The joke’s on Chu

Caught on camera. (Courtesy: The Onion)

By Michael Banks

With Steven Chu nearing towards his final days in office as US energy secretary we couldn’t help but highlight a recent spoof of the Nobel laureate in the satirical The Onion magazine.

The Onion may have recently duped China’s People’s Daily newspaper into thinking that North Korea’s leader had been voted the sexiest man alive in 2012, but the magazine failed to fool people that the spoof of Chu was true.

“Hungover energy secretary wakes up next to solar panel” ran a recent Onion headline, reporting that after visiting a series of DC watering holes, Chu woke up the following morning next to a giant solar panel he had “met” that evening.

“Chu’s encounter with the crystalline-silicon solar receptor was his most regrettable dalliance since 2009, when an extended fling with a 90-foot wind turbine nearly ended his marriage,” the Onion wrote.

At least Chu saw the funny side of the story. In a post on his Facebook page he noted that the allegations had nothing to do with him not continuing as US energy secretary.

“While I am not going to confirm or deny the charges specifically,” he wrote, “I will say that clean, renewable solar power is a growing source of US jobs and is becoming more affordable, so it’s no surprise that lots of Americans are falling in love with solar.”

Let’s only hope that Ernest Moniz, who US President Barack Obama recently nominated to succeed Chu as energy secretary, has a similar sense of humour.