Washington Post Falls For Clickhole Story

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In an era of much too much fake news passing itself off as so called “satire” (remember the Daily Currant?), there are two things we can depend on for a steady stream of chuckles, laffs and other sounds which emit from our bodies as the beautiful sound of giggle and yuks: The Onion and Clickhole. Then there is a third kind of story that we adore — legitimate news sources, or people who should know better, falling for either.

Take for example this story from the Washington Post which cites that ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to England, the people of England are trying to make Green Day’s “American Idiot” the #1 song for his visit. In their discussion of the song, the Washington Post cites an op-ed from Clickhole, stating that the American Idiot was George W. Bush, an opinion incredible in its obviousness. The op-ed’s author is credited as Billy Joe Armstrong, frontman of Green Day, and unfortunately this op-ed is from the aforementioned Clickhole, who current front page articles include asking if you’re more like Bernie Mac or Dracula, the op-ed “Uh Oh: Mom Read An Article” and the awe inspiring article: “Beautiful: This Boy Put The Basketball Under His Shirt And Now He Is Pregnant With The Basketball”.

In short, it’s a pretty obvious comedy website and Billy Joe Armstrong didn’t write that thing. Plus, the joke was the obviousness of the song’s original subject matter, so I don’t know if it had to be cited to begin with. After the Internet had a big old laugh at the respectable old Washington Post falling for a satirical piece so obviously goofy, the Washington Post issued a correction at the bottom of their article stating:

Editor’s note: A previous version of this report included information about the meaning of “American Idiot” that was attributed to a Clickhole.com article. Clickhole.com is a satire site. The information has been removed from the story.

In other news did you hear about the man whose daughter’s head shrinks whenever he lies about the plot of Breaking Bad? I hear it is incredibly true wow.

Editor’s Note: It is not true.

Oh, and– yeah, the American Idiot track became #1 on Amazon in England, but more importantly — someone got TRICKED!

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Now without further ado, here is the parody of “American Idiot”, titled “Canadian Idiot” by Weird Al, put here for really– no good reason other than I have an excuse to.

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