Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines for America's Finest News Source (Running Press Miniature Editions (Hardcover))
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![]() | Product Details: Hardcover 192 pages Release Date: 21 April 2004 Publisher: Running Press Miniature Editions ISBN: 0762418664 Rating: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sales Rank: 34654 | ![]() | Look for similar books by subject:
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| ![]() | Customer Reviews:![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is why satire was invented (12 February 2004)Satire is used to perfection in this book, a ficticious recounting of the headlines of the 20th Century. As the editor of this newspaper calls it, this is "funny fake news." The great thing about this book is that the stories are often related with the utter indifference one suspects reporters must develop after years on the job, packaged for the short attention span the public often has. These articles take the folly and "real" stories behind the stories, the ones that were never talked about in their day, and prints them as front page and headline news. Try, for example: "Eleanor Roosevelt, Nation Hails our First Lesbian President." Or regarding Pearl Harbor, "Dastardly Japs Bomb Colonially Occupied US Non-State." Or how about terming Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio's magical appeal as, "Nation Captived by Fairytale Wedding of Sullen Loner, Depressed Pill-Popper." Or the optimistic, "Drugs Win Drug War" alongside a picture of a bong-smoking man in tie-dye approaching the presidential podium. Page after page of "reprinted" front pages (a joke in itself, because there certainly was no Onion in 1904) makes this a great read which literally brought tears to my eyes. Life ain't always pretty, but with the Onion it is always funny. Andrew Parodi The earlier stuff, where the editors have wider opportunity to make stories up entirely, is much better than the more recent material, which by necessity has to rely largely on satirical views of news events we've already seen lampooned to death. As one commentator lower down in the pack realised, it is important to ignore the comments of those reviewers who say "Don't buy it if you're politically correct." They're the idiots who think jokes about "China-men" are *about* the Chinese, and would presumably fail too to see the real butt of the story "Christopher Reeve Placed Atop Washington Monument" in the companion volume "Finest News Reporting Vol. 1." In truth of course, The Onion is impeccably politically correct (in the real sense of the term), aiming as it does to "accelerate" the evolution of commonsense and decency by highlighting the absurdities of our previous views and forcing them to be cast aside. This is one funny book. (It could hardly be two funny books - unless you use a hacksaw) Buy it. Laugh. | ![]() |
















