Comments on: Comments on 3468

Post number 3468

miamirelative — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:18:39 -0800

What's The Bunion? It's a parody of The Onion. That's right, a parody of a parody. Sheesh! Funny, though.

By: waxpancake

waxpancake — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:31:28 -0800

Depends on your sense of humor, I suppose. It seemed pretty stupid and unoriginal to me. (Except for maybe the "Area Man Joke Gone Too Far" headline. The Onion does seem to use that term in every issue.)

By: highindustrial

highindustrial — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:57:39 -0800

Rule of thumb: a parody should be smarter than the object of its ridicule. A dumb parody is a wretched creature indeed. The Bunion is a dumb parody. Now, The Onion probably *is* ripe for some sort of skewering, but that would require research and planning, not lazy semantic tomfoolery. Or does mocking up someone else's layout constitute a parody on its own terms? The question of the hour, perhaps one for the ages.

By: holloway

holloway — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 17:58:52 -0800

What? No Herbert Kornfeld...mayhaps as Hitler? Eminen? bah humbug. "Wacky Pop Culture Reference Made in Reference to Above Photo" "body part was this big" "Look at my t-shirt. It's Heracles vs Epiphanes. F--king brilliant" "Black man dares to open mouth about X" "Janet Reno explains surgery hiccup X" "Area man taunts police to handcuff him after 'pooping' in town water supply" (yes, I know. That's the point.)

By: davidgentle

davidgentle — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:15:34 -0800

I think the point is to attack the formulas that the onion uses. Parody and satire don't have to be funnier than the original but they do have to make a point about it. I think that the bunion does.

By: holgate

holgate — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:38:48 -0800

They should have got Greg Knauss to do it.

By: skallas

skallas — Sat, 30 Sep 2000 02:26:32 -0800

Once they parodied the typical "Take a mundane midwestern/office/suburban event and make it a news story," it all went down hill from there. That's mostly what the onion does, and if you try hard not to remember the formula it makes for hilarious weekly reading.

By: wendell

wendell — Sat, 30 Sep 2000 08:08:53 -0800

Been there. Done that. Got bored. Moved on. Didn't beat it to death. (Maybe THAT was my mistake.)