAS MY VOTE, HE GAVE ME A FREE PHONE,” but the conservative internet quickly picked up a broader electoral theme: this is what the 47 percent — the people Mitt Romney referred to as “dependent upon government” at a secretly taped fundraiser — looks like.

This is so obvious that it shouldn’t need to be said, but obviously it does.

The above video is hilarious. It is representative of a group of Obama voters who feel entitled to handouts from government. It does not matter what the color of the speaker is. It’s news.

The same goes for any woman who says: “I don’t know where he got it from but he’s giving it to us. … O-BA-MA O-BA-MA!”

Conservatives should not have to shy away from such amusing examples of entitlement mentality simply because the particular proponent of that mentality happens to be black.

And anyone who says different might just have a race problem of their own.

Catching up on more old stories I didn’t have to chance to post on during the week: here is one showing Occupiers cha-CHING! cashing in on being pepper-sprayed:

University of California officials have agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit over a pepper-spraying incident last year that came to symbolize law enforcement aggression against anti-Wall Street protesters, attorneys said on Wednesday.

Video of the confrontation, which showed seated student protesters being pepper-sprayed by campus police at the University of California campus at Davis, was replayed widely on television and the Internet, sparking outrage among faculty and activists.

Under the terms of the settlement filed in court on Wednesday, each of the 21 students and recent graduates from the campus who sued University of California regents over the November 2011 incident will get $30,000 and a personal letter of apology from UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi.

The deal also includes $250,000 for plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

I hereby volunteer to be pepper-sprayed for only $29,000.

I will not be undersold!

It happened several days ago but I just saw it:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday escalated a war of words with a prominent appeals court judge, saying the judge lied in a recent criticism of Scalia’s judicial philosophy.

Scalia, 76, the longest-serving justice and a leading conservative on the court, said Judge Richard Posner, of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lied in a review in August of a book co-authored by Scalia.

In the review, Posner accused Scalia of deviating from his own strict, text-based approach to interpreting law when he struck down a District of Columbia handgun ban in 2008 by considering the legislative history behind the law.

“To say that I used legislative history is simply, to put it bluntly, a lie,” Scalia said in an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler.

Jeez. You hate to see something like that. At the same time, if I’m going to take sides, I’m taking Scalia’s.

For what it’s worth, I obtained Scalia’s book through an inter-library loan and perused it (they didn’t allow me to renew it so I didn’t have a chance to read the whole thing). He says some interesting and provocative things about the benefits of textualism which I copied down and will post on at a later date.