Is this really a headline...?

81% in Poll Say Nation Is on the Wrong Track

That's the headline? In the New York Times? Really?

When I saw it on my Google homepage this morning I was instantly confused. I have my little IGoogle thingy set up with news from the NYT on the left side of the page, and "news" from the Onion on the right. Below are my horoscope, the weather, book and fashion news, celeb gossip, etc.

I mistook this NYT headline, in all its glorious vagary, as a piece of mock journalism culled from the Onion. I wasn't confident that this was a sincere article penned by real NYT journalists until, oh, paragraph three. I guess it's the absurd open-endedness of this blanket statement -- at first I didn't believe it was real.

Sadly, I think this is a definite case of "It's funny 'cuz it's true..."