It's hard to believe that this is not syndicated from The Onion. The linguistic hook? call it discourse styles. I do have to comment that a social psychologist might wonder whether the problem was differences in motivation as much as differences in culture. [link via Parablemania].
[Update: well, I wasn't far off. Lance Nathan wrote in to point out this disclaimer on The Holy Observer's web site:
The stories and content on The Holy Observer are mostly fabricated and should not be taken seriously. Real names are used on occasion for satirical purposes, but the quotations and situations associated with those names are usually fictitious.
Not being totally naive, I did check for other sources that did verify the first stage of the story... but I guess this is one of those cases where "real names are used... for satirical purposes".]
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 25, 2004 11:12 PM