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Watch and Discuss: The Onion News Network Covers CDC's "Don't Be Gay. Don't Smoke" Campaign
I might have treated these warnings like baseball cards - Collect 'em All!
Let me start off by saying I love The Onion, and I've loved it since it was a single print piece per day. Their satire is pointed, and their attitude is that no cow is sacred. These are things I enjoy in my humor. But their latest clip is a faux interview with the Centers for Disease Control about a new campaign to keep kids from smoking by telling them it will turn them gay, complete with extremely sexy imagery. Warning: imagery and language is mildly NSFW. Now I'm all for keeping kids from smoking - stopping after 17 years was one of the hardest things I ever did. But considering that we have Senatorial aides telling people that Playboy will turn you gay, and GLSEN spending money to get kids to stop saying "That's gay" as lame, do we really need something like this? Are our detractors smart enough to get the joke, or is this something I'm going to see quoted back to a Value Voter's Summit as fact?
(via Towelroad) Submitted by on Tue, 2009-10-06 11:50. |
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No and Probably
The average Onion read/viewer is absolute smart enough to get the joke. As are SOME of our detractors.
But that will not stop some idiot from quoting an Onion article/segment as fact. Happens all the time.
I've spent so long hoping other groups who the Onion pointed their satire at would just roll with the gag and take a moment to laugh at themselves lightly, that'd be hypocritical for me to do anythin other than that here...especially given that, as with almost everything the Onion does, I found this really amusing.
I definitely get why there would be concern, but I'm not one of the people who's concerned about it.
Agreed
Most of our detractors
Exactly Right
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Peeling the onion.
That was amazing.
Smart and sharp and perfectly pointed in all the right directions.
It was both overt and subtle simultaneously.
AND I laughed out loud.
In A Round About Sort Of Way
I laughed
So as far as I'm concerned, the ads are successful humor. I agree with herald; we can't dumb ourselves down to accomodate the low end of the bell curve. There will always be stupid people who don't get the joke -- among both our opponents and our friends.
My all time favorite "OMFG how could they be so stupid" moments was from the Seattle Gay News. It was during the Clinton years when West Wing was riding high in the Nielsen ratings. An episode of the show had President Jeb Bartlett ripping into a Dr. Laura clone for being homophobic. Two weeks later, after word of mouth and internet reviews had circulated about the show, the SGN transmogrified the episode into a front page story about President CLINTON giving Dr. Laura public dressing down during a public reception at the White House.
When it eventually retracted the story, the SGN's excuse was their reporter had been on a retreat in a Buddhist monastary for several months and didn't watch tv, so it was an honest mistake.
I laughed then too.
If the cigs don't make you gay the booze will...
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