The clarion call of justice is sounding across America once again, thanks to the tireless efforts of its finest purveyor of made-up news.
The Onion, the long-running satirical publication, has filed a very real legal document with the US supreme court, urging it to take on a case centered on the right to parody. And in order to make a serious legal point, the filing does what the Onion does best, offering a big helping of total nonsense.
The Onion’s gone very tame. Not enough punching against the current orthodoxy.
The Babylon Bee however…..
Not as…acerbic.. as it used to be, but they’re right in filing the amicus brief…
The US supremes (if they decide to do a ruling..) upholding a verdict against any form of parody… Well… that’s really, really bad.. With many knock-on effects..
Unlike the Bee I’m not aware of the Onion being banned from any social media which would confirm that they’re a lot more in step with todays establishment.
The Daily Mash stopped being funny years ago, falling to Cameron Derangement Syndrome (lol). Private Eye has been unreadable for years, but I hear they’re still screeching, unfunnily, about Brexit.
Yes I’d forgotten about the Mash.
Say it very quietly but over the pond when he first started in the business Stephen Colbert was quite funny. Hard to believe isn’t it?
RIP Mash, you were funny once but just became another leftist rag. Just Brexit and evil Tories. Babylon Bee is excellent.
“In May, a US appeals court backed the police in the case … The court’s decision suggests that parodists are in the clear only if they pop the balloon in advance by warning their audience that their parody is not true.”
Typical bloody septics – “it’s OK as long as you use tags”. And they call us wogs…
Long ago Private Eye gave my wife a “free” lifetime subscription. Then some decades ago they just stopped it. Like that! Fuck contracts! It followed its transformation into a smug, mildly leftist, formerly satirical rag. No coincidence, I imagine.
If it’s the Onion I’m thinking of, it was always tediously unfunny articles but with great headlines.
Surely the sign of a good parody is that you are not sure if it’s real or a pisstake. Why would anybody want to mess with that.
BiW; When I was an undergrad, back in the dying days of the 20th century, someone published online a university specific version of the Onion for a brief while, the Durham Shallot. Perhaps realising this tendency it had, along with articles, a number of articleless headlines, one of which has stuck with me for decades:
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