Satire In The Onion

I’m Not Serious, But Neither Are You: A Response to the Onion’s
“Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere”
With their masthead proudly bearing the motto of “America’s Finest News Source”, The Onion is never lacking for chutzpah, or humor. This rag never ceases in its quest to make up news that is funny enough to divert the average American, oversaturated with the constant drip of talk show hyperbole, from the latest crisis demanding their attention. Despite the commitment to fiction and the ridiculous, readers can occasionally find penetrating commentary on current affairs, albeit always bearing the marks of the absurd. The Onion’s commentary, while not conforming to the traditional Aristotelian mode of rhetoric, can still inform

us on some of the myriad permutations the three main rhetorical devices: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.
While intelligent satire can be compelling regardless of source, the bully-pulpit that internet readers afford to The Onion based on their long established history of mockery and lampoonery is unique when compared to other satirical news sources.

The Onion never pretends to be the humorous, chic alternative to the network news in the vein of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” Rather than bothering with commentary on actual news stories, The Onion’s writers and editors would sooner fabricate their own news and allow you to make judgements as to its real world application as you see fit. However, it is in their absolute commitment to buffoonery that their Ethos is truly established. The original Aristotelian definition of Ethos points us in the right direction. “Persuasion is achieved by the speakers personal character when the speech is so spoken as too make us think him credible.” (Aristotle, 493) Even though Aristotle is speaking about individuals, in contrast to the anonymous articles published in The Onion, we still can examine an institutional Ethos that permeates the whole of the organization and project. We find The Onion to be credible because of their perceived lack of bias. By mocking both sides of an issue with equal enthusiasm and vigor, their credibility as satirists is established. Where other sources, even satirical sources, tend to sway in who they lambast and who gets away without egg on their face, The Onion’s track record of consistency is their greatest

strength in critiquing other forms of journalism.
Given this understanding of priorities, it would be easy to dismiss the Onion as having no argument to make or perspective to offer. However, while the Onion makes no claim to any new, modern form of journalism, it successfully inverts the tropes and stereotypes of the “mainstream” media to great effect. Through the use of common devices and schemas of network news, such as the expert interview, superfluous mail from watchers, and images of public servants bent over in deep conversation at the scene of the incident, the absurdity of the whole prepackaged news product is exposed without any explicit criticism of method or design. The Logos of this explicit example of traditional news tropes, combined with the quasi implicit messages attached to them combines for biting sarcasm and criticism. For example, when the “reporter” on the scene says at the end “I’m just some fucking guy” (The Onion, Breaking News), he completely blows up the implied trust in news reporters that networks cultivate. In the end, what the Onion does is something very much like Socratic irony “...pretended ignorance whereby self-professed expert’s overconfident claim to knowledge is subverted.” (Socratic Method, The Oxford Companion) In this case, traditional news media are the experts undone by a single question at the heart of the video. “Why does this matter?”
Nearly the same can be said for the emotional appeals of the video.

Through trotting out the typical reactions to events akin to the “bullshit” they are reporting on, The Onion effectively demonstrates the foolishness of these reactions. When the anchor says “An attractive witness described the event in breathless terms” (The Onion, Breaking News), it’s hard not to read this as a criticism of the over-dramatization of minor news stories by the major networks. This is compounded by the matter-of-fact way that the anchor in choice describes exactly what is going to happen before it happens to the effect of causing the viewer to see just how formulaic the typical news cycle is through a simple description. Through passionless narrative of an event that, at the beginning, is already judged to be “bullshit”, it becomes apparent just how emotionless typical news stories are, despite attempts to convince viewers otherwise. In this way, the video subverts the standard definition of pathos, “The emotional quality of the speech or text that makes it persuasive to the audience.” (OWL @ Purdue, Introduction to Pathos) by rendering the information in a clinical sober way and thus inciting amusement and

chagrin.
While the rhetoric used by The Onion is by no definition academic or professional, it nevertheless communicates the absurdity of the typical cables news network story with a kind of laser like accuracy and precision. Through their commitment to mocking all sides of the story as well as their use of inverted and passionless over exaggerating of common news techniques, The Onion successfully provides a biting criticism of our system of 24 hour news without ever explicitly saying what has to be on their minds; “Why do you watch this bullshit anyway?” (813)