It's a stereotype, one that I feel vindicated in employing to sum up a thread that 1) has half a dozen or so Americans commenting earnestly and sometimes in outrage about an article that is not only clearly facetious in tone, but also hosted on a site that bills itself as satire, and 2) also has posters apparently oblivious to the tongue-in-cheek, irreverent manner in which said stereotype of Americans being dense to sarcasm was itself initially used.
Yes, the gulf between the literal meaning of the words employed and the intended meaning and interpretation of the author constitutes irony.
