God bless the goddamn Onion

"I guess it's funny if you live in NEW YORK CITY ...*sniff*"

Here's the back and forth I had with the anchor today:

Mark Bullock - WSFA 12 News I love The Onion! Follow it on Twitter. But this post was a bit much. Quoting an actual PR firm and real people for a fictituous article is irresponsible. Since the whole thing is fake, why didn't they just use fake names?

JF Mark, great point! Why don't they also just refer to Jim Boden and Borak Otama and Greg Boosh when doing their political stories?

JF i.e. go brush up on the definition of satire again, MEDIA PERSON.

Mark Bullock - WSFA 12 News Hi [JF]! To answer your post, no, if one's satire is critical of the president, you would not use a fake name like Borak Otama. That's silly. Similarly, The Onion satire that criticized Alabama did not use a fake name like Alattama. But for some reason, it did use a real PR firm's name.

JF Right, the Onion consistently uses real names/businesses/cities/states/countries/et al. Why would they, just this one time, create a fake PR firm instead of just going on google and looking for a real one based in the state? SATIRE!

JF The line between satire and fiction is pretty simple. In fiction, you can either draw inspiration from real world things and cleverly alter the names or make things up altogether. In satire, you utilize real world things/persons to critique whatever it is you are critiquing. The Onion doesn't traffic in fiction. It traffics in satire, hence the use of a real PR firm as the story's main player instead of a made-up one.

Mark Bullock - WSFA 12 News The PR firm is not based in Alabama.

JF Fair enough, then. Whether it is or isn't a firm based in Alabama is not a chief detail here. It's why a reporter for WSFA felt the need to reach out to, what we now know is, an out-of-state PR firm to get a reaction on a satirical article that she must've believed was legitimate at some point. If they'd been an in-state business, like I think was mentioned somewhere earlier, I might buy some of the "aw shucks" replies from the station so far, but now it's clear that the firm's relationship to the state is tenuous at best and ONLY connected through the piece on The Onion. That's enough to make me believe Jenn Oravet got good and hoodwinked this morning.

Mark Bullock - WSFA 12 News Thanks for the exchange of ideas, [JF]! Hopefully our viewers who would not normally have seen The Onion's satire were enlightened by this thread and by Jennifer Oravet's story. It's always good to know how you are viewed from the outside. Good luck in the biz!

Just saving this for posterity.

textbook pass-aggery to sign off from Mark there, respect

Haha, right?

Demerits for using 'reach out', though. Whenever I see that in correspondence, it creeps me out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO17B-ACRn0

What if the actual target of the satire wasn't Alabama but.... PR firms?

makes you think

I do wonder why they used a real PR firm, not that it matters. Would the effect been lost had they said "Harper + Phillips"?

I've only noticed it a few times, but every time I've noticed my home state mentioned, they say the guy works in a screen-door factory. There are no screen-door factories here. There isn't even a "Hope Springs."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/miracle-of-birth-occurs-for-83-billionth-time,775/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-settled-for,4037/

Is there a submarine factory? Maybe it's a two-level joke.

Now that's satire!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/breaking-it-wouldnt-surprise-you-if-this-headline,31210/

man it looks like wsfa deleted their status update so the onion post is lost

You mean this one?

http://i.imgur.com/Rt4TKV9.png

http://www.theonion.com/video/reculisive-terrence-malick-of-the-beltway-to-relea,31238/

That news broadcast upthread is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/meth-actually-not-that-bad-for-you-report-doctors,31319/

'Meth Actually Not That Bad For You, Report Doctors Dismantling Stereo'

Double Amputee Proves He's Capable of Anything

Yeah good job there guys.

Still, something:

https://www.facebook.com/TheOnion/posts/10151500974969497

Twitter's reaction to tweet (i.e. calls for tweeter to lose their job) also reveals twitter users' envy over those who get paid to tweet.

Tina Newman Well, all the men on here were OBVIOUSLY raised by a bunch of worthless cunts. Guess their mothers squatted, squirted them out then when back to whoring on the street.
Anyone who thinks it's appropriate or "funny" to call a CHILD a "cunt" is just telling the world that his mother is a worthless piece of shit.
2 minutes ago · Like

getting mixed signals off this one

whole thing is frustrating because the joke was bullshit and an apology is warranted and plenty of the critique is right-on imo but the people who're maddest about it (among whom, nobody'll be surprised to learn, are people I dig a lot and consider friends) are going into the "an apology is not enough!" mode which is social-justice-web for "I'm glad to have another thing to talk at length about"

This seems in the category of actually funny ideas that should never have been realized.

truth bomb xp ^

I mean I think it's pretty funny as a send-up of vapid and catty entertainment industry tweeting, but the grossness of it kind of outweighs that

you just can't pull off a joke like that on a medium like twitter, imo. takes a lot more skill, trust, and even intimacy.

it's not a particularly funny joke but the lolz are obv supposed to occur in the intersection between saying something vile about the most unexpected/most undeserving target.

you just can't pull off a joke like that on a medium like twitter, imo.

Understatement of ever. The only thing that works on Twitter is self-promotion.

I'm LOVIN all the straight, white dudes who are all offended about the Onion's apology

The only thing that works on Twitter is self-promotion.

no, that's not true, but it's a medium where persona and authorial voice can be tricky

appreciate the quickness/sincerity/gravity of the onion's apology

but children are the third rail of american anything, everybody should know better than to joke about children

I'm LOVIN all the straight, white dudes who are all offended about the Onion's apology

― kate78, Monday, February 25, 2013 12:56 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

now i know yall be lovin this shit right here

ilx is super good at getting offended about stuff

Weird how people pick and choose what offends them in the Onion. I'm sure they've made fun of children before in far more offensive a manner than this twitter drive-by.

well, again, part of the problem is that twitter doesn't really provide any adequate, or controllable, context for the tweeter. if your feed was a 1000 "anne hathaway sux i hate that bitch" tweets then i can see how that particular joke popped into the tweeter's mind.

the apology is not enough. if the onion wants to make this right they need to kill the offending employee

I'm LOVIN all the straight, white dudes who are all offended about the Onion's apology

I love that straight, white dudes and lesbians of color all had their opportunity to bond getting super butthurt over this episode.

has that kid ever done anything particularly cunty? like was she being divaish at the time

is there any other context than the send-up of vapid and catty entertainment industry tweeting

seems 100% clear that the object of the joke was wannabe inside-hollywood bitchiness, but i'm not a dolt so

also seems quite a bit over the line in a basic "no rough stuff about kids" unspoken rule kind of way.

case closed!

yeah pretty much.

though it's still an interesting "times we live in" kind of episode!

I'm sure they've made fun of children before in far more offensive a manner than this twitter drive-by.

This remains a high water mark for The Onion in both tastelessness and hilarity.

Seems obvious that the joke is that she is the farthest thing from a bad kid, a total innocent. It's pretty much boilerplate irony. Better or worse than Gawker's sleazy rundown of all the not child friendly swag in her gift bag.

also sorta funny (not haha funny) that if the object of the joke was at least in part the weird rage people direct at celebrities for no good reason then that rage kinda got turned on the onion itself.

let's not overlook the dark power a c-bomb still holds

Naked Condoms (6 pack, $20.00). Shouldn't Quvenzhané Wallis' introduction to prophylactics be with "the finest condoms in the world"?

Bonita Platinum Tequila ($99.00). This premium tequila (manufactured by a company partially owned by Xzhibit) is distilled five times before bottling, making it smooth enough for even a 9-year-old's sensitive palate.

Etc.

also that link is totally hilarious and sorta the same genre of joke--pulled offed infinitely better.

This remains a high water mark for The Onion in both tastelessness and hilarity.

― Zero Dark 33⅓: The Final Insult (Eric H.), Monday, February 25, 2013 1:11 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

this one's my fav, they took it down from the site more than 10 years ago but i never forgot:

http://www.petting-zoo.net/~deadbeef/archive/1687.html

"Dying 13-Year-Old Gets His Wish,
Will Pork Janet Jackson."

One of the infamous headlines to actual attract legal menace.