{"id":640,"date":"2010-04-08T15:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=640"},"modified":"2015-04-26T17:44:10","modified_gmt":"2015-04-26T15:44:10","slug":"and-now-for-something-completely-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/and-now-for-something-completely-different\/","title":{"rendered":"And now for something completely different"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are times when I just can’t read the news. It’s too depressing. There is some value in knowing, I suppose, that California is better equipped<\/span> to handle earthquakes than northern Mexico, or that the price of energy in China and West Virginia may sometimes include human lives, or that a major church<\/a> might be full of pedophiles. But often the news just seems like a list of people who’ve died a spectacular death.<\/p>\n

A colleague of mine once pointed out<\/span> that the newspapers would be very full indeed if they printed stories of all the planes that landed safely. “Dog bites man” is not news. But what if it were? A newspaper started by two Wisconsin college students in 1988 offers exactly that perspective.<\/p>\n

The Onion<\/i><\/a> satirizes not just the news itself, but also the way that news is reported. Some of the stories tie in to<\/span> current events<\/span> and take them up a notch<\/span>; for example:<\/p>\n

\n

Karzai Vows to Crack Down on Self<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(a reference<\/span> to the Afghan president’s promise to fight corruption) and<\/p>\n

\n

Dubai Debt Crisis Halts Building of World’s Largest Indoor Mountain Range<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Turn them up two<\/i> notches, and you get stories like:<\/p>\n

\n

Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(a reference to the origin<\/span> of Superman) and<\/p>\n

\n

Christ Getting in Shape for Second Coming<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My favorite Onion<\/i> stories are those that pretend that everyday events in the lives of everyday people are news:<\/p>\n

\n

Area Man Proudly Accepts Exit-Row Responsibilities<\/a><\/b>
\nCHICAGO \u2014 Air traveler Lynn Paschal feels physically and mentally ready to fulfill the duties of an exit-row passenger should tragedy strike United Airlines Flight 234 en route to Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport, sources close to the 34-year-old confirmed<\/span> Monday. …
\nPaschal’s zeal<\/span> has not gone unnoticed by United personnel<\/span>.
\n“I asked him about six times to stop removing his seat cushion<\/span>,” [chief flight attendant Melinda] Garnock said. “He said he was practicing using it as a flotation device<\/span>. He only stopped when I assured him we wouldn’t be crossing any oceans from Chicago to Atlanta. He kept looking over at me and giving me the thumbs-up<\/span>.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Man on TV Urges Mass Purchase of Listerine<\/a><\/b>
\nLOS ANGELES \u2014 In what is believed to be the widest-reaching appeal ever made by an individual on behalf of an oral<\/span>-hygiene aid, an unidentified man urged millions of people across the U.S. to purchase Listerine-brand antiseptic<\/span> mouthwash<\/span> Monday.
\nThe bizarre, nationally televised plea<\/span> remains unexplained as of press time<\/span>. …
\n“I couldn’t believe it,” said Deborah Dunning, a Des Moines, IA<\/span>, homemaker<\/span> and one of approximately 20 million people who witnessed<\/span> the mass-purchase call. “Right in the middle of my favorite show, this man appears and starts talking about the germ<\/span>-killing power of Listerine. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.” …<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Onion<\/i> also includes some funny and imaginative<\/span> columns. Herbert Kornfeld<\/a> is a meek<\/span>-looking accountant<\/span> who imagines his boring office as the site of a gang war fought with his pocket calculator, his “letter opener of death” and plenty of ghetto slang. T. Herman Zweibel<\/a>, the newspaper’s 142-year-old publisher, uses old-fashioned language to express old-fashioned attitudes.<\/p>\n

Another running joke<\/span> is the section with street interviews<\/a>, where the same pictures of people are used over and over again with different names.<\/p>\n

Two things about The Onion<\/i> are really surprising, though. One is that it is an actual<\/span> newspaper, printed on paper. You can sometimes find it at airports and large bookstores in the US. The other thing is that only the first few pages are satire. The rest is actual news and commentary, 100 percent serious and similar to what you’d find in other newspapers. The film reviews by The Onion<\/i>\u2019s A.V.<\/span> Club are highly regarded<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Onion<\/i>\u2019s editors are rather secretive<\/span> and don’t accept submissions<\/span> from outside. They also take language very seriously. Let’s hope that these stories are only in jest<\/span>:<\/p>\n

\n

Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from Language Programs<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Copy Editor’s Revenge Takes Form of Unhyphenated Word<\/span><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are times when I just can’t read the news. It’s too depressing. There is some value in knowing, I suppose, that California is better equipped to handle earthquakes than northern Mexico, or that the price of energy in China and West Virginia may sometimes include human lives, or that a major church might be full of pedophiles. But often … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,42],"tags":[32,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}