Broadcast Spoofs
Broadcast Spoofs
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
The Onion News Network, a video series produced by the Onion fake-news empire, made a low-key debut a year ago. A near-perfect facsimile of a deadly serious cable broadcast, it brazenly courted brand confusion with CNN. A graphic display in glinting shades of steel introduced a commanding anchorman, rouged correspondents and no trace of bad-comedy wackiness.
Just as network news was trying to refashion itself as lighter and more fun, ONN emphasized vintage voice-of-god journalism, promising a ferocious approach to world events that would be “faster, harder, scarier and all-knowing.” The network’s first segment profiled an $800,000-a-year business executive who lost his job to a Mexican immigrant willing to work for $600,000. “Two thumbs way up!” said The Inland Echo of Spokane, Wash. I wrote something just as effusive. Earlier this month, ONN was nominated for four Webbys, the Internet’s highest (official) honor for excellence.
No one has panned the Onion News Network. Of course not. America has inexhaustible reserves of good will for the homespun Onion, which started as a print weekly in Wisconsin in 1988, as it does for no other national comedy institution except maybe Mark Twain. “The Simpsons” is past its prime. “The Daily Show” is admired but partisan. And each incarnation of “Saturday Night Live” bugs its audience in a new way. The Onion, though, is like overwork or pizza. It’s your patriotic duty to not not like it.
But in a laid-back way, The Onion is also a bully — hefty, hungry, hard on weirdos. Midwestern humor machines (Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Bob Newhart) have always styled themselves as conflict-averse, while also conveying that their fight is with the whole damn thing. Business, politics, scholarship, medicine, technology, nature, celebrity and virtually anything enshrined in print or on screen serves only to obscure a home truth: everybody is vain, venal, pleasure-loving and pain-fleeing.
(Continued here.)
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
The Onion News Network, a video series produced by the Onion fake-news empire, made a low-key debut a year ago. A near-perfect facsimile of a deadly serious cable broadcast, it brazenly courted brand confusion with CNN. A graphic display in glinting shades of steel introduced a commanding anchorman, rouged correspondents and no trace of bad-comedy wackiness.
Just as network news was trying to refashion itself as lighter and more fun, ONN emphasized vintage voice-of-god journalism, promising a ferocious approach to world events that would be “faster, harder, scarier and all-knowing.” The network’s first segment profiled an $800,000-a-year business executive who lost his job to a Mexican immigrant willing to work for $600,000. “Two thumbs way up!” said The Inland Echo of Spokane, Wash. I wrote something just as effusive. Earlier this month, ONN was nominated for four Webbys, the Internet’s highest (official) honor for excellence.
No one has panned the Onion News Network. Of course not. America has inexhaustible reserves of good will for the homespun Onion, which started as a print weekly in Wisconsin in 1988, as it does for no other national comedy institution except maybe Mark Twain. “The Simpsons” is past its prime. “The Daily Show” is admired but partisan. And each incarnation of “Saturday Night Live” bugs its audience in a new way. The Onion, though, is like overwork or pizza. It’s your patriotic duty to not not like it.
But in a laid-back way, The Onion is also a bully — hefty, hungry, hard on weirdos. Midwestern humor machines (Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Bob Newhart) have always styled themselves as conflict-averse, while also conveying that their fight is with the whole damn thing. Business, politics, scholarship, medicine, technology, nature, celebrity and virtually anything enshrined in print or on screen serves only to obscure a home truth: everybody is vain, venal, pleasure-loving and pain-fleeing.
(Continued here.)
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