Bush years in Onion headlines
Over on the Making Light blog, our Teresa Nielsen Hayden's put together the comprehensive list of Onion stories from the Bush presidency -- and since the headline is often the funniest part of an Onion story, this is fine fast reading indeed:
September 26, 2001: Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.The true history of the Bush years
September 26, 2001: Bush Sr. Apologizes To Son For Funding Bin Laden In ’80s.
September 26, 2001: Report: Gen X Irony, Cynicism May Be Permanently Obsolete.
September 26, 2001: Jerry Falwell: Is That Guy A Dick Or What?
September 26, 2001: What Now?
September 26, 2001: Talking To Your Child About The WTC Attack.
September 26, 2001: U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We’re At War With.
September 26, 2001: President Urges Calm, Restraint Among Nation’s Ballad Singers.
September 26, 2001: Statshot: How Have We Spent the Last Two Weeks?
September 26, 2001: Dinty Moore Breaks Long Silence On Terrorism With Full-Page Ad.
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The timeless classic:
January 17, 2001: Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’.
I have this daydream in which Cheney visits a VA hospital and gets his testicles kicked up into his chest by a outraged veteran with a super-powered prosthetic leg.
I guess there's just one day for that to still happen.
my daydream is someone catches up to them the day after they retire and think they made it homefree.
For the past several weeks in the Onion's News in Brief section they've had little articles about how Bush has come into some very bizarre & painful accidents. I have a feeling these are a bit of release for the writers.
I remember reading the 9/26/01 issue, wondering how they could possibly be funny about what had just happened. They pulled it off beautifully. It was heartfelt, respectful, pissed off and very, very funny. I laughed! I cried! My favorite from that day- "God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule."
#1: i herd there's a loyalty oath for bionics.
#2: Cheney as Szell in "Marathon Man."
+1 @ #4, Mark. I had the same experience (in Chicago) - how could they possibly be funny without insulting everyone? And they were, and didn't. Excellent. You fucking go, Onion.
#4
Agreed, I think the "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" is one of my favourites. Satire is always best when it has a point.
@#4
Yep. That shot of the Towers burning, with the caption "an actual scene from real life" is etched into my memory forever.
My favourite Onion headline post-9/11 is still...
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
That first one you listed, about the 9/11 American flag cake, is very high on my list of most-admired Onion stories. It works because it undermines your expectations of what an Onion story is, which of course is already an undermined version of what a real news story is. (And it should be read after the more-on-the-nose 9/11 pieces for full effect, although even those, appropriately, were a little different in tone from the usual.)
@#4
I agree! That whole issue was an absolute masterpiece. I thought so when I first read it on 9/26/01, and I still think so today.
Also, I recall that the Onion's post-9/11 issue made me feel distinctly better about things in a way that nothing in the preceding two weeks had made me feel.
The whole compiled list of headlines makes for a really wonderful read. Thanks Teresa Nielsen Hayden for compiling it!
You good, good woman. That was like opening the pandora's box of belly laughs. Merci.
I was working for a major airline at LAX when 9/11 happened. The mood in that place was utterly bleak in the weeks after. They were trans-con flights, remember, headed for the West Coast, and many people I knew were directly affected by the loss of life. There were guys walking around with M-16's in my place of work, and bomb threats that caused mass evacuations every other day. So much of the talk in the air was about "the death of irony" and "will the country ever laugh again?" John Stewart and Dan Rather were weeping openly on television. And my only thought was "I can't wait until the Onion gets going again." And they didn't dissapoint. "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie" was my favorite, with the key line: "I always thought terrorists blowing shit up would be cool...like, if the Pentagon was bombed, I figured they'd mobilize a special elite squadron of secret-agent ninjas, and half of them would be hot babes. How could I ever think that? This is actually happening, and it's just not cool at all." How true.
Thank you, Cory. Thank you, Wolfiesma.
I had the same reaction to the post-9/11 issue that the rest of you did: I couldn't believe they'd pulled it off, and I felt better after I read it. I've still got the hardcopy version of that issue around here somewhere, with its headline, "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie." And yes, the cake article was perfect: a short story in miniature about the shock and helpless compassion of that moment.* Real satire speaks to a higher truth.
My biggest regret about my Onion list is that the titles of my favorite point/counterpoint pair were just too long for the format: September 24, 2008: "Gov. Palin Has No Foreign Policy Experience, Refuses To Acknowledge Global Warming, And Supports The War In Iraq" vs. "Please Keep Your Voice Down, My Poor Retarded Child Is Sleeping."
My fave post-9/11 Onion headline was something like "A Shattered Nation Longs To Care About Bullshit Again" accompanied by a picture of Britney with a snake draped across her shoulders.
Class.
#4 is absolutely right.
I believe that Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake is one of the most beautifully written pieces ever to appear in The Onion. It's Vonnegutian.
"My favourite Onion headline post-9/11 is still...
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!"
...That, and the article detailing where each of the 9/11 hijackers wound up. The depictions of the Hell the got and deserved should be required reading by everyone, especially their terrorist scumbag buddies. It's nothing less than a short prose update of Dante's Inferno, and about as much of a classic. It took a lot of guts for the guys at The Onion to proceed in the direction they did with the subject of 9/11, and they handled it the way a satirical needed to: by skewering the bastards who deserved it.
"Five Years Later: NYC Unveils 9/11 Memorial Hole" just may be the sharpest piece of satire I've ever read.
Surely I'm not the only one to find the cake-baking housewife story unutterably sad? I KNOW this must have happened in a thousand households.
And it's not funny.
@#3: I actually work for The Onion (not a writer) and I've become somewhat jaded, I don't laugh at the stories as much anymore. But these News In Brief Bush-injury ministories have become one of my favorite bits (well, that and 'Black Guy Asks Nation For Change.') and I'm sad to see them go (SPOILER: tomorrow's NIB story, Bush dies quietly in his sleep....before his corpse is sucked into the engine of Air Force One).
I'm curious; Dilbert is banned in many businesses (for being too true) is the Onion similarly censored in any workplace?
I want to thank Teresa for that collection. The 9/26 articles were just what I needed at the time. And my personal favorite was the Crappy Jerry Bruckheimer movie bit. Because...
"At any moment, it seemed a squadron of alien warships would materialize and begin to menace Jeff Goldblum."
not banned here, and they sometimes ban the comics curmudgeon.
Also: I'm dying at these I've missed..."Attention-to-Deficit Disorder" has me doubled over.
Alright I give up - how long are Bush Years in Onion headlines? Or in people years?
every Bush year is equivalent to twelve human eternities.
My favorite is actually from October 1998, but neatly applies to the Bush presidency:
"Poll: 73 Percent Of Americans Unable To Believe This Shit"
Avram @ 18--that "Five Years Later" piece is just perfect. I remember trying to describe the story at the time it came out--my friends didn't get that it was satire. "Uh, yeah, it's a big hole in the ground; what's your point?"
I remain very fond of Clinton Escapes Through Air Vent, July 22, 1998, for its smooth slide from news story to action-movie scenario.
My favorite is still Second Birthday In A Row Ruined By Terrorism, since it happened on my birthday, and is sourced from Hoboken, NJ, where I live.