John Fleming links to Onion story on Facebook

By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 2/6/12 1:57 PM EST Updated: 2/7/12 11:27 AM EST

Rep. John Fleming has deleted his Facebook post linking to an article in The Onion about a fictional Planned Parenthood “Abortionplex.”

In a Facebook status on Friday, the Louisiana Republican alerted his followers to The Onion’s May 18, 2011 article, “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex” and wrote “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.” Fleming’s spokesman Doug Sachtleben confirmed to POLITICO the post has since been removed from the congressman’s Facebook page and said the office had no further comment.

The blog Literally Unbelievable — which posts Facebook statuses from users who think Onion articles are real — picked up Fleming’s status before the congressman removed it from the social-networking site. Four users liked the post and eight left comments, with one person writing, “The Onion is satire. How exactly did you get elected?”

The May 2011 Onion article details the opening of a “sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.” The fictional Abortionplex includes more than 2,000 rooms dedicated to the procedure, as well as “coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-story nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater — features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.”

The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo, said the publication is proud to count Fleming as a reader.

“We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s Finest News Source and doesn’t bother himself with The New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets,” he said in a statement.

Hudson Hongo, the blogger who runs Literally Unbelievable, said a “keen-eyed reader” sent in Fleming’s Facebook status after the Onion re-posted the “Abortionplex” article Friday in response to the Susan G. Komen controversy. “It seems that Rep. Fleming, like many others, has given the nearly year-old article a second life,” Hongo said.

Hongo added he finds it “extremely satisfying to see a politician being made the rube by just the kind of sensationalism (in this case satiric), that they seem so adept at manufacturing these days.”

Unlike Mr. Hongo, I do not find it "extremely satisfying" a legislator deciding federal abortion law and Planned Parenthood funding has such extremely warped and ignorant "knowledge" of Planned Parenthood he considers an over the top Onion piece plausible. The Onion does a great job playing it straight, but how can anyone genuinely BELIEVE Planned Parenthood changed its slogan to "No Life Is Sacred," and created a million square foot abortion megamall where a counter prominently displays a running count of abortions, disposed of via an incinerator "capable of cremating more than 40 tons of fetuses at a time"? That, as the article concludes, a woman would actually say, "By the time it was over, I almost wished I could've aborted twins and gotten to stay a little longer. I told my boyfriend we had to have sex again that very night; I really want to come back over Labor Day"? Really, how could anyone believe any of that?

Because it fits his view of the world in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular. That would be embarrassing but fine if he were just some survivalist living in his UT fallout shelter, but Fleming is a US Congressman. Again, he writes and passes FEDERAL LAWS, such as those determining whether and under what circumstances abortion is legal, and what, if any, federal funding Planned Parenthood receives. I do not begrudge people absurd factually fractured ideas about abortion, but no one subscribing to them has any place writing federal policy on the subject (or any other, but definitely not abortion.) One would THINK a family doctor better informed on an issue like abortion and thus better qualified to legislate it, but apparently not.

If, after nearly a decade of higher education plus a hospital residency, Fleming is so badly informed on a pet issue, I am afraid to ask his views on defence, job growth, the federal deficit, etc. Again, that would be merely humorous and embarrassing if he were some crackpot living up in the hills, with little influence on national policy, but is frightening in a US Congressman CREATING national policy. One can fairly wonder whether this guy should even be licensed to practice medicine, let alone in Congress.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72507.html