Monday, Oct. 7, 2002 | 8:21 a.m.
Sept. 11 changed everything.
But not The Onion.
The hip satirical faux newspaper/online publication actually held form. While other publications, media outlets and comedians wondered quietly and aloud, "when it was OK to laugh again," The Onion was ready.
It was one of the first media outlets to take edgy humor back to the public, via its online site TheOnion.com and its print edition, available at some newsstands as well as through subscriptions.
In its first post-Sept. 11 issue, barely two weeks after the horrors of that day, the ironic paper was posting headlines such as "U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With," "Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell," "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie" and the now classic, "God Angrily Clarifies Don't Kill' Rule."
"That was a really tough issue to put together," Onion writer John Krewson, 34, said in a recent phone interview from The Onion offices in New York. "I wasn't sure we could do it, frankly."
The Onion not only pulled it off brazenly cracking jokes amid a sense of national despair the publication received numerous accolades for its efforts.
"While other comedians had trouble smiling at all, the Onion scribes turned out heart-wrenching too-truisms infused with their trademark deadpan takes (President Urges Calm, Restraint Among Nation's Ballad Singers'). So thanks are in order, because at that point laughter was a scarce commodity," said Entertainment Weekly, in designating the Sept. 26 issue of The Onion one of the 10 Best Moments of the Internet in 2001.
"Apparently no one told the editors at The Onion that Sept. 11 marked the end of irony in America ... rather than coming off as insensitive, the satire tells a bitter truth: The problem is complicated, the danger real, and the future uncertain," stated an article by Jeffrey Benner in Wired magazine.
"Embarrassing attention," Krewson called it.
But such praise illustrates the point that The Onion has become the de facto counter-culture voice of generations X and Y. The underground publication has drawn comparisons to such former satirical institutions as Mad magazine and National Lampoon and, to a lesser degree, the now-defunct Spy magazine.
"It's a great honor to be considered of that legacy and to carry on that tradition," said Rob Siegel, 30, Onion editor-in-chief. "For whatever reason, America only seems to have room for one humor publication at a time. For now, we seem to fit that bill for most people."
"The history of The Onion is boringly complicated," said Krewson, who has been writing for The Onion for more than a decade. "You know how things can be."
Essentially, The Onion was born in 1988 as a Weekly World News parody at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
"It was a parody of a parody. The basis of the entire newspaper was flawed," Krewson said. "It was fun to read and everything, but having your own campus Weekly World News, we outgrew that fairly quickly and became the USA Today parody we are now.
"I don't think the stuff we wrote back then is bad. I don't think the stuff I wrote back then is bad. I think that what we have now is a better venue for both funny, silly, goofy jokes and serious social satire."
As the mock paper got better, it got bigger, arriving on the Internet in 1996. With millions of potential readers only a few clicks away, The Onion has a distinct circulation advantage over its underground predecessors, which relied mainly on word of mouth at newsstands and among friends.
"National Lampoon was a cult thing," Siegel said. "It reached a national audience with movies, but the actual magazine was read by stoners and college kids. I don't want to be so presumptuous to say this, but there are certain pockets of our audience that National Lampoon didn't really reach.
"We're really popular with stiff white guys in suits in their cubicles. Most of our readers are in big nondescript office buildings sneaking a peek at it during lunch."
With the Internet, weekly readership hovers around 2 million.
"It's what Lifetime Network probably draws on a Monday at 2 in the afternoon," Siegel said. "If you could graph our growth, it would be almost a flatline, maybe point up just slightly."
It takes all kinds
It is easy to imagine The Onion workplace as a group of college graduates and burnouts, with comedic sensibilites sharpened by years of exposure to David Letterman, Monty Python, "The Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live."
The reality is not far removed.
The atmosphere at The Onion office, relocated from Madison to New York City in 2001, is still a college newspaper/dormroom setting.
Foosball matches. Krispy Kreme-donut binges. T-shirts and shorts. And lots of screwing around.
The only real restriction is a ban on nudity among staff.
"But it doesn't always work," Seigel joked.
The writers at The Onion are all in their late late 20s or early 30s and live fairly pedestrian lives. At least, when compared to the frat-boy antics of the National Lampoon writing staff during the humor publication's heyday in the '70s.
"The National Lampoon guys were kind of legendary drinkers and drug users. And, by and large, we're pretty straight," Siegel said. "I think the drug of choice here would be Paxil or Prozac, if anything."
Outside of The Onion, the writers have almost no experience in comedy writing.
Or journalism, for that matter.
"I guess I would come the closest" to having a journalism background, Siegel said. "I wrote for the (University of Michigan) newspaper for a little bit. I covered women's field hockey. Big things like that."
After graduating, he eventually moved to Madison in 1994 where he freelanced for local publications. That's when he discovered The Onion.
"I loved it," Siegel said. "I started writing for it and within a year I became the assistant editor. And I worked my way up from there."
Relaxing in his office while eating an early evening lunch, Siegel laughed when reminded of how enviable his job is: overseeing a group of dopey guys and girls as they churn out pointed, merciless articles that both relish and mock the obvious.
"The context is really collegiate in spirit, but then when we actually get down to business and work, it can really resemble and sound and feel like a real newspaper," Siegel said. "We discuss the graphics and the lead and which story (to) go with: 'Have we been doing too much Iraq coverage, have we not been doing enough?'
"So there is that professionalism. It's like a loose ship and a tight ship."
Spot-on parody
How good a parody is The Onion?
Sometimes too good.
A recent article in The Onion headlined "Report: Al-Qaeda Allegedly Engaging in Telemarketing" was taken too literally.
According to a Sept. 26 story in the Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer, a detective with the Branch County sheriff's department used information from The Onion article to warn residents of telemarketing fraud in the area.
A four-paragraph release issued by the sheriff's department to local media stated:
"In the course of this investigation, it was learned that this is going on throughout the United States and some of these telemarketing programs are believed to to be operated by Al-Qaeda. The CIA has announced that they acquired a videotape showing Al-Qaeda members making phone solicitations for vacation home rentals, long distance telephone service, magazine subscriptions and other products."
The sheriff's department warning reads remarkably similar to a fictional quote from CIA Director George Tenet in The Onion article:
" 'This video, obtained from a credible third-party source, features grainy footage of a group of men strongly believed to be al-Qaeda members making phone solicitations for vacation-home rentals, long-distance phone service, magazine subscriptions, and a vast array of other products and services. ' "
In the Enquirer story, Detective Dan Nichols is quoted as saying:
"We wanted people to be aware of telemarketing scams, and I used the information just in case there is a remote possibility. We have no indication that Al-Qaida is involved, but we wanted people to know there are telemarketing scams."
Anthony Fargo, assistant professor of mass communication at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the detective's faux pas for the faux story is an example of The Onion's high quality of writing.
"They do a remarkably good job of imitating straight news style," he said. "And I can certainly understand how somebody not familiar with the news publication might take it seriously if they saw an isolated report instead of the entire Web page or the entire publication, which I think would make it very clear it's a satirical site.
"I think of it as a kind of an adult Mad magazine. I think they do a wonderful job of lampooning current events as well as corporate journalism."
Still growing
The Onion has become more than a weekly goof on print journalism. It's a franchise.
In addition to three other Onion books -- "Our Dumb Century," "Dispatches From the Tenth Circle: The Best of The Onion" and "The Onion's Finest News Reporting" -- there's the just-released "The Onion: Ad Nauseam" (Three Rivers Press, $17), which is a complete collection of every article published in the paper between October 2000 to October 2001.
The Onion staff has also been at work on a low-budget feature film with David Zucker of "Airplane" and the "Naked Gun" series fame.
The as-yet-untitled flick would be a sketch comedy much like the '70s cult classic "Kentucky Fried Movie," which Zucker co-wrote, along with brother Jerry Zucker and friend Jim Abrahams.
"It's going to be interesting to see how our sensibility translates to something that's not The Onion," Krewson said. "The Onion itself is such a specific medium ... and we've become very used to saying ridiculous things in a very dry, AP-style news voice and constructing humor from that.
"We're all really itching to try our hand at something else."
Even with the film and book projects, Siegel said The Onion remains anything but mainstream.
"I don't think we're a household name by any means," Siegel said. "I think there are far more people who don't know The Onion than do know The Onion.
"I think we will, no matter how hard we try, remain a large underground ... or at most, a very small overground, phenomenon."
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