I’d be a rich gal if I had a dollar for every humor piece–again take the laughing or leave it, it’s typically a subjective thing–that caused more grief than not. It’s almost not worth running them because of the annoyance of being asked if it’s real or not. Sometimes it’s understandable–if it’s especially good, you’re gonna be a little taken in, especially when you’re reading a lot as part of your daily diet. Normally I try to make sure we do something to make it bleedingly obvious it’s humor. “This speculation was written by” or “This parody was written by” or the like. But you (I) always want to hesitate to do that–it almost hurts the joke to have to point out that it’s a joke. And in a piece that began “The Washington Post is trying to kill me.” and ends with an ID of the author as a “humorist,” I, for one, thought it was all pretty obvious.