I have always found The Onion, a satirical news site, to be one of the most hilarious and accurate outlets for commentary on current issues. So many times, its biting satire has nailed our country’s hypocrisy, ridiculous notions, and unsettling trends right on the head. Hopefully, you’re aware of this site and are not one of the people who read shared articles on Facebook and assume their headlines to be factual--there are entire lists of those types of fails, which are very funny but also pretty sad, because they show the alarming state of our ignorance.
In light of one recent Onion article about one of last week’s most disturbing events (more on that later), I’ve compiled a list of ten times the site perfectly captured some of our most backward mindsets and trends:
10. “Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequence”
This 2008 article discusses a (made-up) teenage boy, who attends an elite private school and comes from an extremely wealthy family, and how he was almost forced to accept accountability and repercussions for causing an accident while driving drunk, before his dad intervened and paid off justice. It’s one of the site’s funniest satires, in my opinion, but it highlights the absurdity of this country’s very real income gap, and the fact that our judicial system is skewed in favor of the privileged few.
The vegetarian in me (okay, technically the pescatarian in me) latched onto this 2013 article, and I just wanted to put it in here because it captures so well our hypocrisy towards eating meat. I have never tried to push my dietary practices onto others, and I do not believe that anyone should do so. Still, it does bother me when I hear people talking about how "humane" and "environmentally-friendly" grass-fed, organic (or whatever the lingo) beef is. This article nails the point that, at the end of the day, the cows are still slaughtered. Like any other cow. No matter how wonderful and chemical-free the farm’s pasture is, there is no way to humanely mass-kill a bunch of sentient beings. Eat your beef, that’s fine; it’s no one’s right to judge you, but you should be called out for pretending that you’re being humane. Okay, whew, vegetarian rant over!
8. “Weird, Area Woman Wasn’t Harassed Today”
Okay, the headline for this 2012 article is genuinely hilarious, but it sheds light on an extremely serious issue and a terrifying reality for the majority of women: the excessive catcalling, sexist slurs, and frightening stalking by men on the streets to women commuting to and from work and home, usually in urban areas. Whether walking at night or in broad daylight, women face this harassment regularly, and however much we laugh about it, it never stops being terrifying.
7. “I Don’t Support Feminism If It Means Murdering All Men”
This 2014 article captures in an exaggerated, but very accurate way, the disturbing “anti-feminism” movement. You know, the one in which other men and women push back against feminism because of ridiculous reasoning about how feminism is against men, or all feminists are man-haters, or whatever. None of these reasons are even remotely grounded in the very broad, very flexible definition of feminism, and this headline perfectly showcases the ignorance that these anti-feminists speak from.
6. “Planned Parenthood Opens 8 Million Dollar Abortionplex”
Published in 2011, this article took off from the ongoing right-wing movement against Planned Parenthood, a women’s health service that focuses only a tiny percentage of its energy on abortion services (but which, just for that, earns continual ire and discrimination from anti-abortion citizens and members of Congress). This fake account of a new “abortionplex” talks about how Planned Parenthood is trying to make abortion a big part of every woman’s life, a common argument cited by its opponents, but a claim which couldn’t be farther from the truth. A Louisiana congressman actually fell for this headline and believed it to be real, literally proving The Onion’s point.
5. “Nation Hopeful There Will be Equally Random Chance of Justice For Future Victims of Police Abuse ”
This article, published last April, is actually one of the least funny ones. It underscores our judicial system’s extremely depressing and frightening trend of allowing white police officers to go free after murdering young black men and boys. As the article suggests, bystanders shouldn’t have to be at the right place at the right time with an extremely good camera and sufficient battery life to film standoffs (etc., etc.), in order for police officers and judges to do the right thing.
4. “Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry”
Even though it came out in 2004, this article still holds relevance today, because anti- gay-marriage sentiment obviously still exists. I thought this peice was especially good because it sheds light on one of the most absurd beliefs of those against gay marriage: that the legality of same-sex marriage will somehow, in any way, affect heterosexual marriages, and that all those gays and lesbians just want to take away the rights of the “normal” straight people. Which, of course, is the most far-fetched and inaccurate thing that could possibly be said about this issue.
3. “Climate Change Deniers Present Graphic Description of What Earth Must Look Like for Them to Believe”
This article just came out this past August. I love it because it calls out climate change deniers who think/pretend that they have to personally notice a drastic change in the climate (and who think that “global warming” means that cold temperatures need to somehow disappear), in order to accept that climate change is happening. People: just because you do not personally feel affected does not mean that other areas of the world aren’t already changing in drastic ways. Climate change is happening. If you wait until all you see is dry, cracked land, we’re all doomed, and it will have been your fault for continuing to pretend and deny.
2. “Man Can’t Believe Obama Would Use Tragedy to Push Anti-Tragedy Agenda”
1. “‘ No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens ”
These last two deal with shootings. I put them together because they were both published two days ago, after the Roseburg, OR community college shooting. I felt very affected by them in my own renewed frustration with our shooting epidemic. Both are short “News In Brief” articles, the first of which satirizes Americans who, for some mind-boggling and maddening reason, get outraged when after each mass shooting, President Obama points out our urgent need to make concrete change. People see this as the advancement of a liberal agenda, when literally all Obama and gun control activists are trying to do is get fewer people killed. By getting outraged over the thought of any gun regulation, certain people are advancing an agenda that rules out any change (and any hope of saving future lives) in favor of their own selfish conception of gun rights. An antiquated, no-longer-relevant clause in a document created when modern-day weaponry could not have even been imagined to exist vs. the lives of students and children—is the former really more important? Is it?
The second brief article points out another common phrase spewed by confounding Americans who claim, after each shooting tragedy, that there is “no way to prevent this type of thing from happening.” Really? Not making sure that combat-level, semi-automatic assault weapons stay out of the hands of regular, often mentally deranged citizens? Not even that?
It gets even more depressing when you scroll down from this article and realize that The Onion has used the exact same headline for the past several shootings.
I wrote much more than I intended, but these headlines just capture Americans’ hypocrisy and frustrating perceptions on so many issues that I feel strongly about, particularly the last one. The Onion helps me realize that I’m not the only citizen frustrated with all this, and for that, I will continue to read its wonderful satire.
