# The Onion calls Quevanzhane Wallis a cunt. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 25, 2013, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329 "2013-02-25T06:40:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![drew870mitchell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drew870mitchell/32/3946_2.png) [@drew870mitchell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drew870mitchell)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/281 "2013-02-27T04:48:29Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > Do hipsters still like Tarantino? _Everyone_ likes Tarantino. Citing him as a hipster thing is like saying that hipsters love breathing and using flush toilets. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/282 "2013-02-27T06:34:26Z")
> [@3trew](#): > > Has anyone jokingly called another poster a cunt yet in this thread? Someone should do that. I’m sure it would be cool. It’s not like we’ve had a thing about that here. I was thinking the same thing. I shan’t, but if I did: > [@squeegee](#): > > > [@3trew](#): > > > > Has anyone jokingly called another poster a cunt yet in this thread? > > You’re a cunt. …it would be fine with the mods, because _funny_ and _satire_, right? _Especially_ if you’re an underage person in the public eye. ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/283 "2013-02-27T07:25:09Z")
I knew some Quevanzhane would reply to that comment. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/284 "2013-02-27T07:34:24Z")
> [@3trew](#): > > I knew some Quevanzhane would reply to that comment. HAHAHAAAAA!!!l!!! ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/285 "2013-02-27T07:59:16Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > HAHAHAAAAA!!!l!!! That should do it for the funny. Now we just need the satire. The important thing is that we’ve proven that there is no way the 9 year in question’s name has been associated with a bad word, so she’s all good. No harm no fowl. Interested persons may try “You bunch of Quevanzhanes” as a signature. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/286 "2013-02-27T10:28:00Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Wow… The OP of that thread sure enjoys getting outraged, he’s the one w/ the current thread about witnessing in ATMB right now. :rolleyes: Gee, two ATMB threads 6 years apart (of 6 I’ve started) - one in which the Mods agreed with me and one in which they didn’t & I’ve accepted their ruling - what a wallower in recreational outrage I must be… ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/287 "2013-02-27T13:24:12Z")
Sarcasm, right? I think I’m getting the hang of this… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/288 "2013-02-27T13:53:14Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Sarcasm, right? I think I’m getting the hang of this… The internet needs [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation). ---
**Author:** ![Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4bbf92/32.png) [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/289 "2013-02-27T15:39:12Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Oh my… oh my god… I um, I think you’re a girl and I don’t know you, but I’m feeling an emotion akin to love right now. Not only am I a girl, I’m in fact a dumpy old married lady with a kid. And yet, you feel the love. Such is the powerful allure of linguistics. True story: I once scored a one-night stand based solely on the fact that I knew a word\* in Spanish that contains all five vowel sounds. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That’s basically what I mean by “appropriate.” The inappropriateness of it in the sense you’re using the word isn’t what bothers me; I love Louis CK’s awful routines about his children, for example, and I think A Modest Proposal is wonderful. You know, I’m still on the fence as to whether the Onion’s joke was a bad idea or just a bad execution, though your point is well taken that, regardless of how funny it was, it was possibly not worth the hurt it could potentially cause. But I find it interesting that given this stance, you’re _more_ comfortable with Louis CK’s routines. I agree; he’s totally hilarious. But after all, even if Quvenzhané does hear about the tweet and doesn’t get the irony, her parents can fall back on the explanation that this is just some stranger saying something stupid about her, like the many other stupid, awful things she will invariably hear strangers saying. But it seems equally inevitable to me, if not more so, that Louis CK’s kids will hear and see his routines about them. And they can’t just slough off his jokes as the words of some random idiot. He’s their _dad_. And worse, his jokes aren’t ironic so much as they are hyperbolic or even just funny-'cause-it’s-true. The humor comes not from him saying something he doesn’t mean, but from him saying something that parents normally don’t say - even though we all think it - _because_ of its potential to be hurtful. I mean, I laughed my ass off at [this](http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2012/06/a-collection-quotes-on-louis-c-k-s-parenting-philosophies/3/): [QUOTE=Louis CK] Some kids suck. Some kids are just sh_tty … and I think that some parents just want to [flip off] their kids all the time. As much as you love your kid, there has to be those times, when your kid is being a sh_t, and he’s going ‘Why can’t I have some candy, I wanted a candy,’ and you just wanna go, ‘You know what? F **k you kid, alright? F** k you. How do you like that? F\*\*k you, buddy.’” [/QUOTE] …but I don’t want my kid to know I find that funny. Not for quite a few years, anyway. Anecdote time: when I was young, maybe 6 or 7, my sister had a seizure. I still vividly remember hearing my dad telling someone else about the terror he felt finding her convulsing and turning blue. At one point in his story, he kind of chuckled with nervous, rueful laughter, saying something like, “Whew, we were scared out of our minds!” And my stomach suddenly felt like a ball of ice. Regardless of his words, I couldn’t comprehend how he could _laugh_ about that. What kind of monster was he? So later, I asked him why he had laughed, and he denied it. He actually got kind of defensive about it. He didn’t even realize he had done it; it was so reflexive. Then I repeated what he said, exactly as he had said it, with the chuckle and everything, and he understood what I was upset about. But he had a very hard time explaining why he had laughed. Ultimately, I just had to take his word for it that he honestly didn’t find it funny at all, quite the opposite, and it wasn’t until years later that I really understood viscerally what was going on in that moment. All of which is to say, it’s entirely possible for a kid to intellectually grasp concepts like irony, hyperbole, and the idea that you can simultaneously love someone and want to choke them, yet at the same time, that kid might still feel hurt by jokes that play off these concepts. So, does that mean that we shouldn’t tell these kinds of jokes at all? I don’t think so. I do think that the risk of them being hurtful should be taken into account, but shouldn’t necessarily rule them out. And I think they need to be very carefully crafted. A big part of the problem with the Onion’s tweet was that while the context, and therefore, the intended target, was obvious to a certain subset of people, to many others, it was less than clear. I posit that the joke could have been more successful if it had been handled a little differently. For instance, if it had been elaborated more fully, [like this piece](http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-do-of-course-realize-that-this-is-going-to-end,29734/?ref=auto), in which adorable moppet Honey Boo Boo reminds viewers that they are essentially complicit in relegating her to a future career in porn and/or prostitution. Or they could have put the quote into the mouth of, say Joan Rivers. Actually, yeah! That would have _totally_ worked. “Joan Rivers: ‘Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right?’” There you go, Onion; fixed that for you. > [@Antinor01](#): > > > [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > > > Sigh. And this is my \*\*naked \*\*baby pictures. > > And you handled yourself beautifully in both of those threads. For a dollar, you can finger her. \*_murcielago_: bat (the animal). Use it wisely, my friend. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/290 "2013-02-27T16:50:36Z")
See, I might have believed it was racist (mostly because I wouldn’t have gotten the joke), but **Sleufeets** has convinced me otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/291 "2013-02-27T18:13:41Z")
> [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > For a dollar, you can finger her. [Beautiful](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq2u0cmb2s1qii6tmo1_500.gif). ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/292 "2013-02-27T19:49:12Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The internet needs [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation). Hmm. I’ve tried several different browsers on two separate (Windows) computers and the mark they’re describing on that page either displays as an empty box or some Unicode codes. Same thing using Safari on my iPhone. Anybody actually see the thing? ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/293 "2013-02-27T19:56:48Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > :rolleyes: Gee, two ATMB threads 6 years apart (of 6 I’ve started) - one in which the Mods agreed with me and one in which they didn’t & I’ve accepted their ruling - what a wallower in recreational outrage I must be… Settle down, champ. I was just amused that the linked thread was started by you, at the same time your Witnessing thread was going on. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/294 "2013-02-27T20:06:37Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Hmm. I’ve tried several different browsers on two separate (Windows) computers and the mark they’re describing on that page either displays as an empty box or some Unicode codes. Same thing using Safari on my iPhone. Anybody actually see the thing? Internet Explorer 7 is not displaying the Reversed Question Mark, Percontation Point, nor the Irony Mark within the body of the text. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/295 "2013-02-28T00:00:07Z")
> [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not only am I a girl, I’m in fact a dumpy old married lady with a kid. And yet, you feel the love. Such is the powerful allure of linguistics. True story: I once scored a one-night stand based solely on the fact that I knew a word\* in Spanish that contains all five vowel sounds. > \*_murcielago_: bat (the animal). Use it wisely, my friend. This is more motivating than Memrise and Michael Thomas gene-spliced together. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/296 "2013-03-01T07:47:15Z")
> [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Right, because isn’t “we be + [verb]ing” basically like saying “we usually/generally/often/tend to [verb]”? Therefore, \*both \*“we were” and “we will be”. So… “we be illin’” would mean “we used to be illin’” AND “we will (again) be illin’ at some point in the uncertain future” but not "we are in a current state of illin’ " Got it! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/297 "2013-03-01T11:27:39Z")
I think it’s all kinds of wrong to call a child a cunt. It even sets off my ped/porn alarm, considering how many more words are available in the English language. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/298 "2013-03-01T12:55:22Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > I think it’s all kinds of wrong to call a child a cunt. It even sets off my ped/porn alarm, considering how many more words are available in the English language. Recalibrate that alarm. No other word would have made the humor work as well, given the people being satirized–vicious snipy horrible gossipmongerers. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/299 "2013-03-01T14:08:46Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > I think it’s all kinds of wrong to call a child a cunt. It even sets off my ped/porn alarm, considering how many more words are available in the English language. See, now I wonder if you’re one because you used both words together, with only a tiny “a” between them. ---
**Author:** ![Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4bbf92/32.png) [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329/300 "2013-03-01T17:06:59Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > So… “we be illin’” would mean “we used to be illin’” AND “we will (again) be illin’ at some point in the uncertain future” but not "we are in a current state of illin’ " > Got it! 😉 Well, actually, it probably _also_ entails “we are in a current state of illin’”, though not necessarily. It means “we are are illin’, in a general sense,” or “we tend to be illin’.” Therefore, we’ve been illin’ in the past, we are highly likely to be illin’ right now (though this particular moment might be an exception to the usual state of affairs), and we will almost certainly continue to be illin’ in the future. Let’s take a different example that might be clearer. Compare: 1. “Bitches be trippin’.” This means that, in general, women tend to be crazy. You might be able to point to examples of women who are not currently doing anything particularly crazy, but broadly speaking, women are crazy. 1. “Bitch, you trippin’.” This means that the woman being addressed is being crazy _right now_. She might well be a fairly level-headed person in general (in contrast to most bitches, who be trippin’), but at the present moment, she is acting crazy. And you’re choosing to tell her so, which is probably not the wisest decision you’ve ever made. Capisce? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-onion-calls-quevanzhane-wallis-a-cunt/651329.md?page=16)