The theocratic regime in Iran earned global mockery last year when its state news agency fell for an article by the satirical newspaper The Onion, which claimed that a vast majority of rural whites in the U.S. would rather have a beer with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Obama. It turns out, however, that apparatchiks in the Iranian press are not the only ones to have mistaken parody for hard news. The Washington Post today published a blog post by Suzi Parker that claimed Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, had joined the Qatari-based news channel Al Jazeera. Parker went on to rub Palin's face in it a bit, noting the delicious irony that Fox News, Palin's former employer, had dubbed Al Jazeera "an anti-American terror mouthpiece."
The only problem with Parker's analysis is that Palin never joined Al Jazeera, and the only source that ever claimed so was the satirical site the Daily Currant. A sample from the Daily Currant's "scoop":
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