The Onion admits Republican Presidential ticket a satire that “spun out of control”

MINNEAPOLIS – In an announcement that has shocked the Washington establishment to its very core, the editor of the satirical newspaper The Onion has admitted that the 2008 GOP Presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin is a satire that has “spun out of control.”

“Things just really got out of hand,” said Scott Dikkers, editor of The Onion. “Once the movie ‘Mystery, Alaska’ broke out at the Republican National Convention, and John McCain was about to get an official shot at having access to the nation’s nukes, we realized we had to come forward and nip this thing in the bud.”

The announcement by Dikkers came just one moments before presumed Presidential nominee John McCain was to officially accept the GOP nomination. The convention was abruptly halted when it was announced that John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin were not, in fact, the GOP nominees for the Executive office.

According to GOP sources, it is now likely that Jeb Bush will become the true Republican nominee for President, with current Vice-President Dick Cheney as his running mate.

In a column that will be published tomorrow morning in the Washington Post, Dean of Washington Media David Broder reacted angrily, but added that he was pleased that a serious ticket would hopefully “restore the natural order of Washington.”

“The McCain-Palin hoax has been a crime perpetrated against the media. We are the victims,” wrote Broder. “Now that the natural order has been restored, however, I have great confidence that a ticket of Bush-Cheney will be a serious one that understands Beltway complexities and the nation’s continued grave threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of Islamic terrorists.”

Dikkers said the entire satire began simply, but rapidly gained momentum. According to Dikkers, a story titled “George W. Bush Privatizes the White House Executive Bathroom” began the entire debacle.

“It was just a simple filler story,” said Dikkers. “Then somehow angry bloggers got a hold of it, and we just sort of sat back and watched what happened.”

While details are still sketchy, Fox News has reported that the story somehow morphed due to the diligent work of the “leftist, Marxist blogospheres.” The angry leftist bloggers continually pushed, altered and continued the satire and the national media followed, until somehow: “Republicans had actually bought the ridiculous notion that McCain is some type of non-partisan maverick and that an inexperienced Alaskan governor had put her foot down against the infamous Bridge to Nowhere and was a maverick in her own right,” as Publisher of The Onion, T. Herman Zweibel stated in a press release.

For his part, Dikkers said he realized things were completely out of control when McCain was about to accept the nomination for the GOP.

“We were waiting for someone to figure this whole thing out, but once McCain was 24 hours away from having a legal shot at the Presidency, we just had to pull the plug. It was just too dangerous,” said Dikkers. “We’re really sorry about this whole thing. Seriously, sorry.”

Dikkers said the lead story in the next issue of The Onion will explain more about the satire that went out of control, under the title “Holy Shit That Was Close!”

–WKW

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