The new right-wing conspiracy -- Obama building a Death Star

You can’t make this stuff up – and with wacko websites like World Net Daily,

 there’s no need to …

Here’ a recent headline from WND:

THE FINAL FRONTIER

Will Obama build a Death Star next?

White House urged to construct 'Star Wars' space battle station

The story is written by WND editor Joe Kovacs as straight news. And the headline reinforces the idea that there is a legitimate proposal under consideration by the president to build a Death Star like the massive enemy ship featured in the “Star Wars” movies.

In reality, the story, posted last month, is about one of those goofy public petitions on the White House website, the same “We The People” web page where all those state secession proposals popped up in response to the November election.

Kovacs acknowledges that the petition calling for President Obama to build a Death Star is probably satire. But then he adds this bit of straight-face reporting:

“So far, there’s no official response from the White House, but there could be one should the petition collect 25,000 signatures. As of Monday afternoon, more than 800 people signed the online measure.

“Interestingly, one of the names on the petition is “Darth V.” from Burlington, N.C. … Darth Vader is the legendary character from ‘Star Wars’ who was the father of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, and was seduced to the ‘dark side of the force.’”

That bit of subtle messaging about the “dark side” in reference to Obama is laughable. Then again, so is WND. You don’t have to search very long on their website to find some outrageous headlines. In fact on the same page as Kovacs’ Death Star revelation, I found these headlines:

“8 deadly agents to bring America to its knees”

“New radio waves coming from your faucet”

“Franklin Graham warns of wicked America”

“What has happened to my country?”

Is it safe to say that WND makes it's money off of fear-mongering, even if it means creating a silly Death Star to mislead their readers?