PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Current 2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) apologized Thursday night for a misunderstanding that led the former senator to publicly call for a ban on pawpaw, a mango-like fruit that grows along the banks of the Potomac and across large swaths of Southern, Southeastern and Midwest states. The fruit was popular throughout the 1700s and 1800s, but has only recently been rediscovered and commercialized. And because food scientists have found an abundance of nutrients in the pawpaw and a high antioxidant count, demand for the produce has been high. The fruit, slightly testicular in appearance, is also referred to as a Hoosier banana.

Today, after an embarrassing PR blunder, Rick Santorum’s campaign issued a written apology from the White House hopeful: “Until this afternoon, I had never heard of a pawpaw. When I learned that scores of young men were rafting up river through the woods in search of a ‘wonder fruit’ called ‘papa,’ I made a false assumption, though with the best of intentions. Then I saw pictures of a man holding something resembling a giant pair of truck nuts. And I’ll tell you, where I come from, the phrases ‘Hoosier banana’ and ‘Ohio Papa Festival’ mean something entirely different. To the growers of the pawpaw and those straight Americans interested in exploring the mysteries of this edible fruit, not the kind I thought, I apologize for calling on Congress to ban the pawpaw as a parasitic menace that could cause men to engage in any variety of aberrant gay sex acts with equally confusing, fruit-related names, such as Caramel Apple, Thornberry Prickle Pit, Pear Bottom, Rumpkin Pie ala Moe, Soursop Dew Honey and Prune Tang.”

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