Knight Ridder Newspapers
Readers of one of Beijing's biggest tabloid newspapers recently were led to believe that the U.S. Congress was threatening to dump Washington and move to Charlotte or Memphis unless it got a "new, state-of-the-art" Capitol building.
The Beijing Evening News quoted House Speaker Dennis Hastert dissing the Capitol Building as "no longer suitable for a world-class legislative branch." Bad bathrooms, miserable parking, you get the picture.
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said, "If we want to stay competitive, we need to upgrade. Look at British Parliament. Look at the Vatican ... without modern facilities, they've been having trouble attracting top talent."
It wasn't true, was it?
No, it wasn't true. It was a satire from The Onion, the newspaper born at the University of Wisconsin, now written out of New York and available via the Internet all over the world. That piece ran May 30 and shared the cover with the other big, breaking "news" of that week — "Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point."
News that the Beijing Evening News bought the Capitol story hook, line and sinker elicited some high-minded snickering in the United States about how gullible the Chinese can be. Satire must go right over their heads.
Lest Americans spend too much time feeling smug about this, let's recall a little story.
Years ago Mike Royko wrote a tongue-in-cheek column announcing that he had gone in for a nose job, but the operation had gone horribly awry. His nose wound up attached to his forehead. A doctored photo of Royko placed his nose squarely above his eyes and below his hairline.
Many readers laughed. But some called Royko in tears to tell him they were aghast at his terrible misfortune. Some encouraged him to sue the no-account surgeon who had butchered him.
Now, nobody likes to find out they were the only one who missed the joke. The Beijing newspaper acknowledged its mistake, but initially resisted printing a correction. "How can you prove it's not correct?" the editor of international news asked Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times. Finally, the Beijing Evening News admitted it had been had and apologized to its readers.
So, fair warning for anyone who picks up the recent copy of The Onion with the headline: "Drought-Ravaged NYC Institutes Alternate-Side-Of-Street Firefighting."
It's not true. Nope.
