The satirical verses

摘要

Political jokes travel farther than ever before. Last year the Onion, a satirical magazine in America, declared Kim Jong Un, North Korea's round-faced leader, the "sexiest man alive". The People's Daily newspaper in China took the nomination seriously and ran a 55-photo spread to celebrate the honour. When the Onion published a fake poll announcing that rural white Americans had a more favourable opinion of Iran's then-president, Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, than of Barack Obama, an Iranian state news-agency covered this as real news. Lots of people are less ingenuously looking at the Onion to entertain themselves. In the past year its web traffic has grown by around 70%.