In 2000 — when I was in college — I discovered The Onion and thought it was genius; I stayed up all night reading literally the entire archive. It was like the moment that Mozart discovered music, only if Mozart was much less talented — I guess it was more like the moment that Hoobastank discovered music.
The Onion these days rarely parodies left-wing shibboleths. Since the media environment has been cleaved into left-wing and right-wing spaces, The Onion has nestled into the progressive lane, with The Babylon Bee becoming its right-leaning counterpart. The Bee makes jokes about the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers, but IMHO, it lacks the spark of The Onion in the ‘90s/2000s. Though, to be fair: I think that era of The Onion was one of the funniest things ever, anywhere. Age bias is probably at play here — this might be a “the best SNL cast is the one when you were twelve” situation — but I stand by my opinion that maybe nothing was funnier than The Onion in the late ‘90s/early 2000s.
The present-day Onion doesn’t parody DSA-thought, but the Golden Age Onion did. Usually not intentionally — The Onion mocked dumb behavior, generally; it just so happens that the DSA has often adopted those behaviors. For example, I recently saw this tweet:
And the ostentatious placement of a Black guy front-and-center in an overwhelmingly white crowd reminded me of this:
Another example came from a viral clip from an Oxford student.1 The Oxford Union invited a right-wing activist named Tommy Robinson to debate the proposition “The West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam". This was — obviously — controversial, and crowds gathered outside the debate that had to be controlled by a large police presence. And that led one of the student debaters opposed to Robinson to make this twisted argument:
So…she’s saying that people are so offended by the notion that Islam is a violent religion that they’re…threatening violence? That reminded me of this article that would never, ever run these days:
AOC freezing her eggs also caused me to flash back to The Onion. It was not okay in some circles to respond to AOC’s choice with “Sure, whatever” — you had to celebrate her decision as a resounding girlboss triumph. That was true even though those same circles — which often include climate doomers — frequently celebrate the choice to not have kids. Which brought to mind this:
There’s also the belief by some in the DSA that we’d be living in a utopia if not for evil capitalists. This is downstream of the classical Marxist belief that man is corrupted by capitalism, and if that system was removed, the results would be beautiful. The modern manifestation of this belief is the counter-empirical conviction that things have never been worse, and that society’s ills could easily be solved if only we possessed the will. That breezy, childlike view of social progress — especially when combined with brainless populism — reminds me of this:
And finally, the Golden Age Onion did at least one article that’s not about behaviors many socialists have adopted — it’s about actual socialists. I speak of this classic:
I miss the classic Onion. The modern version makes me laugh sometimes, but not nearly as often. The Golden Age Onion writers went on to be major players at shows I loved including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, so that group of Wisconsinites had a shockingly disproportionate amount of influence on my sense of humor. I hope they take that as a compliment. But I do think that stuff they wrote 30 years ago often captures the present moment at least as well — and often better — than stuff people are writing now.
The Religious Left is Turning Comedy into Christian Rock
I have said the n-word. I have argued at length that Gavroche -- the plucky street urchin from Les Mis -- should have been thrown in jail, because he’s a pickpocket. I have looked an 80 year-old woman straight in the eyes and said “Hey Betty White: Shut the fuck up.”
Why I Write About the DSA Left So Much
I feel guilty about writing yesterday about the activist duo who recruited Graham Platner. There are, after all, far more important things than a maddening interview with a couple that seems like an AI-generated caricature of smug leftists. My first line of defense is simply that I’m a comedian, and that guy’s Henry-Kissing…
Who, to be fair, has no ties to the DSA that I know of. Here, I’m expanding “DSA” to “leftists, generally”, because I think it’s fair to say that the view expressed by this student is common in the DSA.
I think you’re not giving the modern Onion enough credit. The contributors’ online presences are a brilliant performance art piece where they play the persona of annoying, dumb socialists who get annoyed at the DNC for not being anti-capitalism and pro-Mao and get really mad at like Harry Potter or Doctor Who for being racist
Also every time I open your articles from my email after reading to comment the app crashes for some reason. Idk why it’s just you, but you could say your articles are so good substack cant even contain them
1. To quote Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun." Political activists tend to be much the same, regardless of what era of history they live in--just look at the failed communal experiments in America in the mid-19th century.
2. One thing about the Babylon Bee is that they will actually poke fun at/satirize their actual core audience or things their actual core audience likes. I'm not sure if the Onion does that anymore, or could get away with it even if it did. I will welcome correction on this point.