An Astrology Magazine's "unforeseen circumstances"

A co-worker rushed to me to ask, "Is it ironic when an astrology magazine goes out of business due to 'unforeseen circumstances'", to which I immediately answered "No, it's just funny". But the more I thought about it, I realized there is irony all over the situation. Astrology, as we all know, is clearly bunk. A magazine devoted to astrology that claims to tell the future is using the term "astrology" to mean "foretelling", rather than "money making scheme to sucker poor schmuck's out of their hard earned cash". Since they seem to be talking about stars and planets, but are actually talking about a con job, the whole magazine is ironic. At least, it's ironic for me and those who know the truth, which almost certainly includes the authors. Now, when they actually fail to predict their own demise, the fact that we all knew it was full of crap to begin with means that it is no longer ironic, the words "money making scam with no predictive power" accurately describe the situation. Of course, the fact that they ran out of money (or at least won't be making any more) adds irony to the ending.

Now, if you are one of the every 15 minute types who believes in astrology, the death of the magazine is in fact ironic, since they used "future predicting" powers, and that turned out to not do what they claimed. As you can see from this relatively simple example, even the most casual usage of the word "irony" is difficult to analyze, made all the more difficult by the fact that it requires us to determine the actually intention of the person, as well as the literal intention of the word.

To summarize, the main reason we use the term "Ironic" is because we're too polite to call them liars.

Verdict: Not Ironic