Iranian press fooled by The Onion

Iran's semi-official FARS news agency has been fooled by an Onion story that found rural white voters prefer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Obama. 

The agency on Friday republished, without attribution, a bogus Gallup poll from the satirical U.S. newspaper showing Obama badly trailing Ahmadinejad among rural white voters. 

According to the story, “77 percent of rural Caucasian voters ... would much rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Ahmadinejad than spend time with Obama.”

The story says rural whites prefer the Iranian leader because he “takes national defense seriously,” “he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does” and he “doesn't try to hide the fact that he's Muslim.”

The Onion first ran the story on Monday, with a bogus Charleston, W.Va., dateline. Ahmadinejad, who is in the last full year of his final term in office, was in the news again this week when he delivered a fiery speech at the United Nations on Wednesday calling for a new world order to replace U.S.-led capitalism.

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