No one says it better than The Onion

July 27, 2005

The only problem with the brilliant news parodies at The Onion is that real life is just as bad, if not worse, than their exaggerated caricatures. Their parodies are, therefore, hilarious and depressing at the same time.

Mark Kleiman noted yesterday that The Onion’s editors “have figured out a new mission: print headlines that report the real events, but which the conventions (and cowardice) of mainstream journalism don’t allow.”

Last week’s issue was a classic example. Consider this headline:

Bush Awaits Orders From Rove On Handling Of Rove Scandal

There was no accompanying article, because there was no need for one. Those 10 words sum up the problem quite nicely.

Let’s get the people at The Daily Show together with the people at The Onion and create the Super Comedy Team that can take over the country. Good idea?

  • On NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me last Saturday, one of the questions had to do with Rove. It went something along the lines of ‘There is talk that the reason President Bush announced his Supreme Court nomination when he did was to distract attention from this person…’ One of the panel chimed in with ‘Yeah, this person probably told him to do it!’ And after the contestant got the answer, another panelist chimed in with ‘George, I don’t care that you want to watch Fear Factor, you will announce that nomination!’.

  • Maybe we ought to send all of the conspiracy theorists over to The Onion since they all got banned from dkos. With this BushCo gang of thugs, I’m not willing to bet that ANY scenario is too outrageous for them to consider trying to pull off if they thought they could get away with it AND gain some political mileage out of it!!

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