The Day the Onion Apologized

On Sunday, satirical magazine The Onion called a nine-year-old girl a “c*nt” while pretending to be a media outlet calling a nine-year-old girl a “c*nt.” This strange circularity is no common occurrence. In fact, in the 25-year-long existence of The Onion — the real doyen of the satirical press, comparable to Spain’s El Mundo Today, whose humor lies in precisely how much its absurd articles mimic the form of the serious press — the magazine had never previously seen itself embroiled in such controversy, which lasted all day Monday and into Tuesday. Never before had it been obliged to publish a painfully earnest press release apologizing to its readers for having crossed the line.

Nonetheless, the girl that they “insulted” wasn’t just any girl, and the word they used to do so wasn’t one that can be bandied about in the United States with impunity. The little girl was Quvenzhané Wallis, the universally adored star of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the break-out film of 2012 which made her the youngest ever Oscar nominee for Best Actress. She was attending the awards ceremony when The Onion, which has an impressive Internet presence and following, tweeted the comment that created uproar: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a c*nt, right?”

The comment has the same logic as the rest of The Onion’s content (it is as if the tweet’s author had said, “Wouldn’t it be just like those tabloids to call a nine-year-old girl a c*nt to provoke a reaction?”) but on this occasion it was greeted with such a deluge of criticism that, the next day, an incident that started and ended on the Internet was being discussed almost as much as any other story relating to the Oscars.

What’s more, The Onion chose the word “c*nt” for its shock value; it is a term with many meanings that can also be used as a vulgar term for female genitalia. In the United States, it is much worse to call a woman a “c*nt” than it is to call her a “zorra” in Spanish — and we’re talking about “zorra” in the most chauvinistic sense of the word, where it is used to accuse somebody of having the cunning maliciousness associated with the worst kind of stereotype, not where it just refers to their sexual tendencies. To do so is to call her a vagina in the most reductive and misogynous sense of the term: Something weak to be penetrated, as was so exhaustively explained in that episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Judging by the invariable indignation the comment caused, it is a universally accepted truth that using the word to describe a perfectly innocent girl — even with the aim of parody — is a serious matter no matter which way you look at it.

The controversy which kicked up has been justified by some, who offer the explanation that American sensibilities were already running high that night because of the graphic humor of Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” and presenter of the ceremony. His anarchic style of offense for offense’s sake had enraged a number of viewers for its misogyny (see his musical number “We Saw Your Boobs,” dedicated to all the actresses who have won an Oscar for a role which featured them naked, branded by liberal publication Salon as “a celebration of rape scenes in cinema”).* All of which leaves the following question: If MacFarlane was being reprehensibly offensive by reducing women to their sexual organs, shouldn’t The Onion have been spared the tar from that particular brush for parodying precisely that attitude?

The magazine’s chief executive, Steve Hannah, must not have thought so. On Monday, he signed a press release in which he explained that, “No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire,” adding, “We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again,” before addressing Wallis directly to set the record straight: “You are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.”

This has not been The Onion’s most serious scandal. The publication, whose notorious headlines range from the deliciously everyday — “Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequence” — to the provocative — “Black Guy Asks Nation For Change,” upon Obama’s election in 2008 — perhaps its most memorable piece along with “Donald Trump Stares Forlornly At Tiny, Aged Penis In Mirror Before Putting On Clothes, Beginning Day” in 2012 — is also renowned because some of its articles are taken so seriously that they provoke angry comments on social media (there is a whole blog dedicated to these instances) or end up being printed in some unsuspecting newspaper. This happened with “news” stories such as “Study Finds Every Style Of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults” or “Congress Threatens To Leave DC Unless New Capitol Is Built.” In November, the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily celebrated that the American press had chosen Kim Jong-Un as the sexiest man alive — perhaps the magazine’s most talked-about intrusion on the “real” world.

None of these incidents prompted the magazine to lay its cards on the table, get serious and explain where they understood the line to be. The Wallis tweet, on the other hand, did. It is a problematic decision: As soon as this type of publication sets the precedent of apologizing, what is to stop it doing so the next time that somebody considers its work rude? Before, they were protected by the ambiguity of their “anything goes” attitude and their arrogant insistence that “you can take it or leave it.” Now, the publication that calls itself “America’s Finest News Source” has not only set out its idea of wrong for the first time. It has, by extension, defined its idea of right.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.