VIDEO: CNN Mistakes Dildos and Butt Plugs on a Black Banner for the ISIS Flag

CNN: where terrorism meets irony, and neither one recognizes the other.

June 27, 2015 may go down in history as the date when there were no gays or lesbians working in the CNN control room. Clearly, we would have noticed this.

In a desperate and failed effort to be the first of a myriad of 24-hour cable news networks to break what turned out to be a non-story, CNN mistook an on-the-ground sighting of a mock-up of the ISIS flag comprised of variously shaped dildos and butt plugs on a black banner, for the real flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In true 24-hour panic machine fashion, Lucy Pawle, a CNN International editor called in to the studio to report what was described as an "unnerving sight" - a man dressed in black at a gay pride parade.

"..all of a sudden, this man, quite distinctive from the rest of the crowd, he was dressed in black and white [..] was waving what appeared to be a very bad mimicry, but a clear attempt to mimic the ISIS flag," Pawle reported.

What Pawle and the folks in the CNN studio failed to notice was, the man in black was carrying a parody of the ISIS flag made up of dildos and butt plugs in place of Arabic letters.

More versed in Arabic lettering than sex toy silhouette imagery, Pawle said that the symbols on the banner were "clearly not Arabic" but more like "gobbledygook."

"I seem to be the only person who has spotted this." Pawle said.

Well, she may have been the only one who spotted it and missed the joke.

Adding to the hilarity, CNN brought in their National Security Analyst Peter Bergen to view the footage of the phallic-lettered flag.

Bergman noted that a gay pride parade was "a very strange place to be showing an ISIS flag."

The video was removed from CNN's website, but was preserved for posterity here.