In an age when a fake news show (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show) serves as a more reliable news delivery vehicle than some real news networks, and when it is increasingly difficult to distinguish opinioniated hype from objective fact in the national media, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the satirical newspaper The Onion has a bit of an ongoing problem with people who take their stories seriously. The paper’s deadpan style may have something to do with it, but another factor is emerging as well: in a society so politically and culturally divided as the US seems to be at the moment, people are ready to believe anything that validates their personal point of view, no matter how absurd it may seem.