OMG - Agent Orange quoted WAPO, not understanding 'satire'

[ehrnst]

The White House included a satirical column in its list of news stories meant to promote Trump agenda — apparently ignoring the fact that the column actually savages Trump's new budget.

Friday’s edition of the “1600 Daily” highlighted a Washington Post article by humorist Alexandra Petri with a deceptively positive title: “Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why.”

But Petri's column is actually a brutal attack on Trump's proposed budget, with cuts domestic programs and the State Department while boosting the defense budget.

“Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful, macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds,” she wrote Thursday. "These people are wimps.”

“America has been soft and weak for too long,” Petri added. "BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/324489-white-house-cites-satire-column-to-tout-budget

[SunSeeker]

1. LOL

[livetohike]

2. This administration is too stupid for words. n/t

[Cracklin Charlie]

4. Their attention seems consumed by other matters.

Bless their hearts, they're trying to keep the old jalopy running, but the nuts and bolts are flying off every time they hit even the smallest bump.

What's that in the road?

[renate]

3. the article is not even subtle in its mockery

That sounds like a criticism, but it's not--I love it! I love this writer and I love her book too, by the way.

But I just don't get how anybody could have confused this with a news article. It literally has "BOOM" and "POW" and "PEW PEW PEW"--yes, in all caps--in it.

Edited to add this follow-up article by the author:

I was as surprised as anyone to discover that I was Real News. Here I thought that I was toiling away in the Dank Cesspool of the Mainstream Media, but all along I was a Trusted News Source, just like Breitbart.com! I just needed to BELIEVE in myself more.

The White House believes in me, and the White House is not full of careless people who skim headlines looking for the ones that sound sort of positive and then send them out in their daily briefing newsletter hoping for the best haaa ha ha nope ha ha these are the minds who control war and peace and the budget and things ha ha ha it’s fine ha ha oh god help.

I honestly thought that, no matter the headline, there was no way that anyone could think this piece was anything other than me yelling at the budget for a number of paragraphs — the last words were “RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!” — but I have always overestimated people’s desire to read things I write. But the White House, as Noel Coward once said of himself, can take any amount of criticism so long as it is unadulterated praise.

This is 2017 in a nutshell: You start with what you think is obviously a joke, and then a few days later it is being sent out from the White House.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/03/17/how-the-white-house-made-me-real-news/?utm_term=.cebc812ea381

[monmouth4]

5. The article was not actually read by anyone methinks..n/t