Good Job. Good Effort.

I leave tomorrow morning for three kid-free days in the Virginia Piedmont. Before I do, though I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this with you.

In this image, Billie Joe Armstrong hugs a reporter. Probably.

I'm a big fan of The Washington Post. It's unquestionably one of America's best newspapers, and it's consistently good across all of its sections.  Though I no longer get the daily version in physical form, I do get an actual paper on Sundays. And perusing the Sunday Post (in this order: Sports, Business, Outlook, Style, Front Page) remains one of the simple pleasures of my week.

Today, though, Ben Bradlee spun in his grave.

In a story about a campaign in England to get Green Day's 'American Idiot' to the top of the UK pop charts in advance of President* Trump's visit to London, the Post cited an article written by Billie Joe Armstrong on ClickHole. As noted by The A.V. Club, ClickHole is affiliated with the Onion, which we all know (well, most of us know, and one Post reporter definitely knows now) is a satirical website, and as such, really does print fake news. The A.V. Club goes further in assisting the Post in checking the veracity of its sources, offering the following advice:

• "Generally, reputable news sources end in a .com or .org web address. Beware bizarrely complicated domains. For example, nbcnews.com is real, whereas nbcnews.com.co.net would be bullshit.
• If you’re not sure if a site is real, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “about us” link. Many faux news sites, even completely unfunny ones, say they’re “satire” in their mastheads.
• Google is your friend. If you see an image you think might be Photoshopped, do a reverse image search. You can also search fact-checking sites like factcheck.org, politifact.com, or that old reliable, snopes.com, to verify dubious-sounding assertions or statistics.
• ClickHole is part of the Onion family of websites, of which only the site you are reading right now deals in non-joke information".

This will NOT help the mainstream media and right-thinking America win the fake news battle. Of that I'm quite sure. 

And now, off to get drunk and try to forget the world.