Reeled In by a Spoof, Chinese Daily Shrugs Off Its Capitol Error
By HENRY CHU
June 7, 2002 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
BEIJING — A gaffe by China’s usually staid state-run media has left a popular newspaper here with onion on its face.
Readers of the Beijing Evening News, one of the capital’s largest-circulation newspapers, learned this week that the U.S. Congress had threatened to move out of Washington unless a fancy new Capitol was built.
“Don’t get us wrong. We actually love the dilapidated [old] building,” House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was quoted as saying. “But the cruel reality is, it’s no longer suitable for use by a world-class legislature. Its contours are ugly, there’s no room to maneuver, there aren’t enough bathrooms, and let’s not even talk about the parking.”
If a new building wasn’t erected, the article said, lawmakers were prepared to pack up and move to Memphis, Tenn., or Charlotte, N.C.
The story seems newsworthy enough. Trouble is, it was lifted straight from the Onion, a satirical “news” publication based in New York that has caused countless American readers to double over with laughter at its weekly spoofs on current events.
Its story on the Capitol appeared in its May 29 edition, alongside such headlines as “Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point” and “Man Blames Hangover on Everything But How Much He Drank.”