Does anyone else think it would be frickin awesome if on April Fool’s Day, The Onion ran serious news articles?
The best part is that, after hundreds of mocking comments were posted about the original blog entry, this numbskull wrote a spin-control followup entry in which our hero “Pete” reveals that he’s still unclear on the concept that stuff printed in The Onion isn’t real news.
I like the blog’s latest entry trying to backpedal and not look like a fucking idiot. Classy.
The first paragraph seems like that, but afterward it seems he’s saying more, “It might as well be real because that’s the attitude I’ve seen.”
The example he shows exhibits the same cluelessness – if some jackass came up to me and started pestering me with questions the way he describes himself doing, I’d give the same sort of outrageous answers. The simplest way to get rid of that sort of crank is to outdo him until he makes his escape, convinced that you are a crank.
Interesting that he would pull this quote from the Onion article:
but omits the follow-up:
I’m sure he’s talked to *so *many women who’ve been similarly “psyched” for painful surgery. :rolleyes:
I don’t know that Dear Abby or Ann Landers were taken in, but I clearly recall reading a letter printed in Reader’s Digest by a woman citing the Onion witchcraft article. The editors had replied that it was a spoof, and they were clearly kind of embarrassed to have to tell her that. I can’t tell you which RD it was, though; just something I picked up somewhere.
DING
That’s what I was remembering. Thanks! I think I might have bought that issue for that very reason. It’s lying around here somewhere…
The Dubya Administration did send the Onion a letter demanding that they not use the Presidentail Seal in any of their articles. The letter, available here, seems in indicate that they feared that people would interpret Onion articles as “suggesting presidential support or endorsement”. The letter was filed after the publication of Bush to Appoint Somebody to be in Charge of Country.
Actually, I think they wrote the letter because the Onion website featured satirical versions of the weekly radio addresses from President Bush, and the graphic for them featured the Presidential Seal. Although the article you linked to does feature the presidential seal on the President’s flag, it does not seem to represent that Bush or the office of the President endorses the Onion, whereas the radio addresses are satires of Bush and his office, and the use of the presidential seal could imply that these fake radio addresses were authorized by the office of the President.
But only for 20 minutes.
I like reading the feedback comments on the OP blogger.
Well, the AV Club, their entertainment section, is all 100% serious reviews and interviews.
I think we should not forget to mention the case where the Chinese newspaper picked up the story about congress threatening to move.
But what about the time when that congress-demands-a-new-capitol story was picked up as true by that Chinese newspaper? I’d like to hear about that.
What’s this, Harry Potter threatened to move unless somebody built a Chinese restaurant?
No, he threatened to have an abortion. In 1960. For 20 minutes.
Wow, this endless-repetition-of-dumb-joke thing is really, really unfunny. Please stop, all of you.
The Harry Potter/Satanism story is archived here:
Hey guys? Remember the time when someone posted something three times in a row, and everyone else copied it?
Actually it was just two times in a row. The third post said “Hi, Opal”.