I've read Persepolis, love it, and think highly of it. So, naturally, I immediately clicked on the article thinking that I was reading a legitimate article about a Marjane Satrapi (and others) scandal. This was not an erroneous assumption considering the picture featured with the article, which clearly seems to indicate that Satrapi faked much of Persepolis.

I have been reading Slate for over a year now and daily for about 6 months. I don't think that I've read ever read a Low Concept article before or, if so, I did not recognize the "satire" inherent to these articles. In any event, I did not know that this article was supposed to be satire and, honestly, the "humor" is so dry and poorly done that it's very difficult to pick up. I e-mail Slate articles constantly to my friends and am a great fan of this site; never have I been so disappointed and frustrated with an article than I am with today's Low Concept article. I finally realized that the article was almost entirely fake after I noticed the future dates of publication associated with the "funny" scandals. A few of the scandals seemed ridiculous, but not entirely improbable, considering how over-the-top some of the recent memoir scandals have been. Plus, I googled "Love and Consequence" and Ishmael Beah, read separate articles about each of them, and assumed that the rest that followed were basically true. Even though clearly ridiculous, it seemed possible that Satrapi would make a joke in the midst of a break-down or that the Obama memo had not reached full publication since it was "distributed" yesterday.

Call all of this an oversight on my part, but I don't think I'm alone. Just look at the other comments on the discussion board about this article. I consider myself an astute reader, but, taking the article on its presentation alone, I did not recognize the "joke" at all. It took 20 minutes of fact checking, to no avail, on the internet before I finally noticed the dates and realized I had been had, but not in a good way. This article recklessly categorizes authors of integrity like Obama and Satrapi next to the reprehensible James Frey and Margaret Jones. And for what purpose? An extremely lame and wholly unsuccessful attempt at humor?

This article is irresponsible and a retraction is necessary.

The little "divider" they had between real and fake - "*************" - was rendereded nearly invisible by the ad in the middle of the article, which appeared directly under it. Move the divider - solve the problem, in my opinion.

Rendereded? Sheesh. Proofread...

kaiso:

The little "divider" they had between real and fake - "*************" - was rendereded nearly invisible by the ad in the middle of the article, which appeared directly under it. Move the divider - solve the problem, in my opinion.

The placement of the divider was problematic, but I think moving it does not entirely solve the problem. It's not like the divider says [begin satire].

Oldbrotherhubbard,

In the future, before doing twenty minutes of fact-checking on a questionable article read anywhere, you might try doing a little finer perusal of the article at hand. Remember when you assume you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

And as for the humor of the article per se, it can be argued that it wasn't that funny (although I did particularly like the part about St. Augustine), and that the part about Obama's deceased biological father was in poor taste, BUT the postings of all of you rubes crying righteous indignation and/or telling how you were bamboozled by it is a fire-trucking hoot. Hoo-Haaw! You want your world to really be turned upside down, try reading The Onion.

Calling for a retraction of the article -- give me a break. What is needed is an extraction of a stick from up yours and a lot of other readers' butts.

Good people, we are talking satire here. And good satire, on first examination, should be nigh believable; otherwise it falls flat.