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

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

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