Birthers Sue Esquire

Nobody likes to be the butt of jokes, and now two birthers are suing Esquire for a jaw-dropping $285 million to make the point. Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have filed the suit because journalist Mark Warren said in a satirical piece in May that Corsi's book—Where's the Birth Certificate?—was being yanked from bookstores, reports Forbes. Warren's Onion-style parody screamed "Breaking! Corsi's Book Pulled From Shelves!" because President Obama had just released his long-form birth certificate, essentially rendering Corsi's tome a waste of eye muscles.

Esquire later explained for readers too dull to catch the satire: "We committed satire to point out the problems with selling and marketing a book that has had its core premise and reason to exist gutted by the news cycle, several weeks in advance of publication." Farah and Corsi are claiming the piece cost them a hoped-for fortune in book sales and exposed them to "extreme ridicule." But they deny the book was a waste of time, because they say the long-form birth certificate is a forgery. (More birthers stories.)