Iran Lately

If you're not particularly keen on keeping up with international affairs, it may surprise you to know that many news agencies abroad are state controlled.  This means the government filters what stories do and don't get seen by the general public.  In the case of Iran, this is also true of certain online news agencies like the Fars, the English language outlet of news for Iranians closely controlled by the Islamic clerical Iranian regime.  What may also surprise you is that they recently decided to publish a news story from The Onion, a satire news organization that prides themselves for off-the-cuff and, at times offensive, comedy.  The Fars reprinted a (completely fictional) Onion News story that rural white Americans were polled to prefer President Ahmadinejad over President Obama.

Now, it's embarrassing enough to get something wrong, but blatent plagiarism, a pseudo-apology, and personal endorsements for the story's validity after the facts were straight leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  And the impression starts to form that a government unwilling to acknowledge the Holocaust while pursuing nuclear weapons is unstable, in the rational/sane sense of the word.

In other words, if you're wondering why Obama and Romney couldn't stop agreeing with each other about bombing Iran during their foreign policy debate, now you know.