Dada Journalism (exit stage left)

Posted: January 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Other |

The Onion’s writers are talented, but with the advent of the Daily Show, Colbert, or even of Letterman’s move to the primetime slot in the 90’s, their brand of humor seems far less rare. So their recent series of headlines about Bush in the closing days of his presidency stood out for their unique approach to the absurd. These aren’t the stuff of South Park celebrity appearances, which revel in sort of glee that bad 10 year old boys take in throwing live frogs in the air. The Onion’s series of Presidential mishaps take their shock less from the content of each horrible event, and more in demonstrating just how irrelevant the Leader of the Free World has become in the dominant news cycles.

As we inched toward the end of a horrible eight years, the Onion’s writers pushed the mishaps into more and more dramatic territory, like the louder and louder shouts of an insistent toddler being carted off to bed. Here are the standouts, in chronological order:

11/12 - Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase

11/19 - Crocodile Bites Off Bush’s Arm

11/28 - Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone

12/04 - Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade for 26 Blocks

12/08 - Bush’s Eyelid Accidentally Nailed to Wall

12/18 - America’s First Gay President Concludes Historic Second Term

01/14 - Spider Eggs Hatch in Bush’s Brain

01/20 - Bush Dies Peacefully in His Sleep

I wish no more harm to the man than I do toward Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but this series calls to mind all the people in the world who wished Bush had returned to Texas sooner, but who in the end hardly needed to pay attention to his actions anyway.

In the end, The Onion is actually improved as an RSS feed, since it’s all about the poetry of the headlines anyway. There was a good story a while back about their process.

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