Fox Nation Readers Confuse Onion Article With Real News

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/fox-nation-readers-confuse-onion-article-real-news/

Fox Nation readers confuse Onion article with real news

By David Edwards
Friday, November 26th, 2010 -- 1:32 pm

Fox News' opinion website Fox Nation and their readers don't seem to know satire when they see it. The Fox News sister site re-posted a joke from the satirical website The Onion Friday about President Barack Obama sending a 75,000-word e-mail to the the entire nation. At no point does Fox Nation note that the story is a satire.

The Onion story joked that Obama had "reached the end of (his) rope" and sent out the "rambling" stream of consciousness e-mail that addressed everything from the war in Afghanistan to his live-in mother-in-law.

The story goes on to say that the fake Obama e-mail was 27 megabytes and 127 printed pages. If Fox Nation knows the story is a joke, they aren't letting on, and many of the comments on the post treat the story as if it were actual news.

- snip -

Janerogers wrote:


Freedomfighter2 said he e-mailed The Onion to ask them to confirm the story.

Markejohn commented:


MORE

:rofl:

These guys are just fucking dense. This is what happens when a group of people simply never checks a source.... ever.

Because they WANT to believe it. They HATE a Black intelligent man in the white house and want so bad to believe ANYTHING negative they read. I doubt they care EVEN when confronted with the fact it came from a joke site. They'd justifiy it by saying "well the Onion while a satire site they decided to do a real news article" YA RIGHT LOL. These people are sad pathetic excuses for a joke. They keep talking Beck talking points Obama's destroying the country he's gonna ruin us blah, blah. just WHAT has he done to destroy the country? NOTHING!!! But they have conveniently forgot G.W. BUSH huh?

:hi:

:loveya:

I remember Senator Al Franken's take on the decision against O'Reilly: satire is protected speech, even if the target of the joke doesn't get it.

Too, too, too good. I can't wait to see what The Onion does with this. It is a thing of beauty.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-kill-rule,222/

NEW YORK—Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

Enlarge ImageGod.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence."

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

:rofl:

GENIUS!

Thanks for sharing.

they don't realize how stupid they are.

I'm going to get a bumper sticker that says: REPUBLICANS ARE GLAD THERE IS NO LAW AGAINST BEING STUPID!

It is called the Dunning Krueger effect. Research done at Cornell by Dunning and Krueger proved stupid people are too stupid to realize how stupid they are. Furthermore, the stupider they are, the more convinced they are that they are right.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/when-ignorance-begets-confidence-the-classic-dunning-kruger-effect

it explains so much. I was so relieved to find this evidence. Some people laugh, but I'm serious.

I'm glad you recognized that. :)

didn't Plato say smart people admit their ignorance?

He didn't need no fancy college study!

Demonstrable proof that these assholes are bald faced liars

It's possible that the poster literally willed herself into believing that she had seen the e-mail. Teabaggers think that they actually are entitled to their own facts.

He lives in the same nation with these people. :rofl:

I worry about myself too, I live in the same nation with them.

we are not so lucky :)

otherwise they wouldn't be watching Faux Snooze, would they?

Im sorry but it STILL doesn;t seem implausible to me.

Hahaha!! She leads Teh Stupid!




Edited to add link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9631846

If President Obama could type 120 words per minute (meaning he would be an "advanced typist" according to Wikipedia) it would take him over 10 hours to type such an email. Yeah, the Onion should have been a big clue but simple math might have been another lead. Yet "janerogers" is apparently capable of diagnosing bipolar disorder.

"Freedomfighter2 said he e-mailed The Onion to ask them to confirm the story." Apparently they don't even know that The Onion is all parody and satire all the time!

does 75,000 words or 126 typed pages eat up 27 megabytes? He must have embedded one hell of a lot of images in it as well!

My novel is 95k words but it's not even close to a single megabyte. It's amazing how you can throw wild-ass numbers to people and they just accept them.

That, and their inability to take a joke once they do get it.

But still, most people who read that web site won't know what that is.

Is it just me or is America getting stoopider? I didn't know Idiocracy was a documentary.

Better buy some stock in gatorade.

Would print that to make their point, that they think Obama is a scary person who has lost his mind. They totally suck, for being such jerks.

I dated myself with that one, didn't I?

Wow, googled it.

His show(s) went off the air 3 years before I was even allowed to watch television... and I can't believe they (the FCC, the general public) allowed that kind of racist shit *on* the air in the first place.

Or has life begun imitating satire?

It was formulated for and because of just such people as we're discussing- the truly fuxated- they keep falling prey to Poe's Law:

Similar to Murphy's Law, Poe's Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics.

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

In other words, No matter how bizarre, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.
It's one thing to create your own parallel universe, it's another thing entirely to live completely in it.It's no wonder reality blindsides these folks so often and they can't figure out how and why.I guess this would be a reverse Poe's Law.I tend to see it as a function of excess self-righteousness.

To me, it's like the idea of:
"Hey, let's make a family show about a mal-adjusted child molester! It'll be funny!"

It may seem funny to those outside the universe where children are molested, but for those inside a universe where they were molested, the "joke" is lost.

You may also be correct about self righteousness, but it may fall on on both sides... "Hey, molesting small children is funny!" may be appropriate for some, but not others.

...as I don't get paid for writing for anybody.

The show went off the air 27 years ago, and I wasn't allowed to watch television until my teens (I'm 38 now).

The "character" sounds pretty reprehensible to me.

I loved that show and Archie WAS/IS my dad. I liken Archie to Colbert.

It exposed the ugly American, played off against the idealistic and hapless liberal children, Mike (Meat head!) and Gloria. It opened the door to the use of politics, bigotry, and sex in prime time television and spawned a slew of spin-offs.

A moment I can remember - Archie displays his simplistic idiocy in telling Mike "I could solve your hijacking problem right now. Just give everyone boarding an airplane a pistol." That would be still another satirical line that today's rabid right-wingers would think represented a great solution.

His family, associates, neighbors, and droppers-by invariably debunked his simplisticly conserative opinions. The audience "got it" then. I'm not sure that today's garden variety conservative sheep would come away with the same message.

the progressive organization People For The American Way, which still exists.

You should probably watch some episodes of the show before you talk about it. It was a great humanist, well-written. groundbreaking show that was sympathetic to ALL it's characters, illuminated all our foibles, dealt with VERY important issues, but ultimately showed the ignorance and fear and illogic behind Archie's views. Archie's character's habit of judgmentally discussing things he had little knowledge of was one thing that was mocked on the show.

I have a hard time with sympathy for racists.

(For the young ones, O'Connor was the actor who played Archie).

Maybe Americans were more open to satire 30+ years ago. The only people I can recall who didn't like the show were a couple real life Archie types who had the vague sense that perhaps they were being made fun of in the show (they being too stupid to actually get it).

Archie Bunker was a bigot but the show was the opposite of racist.

Norman Lear is too smart for America.

"Diagnosis: bi-polar disorder"

:rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

"Gosh, I knew it!"

there's assholes out there that is taking that all in and no facts will ever change their minds, they heard it on the teevee and thats that. It said what they wanted to hear said so to them it is gospel. yup sad state we're in alright

rec

friend of hers who had received it directly from Obama! The nitwit "could have told her so".

:rofl:

Should be fun to watch certain reactions. :rofl:

and cameras and send everyone home.

Fox is so NOT news!

It's like meta-satire in there:

http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama/2010/11/26/frustrated-obama-sends-nation-rambling-75000-word-e-mail#comment-103554089

concerning credible sources and explore the strands of plausible denial...er...

Nah, they're just fucking idiots.

with nothing on it that concerns this story.

got a screen cap.

"Can't wait to hear what Charles Krauthammer has to say..."

EOM

washes his car shirtless in the White House drive- how vice-presidential is that?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-dri,2718/

:)

:rofl:

Returning a 404 - still, screenshot lives on here, along with some quite spectacular RW spinning:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/foxnation-com-repurposes-anti-obama-article-from-the-onion-forgets-to-mention-its-a-joke/

and still they won't understand



Many also think Stephen Colbert is a Conservative because they just can't grasp the sarcasm

And have a really giant laugh at their expense. Unfreakingbelievable. :rofl:

I'm sure they'll find that a total affront to American decency:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/alqaeda-marching-band-to-join-macys-parade-after-i,18508/

and really love it when he "sticks it" to liberal guests by using the Right's talking points. Then Colbert allows the person to fully explain their position -- and the supporting facts -- which makes it obvious how dumb the Faux News crowd are.

Too bad she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.

Note the date...

:sarcasm: I had to see the date too. Amazing isn't it.

:rofl:

"A Nation of Idiots" sadly, I agree.

:rofl:

so they can't tell the difference.

Hell that describes my 6 month old cat.

fantasy news. They believe anything and can't distinguish the difference.

If it wasn't so goddamned scary...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/

This one was so spot on it leads me to believe the Onion Editorial Staff are higher ups in the military-industrial-congressional complex and are part of the tiny cabal that controls everything our government does.

How else could you explain such and accurate prediction of the GW Bush years?

-90% Jimmy

"An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech." :rofl:

is diagnostic of any number of mental disorders.

And that she should use a more opaque screen name, if she's going to post idiocy like this.

this is beyond pathetic, lol.

:dunce:

The seemingly solid line between absurdity and reality was somehow blurred long ago.

Thanks for posting!

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOnion

of times someone has posted something from the Onion here and people haven't gotten the joke.

That's an exceptional experience you've had there, pardner.

rather then just the title of the article as we do with almost every other publication. People would read a paragraph or just the headline get pissed and post without bothering to look at the link.

Heck, your thread is competing with a thread based on spoof-ad by the "Soda Pop Council" that many DU'ers thought was real.

Thanks for preserving some of the better parts here!

Here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache:http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama/2010/11/26/frustrated-obama-sends-nation-rambling-75000-word-e-mail

a little hard to read--but well worth it!

How the hell does the President have all the email addresses of everyone in the country? It seems that these 'tards looked past this enormous plot hole and just assumed it to me true even though the notion of a 75,000 word email to 310 million people is absurd. hmmmm, not surprising really.

''Freedomfighter2 said he e-mailed The Onion to ask them to confirm the story''

hahaha, OMG, this 'Freedomfighter2' actually asked for confirmation. Again, not to surprising that this person would view the Onion as a news source since this person sees Fox 'News' as a real news source.

Jokes all around

:rofl:

that you are dumber than a box of rocks and with even less of a sense of humor.

Thankk goodness for The Onion.

Way to go Rupert Murdoch! As if Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity didn't deliver enough brain melters.

After all he was a dry drunk psychopath. Were they all worried about Bush's mental health?

I mean, I could start a website full of plagiarized bullpucky and, on the strength of that, call myself a journalist, but that doesn't make it so.

Not checking sources is worse than amateurish. How come Fox is still considered--by anyone, but especially the FCC--a news organization?

over there.

Could it be she's finally tripped over a brain cell?

Naaaaaaa. Probably the dolts that FWD FWD her haven't gotten theirs yet.

from the same class of idiots that can't tell the difference between fact and satire, news and not-news, and incompetence and intelligence, and they luurvve GW Bush*. They do know ONE thing--they hate the fact that a black man is President.