AFP may have picked up a three-week old satirical piece from The Daily Farce as if it were news. When I read it, I was curious that this was not being reported more broadly. Does life imitate art or is truth far stranger than fiction could ever be these days? There has been an accumulating series of stories in which satirical stories, usually from The Onion, are picked up by the news media and reported as true, but those have usually been in the non-Western press which perhaps can be excused for not grasping the subtleties of skillful Western tongue-in-cheek. If this story was an invention, one is prompted to wonder what has become of the Sydney Morning Herald‘s fact checkers? and of their sense of humor?