Ever wonder what would happen if someone came across one of The Onion’s satirical pieces and mistook it for the real thing?
Titled “I’m Totally Psyched About This Abortion,” the column was written seven years ago and adopts the voice of a teenager who’s thrilled at the prospect of an invasive surgical procedure. It’s a withering piece, slamming those who say a woman who opts for an abortion is doing so frivolously. It’s also one that’s awfully hard not to see as satire:
The funny thing is, I actually have the pro-life movement to thank for this opportunity. If my HMO wouldn’t have bowed to their pressure not to cover oral contraceptives, I never would’ve gotten pregnant in the first place. Then what would I be doing a week from Thursday?
But when The Onion featured it again, an anti-abortion blogger found it and wrote a vehement rebuttal. According to Good Magazine, the result was a hilarious if vituperative exchange of comments on both the initial post and the writer’s follow-up.
(Sadly, we’ll have to take their word for it; the blogger has since disabled comments on his blog, and now both belatedly and unconvincingly claims that his original post was satirical.) (Ah, but wait: through the miracle of Google’s cache, we can find the link to the first batch here.)
Some have argued that the fundamental difference between progressives and the political right is an appreciation by the left of the importance of context. If he’s performed no other service, the blogger who has come to be known as “Onion Pete” has provided ample evidence to buttress that view.
James, you’ll be delighted to know that your post is the first hit from a Google search on “Simply Truths Our Priority” (the name of the group that thought the Onion article on gay recruitment in schools was for real).
There’s a great article waiting to happen collecting the various Onion stories that have been taken at face value as hard news and the derivative, outraged articles that result.
I posted about 2 on my blog – The Onion Spreads Gay – with a link at the bottom of the post to another Onion article that an organization of a certain stripe in the US used as evidence that Harry Potter should be banned from schools.