Short take: No joke — The Onion now owns Alex Jones’ despicable empire

As many have noted, it's sometimes difficult in this bizarre political era to tell the difference between a genuine news headline and a sendup from the satiric website The Onion. But the one above is for real.

Right-wing provocateur Alex Jones — whose online media sewer known as InfoWars tormented the families of the dead children of Sandy Hook Elementary School with cruel lies claiming the 2012 mass shooting never happened — was ordered in a defamation ruling to liquidate his holdings at auction.

The winning bid came from The Onion, the irreverent site famous for guffaw-inducing joke headlines ( "Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets To Run Foreign Policy Meetings" ) and a decided liberal tilt to its satire.

The site's recurring headlines after mass shootings are often some variation of, "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens."

Jones' sadistic campaign to paint the massacre as a pro-gun-control hoax led to death threats against these already tormented families. The resulting litigation has garnered more than $1.4 billion in judgments against him.

In service to that debt, Jones' corrosive conspiracy site was put on the auction block Thursday. The Onion, which won the bidding with the backing of the Sandy Hook families, plans to re-launch the putrid site as a parody platform. What a satisfying punchline.