Iran Feature: Fars News and The Onion Agree --- "Rural American Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama"

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UPDATE 1745 GMT: Looks like Fars English has realised that its scoop might not be real --- the story has been withdrawn from the website.

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To be fair, other Iranian outlets carried the story before it appeared on Fars' English-language site. Mehr, for example, featured the story, although it has since removed it from the site.

Iran's Fars News Agency has a surprise revelation, "According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday, the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama."

The website continues:

"I like him better," said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Ahmadinejad than spend time with Obama. 

"He takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does." 

According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn't try to hide the fact that he's Muslim. 

Fars has ventured where no US media outlet seems to have gone in breaking this news. Mitt Romney has not trumpeted this as proof of his ascendancy. Fox News has not yet proclaimed the evidence that the Great Liberal Menace has been defeated.

Indeed, Gallup does not seem to have the poll on its website.

So where did Fars' reporters make this discovery?

Enter the satirical "newspaper" The Onion: "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama".

CHARLESTON, WV—According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday, the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. president Barack Obama. “I like him better,” said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Ahmadinejad, a man who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and has had numerous political prisoners executed, than spend time with Obama. “He takes national defense seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does.” According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s Muslim