The misuse of "irony" is another one of those situations that seems to show that there's a missing word in the English language.
To take one specific example from Alanis, (yes I'm going there), there's something peculiarly funny about "ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" in a way that wouldn't be if you had "ten thousand turtles when all you need is a knife". I think we needed a word for "bittersweet happenstance", and people wrongly latched onto "irony".
Which is presumably where the confusion with irony (as a stand-alone word) comes from.
Interestingly enough, the term exists in a literal translation in other languages, too: "Ironie des Schicksals" in German, "ironie du sort" in French, and "ironia della sorte" in Italian.
"raises the question".
Educated people saved the word "irony" once, "begs the question" isn't gone yet.