What started as a condescending “cautionary tale” about Sarah Palin’s mixing of celebrity and politics quickly became a cautionary tale about mixing contempt for Sarah Palin with desperation for the traffic her name will generate.

Suzi Parker of the Washington Post‘s She the People blog reported Tuesday that Palin, in an attempt to “stay relevant,” would join the Al Jazeera America network, to “reach millions of devoutly religious people.” The only problem is the report comes from “The Daily Currant,” a parody site whose lead story today is “Catholic Church considering Jerry Sandusky for Pope.” A sampling of the original “report:”

After leaving Fox News, Palin said she was hoping to reach a broader audience with her message. When contacted by phone, Palin said Al Jazeera – with its extensive international network – offered her the best opportunity to broadcast to millions of people.

“As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin said. “But I met with the folks at Al-JaJizzraa (sic) and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”

Now, the original item has this correction appended to the top:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin planned to contribute to the Al Jazeera America news network.

The article clips out the erroneous bits, but John Hayward has reproduced them as they were, with the silly quote and all:

Late last week Al Jazeera America announced the former vice-presidential candidate would be joining their news network.

“As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin told the Web site The Daily Currant. “But I met with the folks at Al-Jazeera and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”

E.M. Zanotti offers the upside:

The good news is, the Washington Post is still interested in digging up the hard news on failed Vice Presidential candidates from five years ago. They’re really that tenacious in their reporting. And you have to be in this day and age of the Internet and technology and smart phones and whatever. You really have to be at the top of your game on things that happened in 2008. They are important to the face of political discourse in America. And if you stop reporting them, Julianne Moore will have absolutely no reason to do a sequel to Game Change.

And, they’re dogged about it. More than an hour after other media reported the mistake, the Washington Post Twitter feed sent this out:

http://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/301376169113165826

Iowahawk takes the downside:

Leftwing satire headline: "Palin to work for Al Jazeera." Rightwing satire headline: "Al Gore sells CurrentTV to Al Jazeera." #SatireisDead

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 12, 2013

Update: Sarah Palin responds:

Hey @washingtonpost, I'm having coffee with Elvis this week. He works at the Mocha Moose in Wasilla. #suziparkerscoops #idiotmedia

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) February 12, 2013

@suziparker Nah. Turned 'em down. Their $22 million offer was too low…. just kidding. Really. #suziparkerscoops #idiotmedia

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) February 12, 2013

A @washingtonpost writer once promised not to write about me for a month. That was a good month for me. #idiotmedia

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) February 12, 2013