The Onion fooled the The New York Times with fake Obama Tiger Beat cover

This weekend The New York Times may have printed the best correction in its one-hundred-and-fifty-plus year existence. Last week, the esteemed publication ran an article documenting the squeaky-clean history of tween-heartthrob magazine, Tiger Beat. Accompanying the article was a retrospective collection of past covers. In addition to presenting a brief, visual timeline of dreamy teen idols (Has any male's hair ever out-feathered Leif Garrett's?), they ended up providing readers with a fun game of "one of these things is not like the others." Because it turns out one of the covers never actually existed. Hint: it's the one with President Obama's face on the cover.

Turns out the image originally appeared in The Onion.  It's kind of hard to believe that no one thought to double-check the veracity of the president's image on a publication typically reserved for the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus or whoever the kids are into these days. I guess someone over-estimated the political investment of America's middle schoolers. Looks like there'll be a couple of job openings in the Times fact-checking department in the near future.