The next-day Oscar talk ought to be about The Ghost of William Shatner opening the ceremony, despite not having played Captain Kirk for 20 years, or the bizarre nostalgic tribute to a movie, Dreamgirls, that came out seven years ago. Instead, the Internet’s in a tiff about something The Onion tweeted in regards to impossibly adorable nine-year-old Beasts of a Southern Wild actress, Quvenzhané Wallis. “Foul language alert,” which is the problem for many.
The general opinion is best summed up by something The Bunk wrote soon after The Onion deleted the tweet.
So, what do you guys think? At the risk of sounding too preachy, my thoughts are somewhere along the lines of: the message of the joke doesn’t bother me — I like what, I think, The Onion was trying to do, which is call out the way we talk about celebrities, and the terrible, awful things we say about people we’ve never met, including kids — but, well, it’s that “I think” that’s the problem.
The joke’s too ambiguous, so its defenders are grasping for straws, while the offenders are screaming at The Onion for picking on a child. Thing is, that’s not what they were doing (hopefully) — they could have instead picked on Anne Hathaway (who people have called the c-word, and much worse, because people are dumb), but they went with Wallis. That’s what The Onion does; they go for the most shocking target to satirize something in our culture, in this case, the way E! is going to devote hours of coverage to Meryl Steep looking magnificent and Amanda Seyfried, a whore. Well intentioned, poorly executed.
And beside, Quvenzhané Wallis, who is 17 kinds of awesome, don’t care. After all…
Well, “woman.”
UPDATE: The Onion has issued an apology…
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/photo/679/thumb)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/onion-fry-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2012/12/internet-college-sweater-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2012/11/kimjongun-school-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2012/11/Screen-shot-2012-11-01-at-1.15.29-PM-150x150.png)
She’s a kid, is awesome, and that’s why the joke is so outstanding.
I think people don’t get the idea of “hyperbole”. I’m pretty sure that’s the problem.
All that’s missing is Wooderson re-tweeting with “No imagine that she’s white.” [cue tears].
*now
[real tears]
I’m looking forward to tomorrow when everyone will be outraged about something else.
I’m looking forward to this afternoon when everyone will be outraged about something else.
I’m looking forward to the next reply to this comment when everyone will be outraged about something else.
Off-topic: Obama is totally a Muslim you faggots.
I’m looking forward to the Outrage Awards. But I don’t think this one really has the legs to fetch a nomination.
Me neither. Limbaugh is the heavy favorite for calling Sandra Fluke a slut.
Damn liberal bias.
I’m offended that, in 2013, there are still people out there that dont realize The Onion is satire.
“wont someone please think about the children?!?”
I think people get so enraged with things that the “this is satire” claim doesn’t have any effect. I laughed at the Tweet, but it came from The Onion. If it came from Ted Nugent I think I’d feel differently.
@tobias funke — sure, but Ted Nugent is kind of a cunt.
Kind of?
Best tweet of the night by far. If someone doesn’t get why that’s funny, they should probably not be following the onion.
I’m much more offended by this Wendell Pierce character and his desire to hunt down the satirist.
Bring the satirist to justice! Let the court hear his or her pleas of mercy!
If you think Wendall Pierce is bad, check out Edward Champion on Twitter. He went after the Onion by going after the AV Club.
At least Wendell Pierce is a talented guy who I have heard of. Can’t say the same of that Champion twerp.
Absolutely.
Twitter isn’t the best medium for it because it’s harder to convey what they were trying to convey: extreme hyperbole.
That being said, it’s pretty obvious that they were mocking celebrity worship. The people out there who literally think they were calling a 9-year-old girl that word are just being willfully ignorant because they enjoy being offended and indignant. Which is a HUGE problem we have in our social discourse.
As for Bunk…there you go again, giving a fuck when it’s not your turn to give a fuck.
agreed, appropriate or not I don’t get how someone could take it as a serious insult to the girl.
I really don’t care what The Onion was trying to do or that people are upset. It’s a tweet. And it’s The Onion, so I would never take said tweet seriously.
Does it have to be a big thing? There are dozens of other things to be more upset about in this world.
The only thing that I’m upset about is that apology. STOP APOLOGIZING YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!!! I wish one comedian would just respond to the outrage by saying FUCK YOU PUSSIES, TOUGHEN UP! No one ever does, they all wuss out and apologize, or step back in some way. Louie is the one guy I credit with standing behind his stuff, even when its “outrageously offensive”, but even he steps back and plays this little nice game too often. ENOUGH. FUCK ‘EM!
Adam Carolla never backs down. Lots of that is because he’s mostly his own boss, doing a podcast, standup,and writing books. It helps when you’re not getting your paycheck from a corporation scared of bad pub.
I think the joke could have gotten by by using a less abbrasive word (“jerk”, “diva”, ect.) Calling a prepubescent girl the c-word is usually reserved for places like 4chan and reddit.
I am with you on that – I found the intent of the joke to be funny but think they went a bit too far with that word.
Jerk/diva/asshole/Presidential Candidate misses the point of the hyperbole and satire they were apparently going for.
I would have used “bitch.” Then again, I’m not cutting-edge like The Onion.
Yeah, probably right. I don’t think they were in the wrong either way, but they could’ve gotten the same effect with a slightly lesser word. “Jerk” or “diva” would’ve been weak enough to be reasonably construed as sincere, though, so I think “bitch” or “asshole” would’ve been a nice middle ground.
NO, it couldn’t have gotten by with less. That’s the entire point of the joke – it’s complete inappropriateness. Hyperbole is the key to the joke – calling an innocent (presumably ) nice, sweet, whatever child – a fucking cunt – is the joke.
bitch, jerk, diva etc? would have been more offensive because it could conceivably have been read to be a real comment – saying cunt clearly signaled the satirical nature, and created a dissonance – which is the source of the comedy.
@AB I don’t know, maybe I’m just being uptight, but I do kinda have a problem with someone, even a professional satirist, calling a nine year old girl (who by all accounts is very sweet) a c*nt.
If hyperbole is the key to the joke, then by that logic the next time the President announces something important, a satirist should be able to say “That Barack can be such a N**ga!” and people should not get mad. They will though. There are just cultural taboos that are unnecessary to cross to still be funny.
Yeah, I get the premise of the joke just fine. As a concept it’s quite clever, honestly. But sometimes crossing the line in certain ways just plain isn’t necessary, especially when you’re stepping into territory like using *really* loaded words with racist, sexist etc. histories behind them. As a feminist, I have issues with being comfortable even with the use of bitch, on a writing/dialogue/humor level, when it’s in contextual reference to a woman. That and c**t just have such a painful background to them, I generally can’t help but cringe.
Well, that sucks. They should’ve stuck to their guns. It was a great joke.
Great joke? Now THAT’S hyperbole! It was mildly humorous at best.
I hope everyone was smart enough (fat chance) not to mention anything about this to Wallis. I doubt she reads The Onion and could live the rest of her life happily without knowing about their bad joke.
It might have been a tad tasteless, but I think that the Onion was just doing what it does – satirizing society. I personally hate the c-word, however, people use it freely when dealing with women like Anne Hathaway. I mean, what has that person ever done to you to warrant such a hateful opinion?
I also enjoyed the Kathy Griffin bit a few years ago when she was hosting a red carpet show and she told celebrities that Dakota Fanning (who was maybe 12 at the time) had gone into rehab and asked for them to give her well wishes.
Fuck Wendell Pierce.
Seconded.
DON’T FUCK WITH THE BUNK.
No, fuck you.
yeah, fuck that guy twice. Once for not getting the joke, and the second time for thinking it’s ‘more wrong’ to say this about a kid if that kid is from N’ahlins… ya know, cuz katrina. fucking twat
Phew, I’m relieved people found this funny here. I thought the amount of over the top it was the better.
last week, Uproxxx deemed Lisa Lampinelli’s tweet calling Lena Dunham “my nigga” the “Worst Tweet Ever” (while seemingly forgetting the fact that there are tweets calling for the assassination of our president on a minute-by-minute basis, but whatevs). Is this worse, the same, a non-story? I’m looking for Uproxx to get back up on their high-horse and tell us were we are all wrong and that they know better. Not saying what the Onion did was right or wrong, but it is a comedy site and it shouldn’t come as a shock.
Imo, every Tweet by Lisa Lampinelli is the worst tweet ever. She was never funny, not even for 10 minutes, and no one likes her, and that’s why she got jumped on for calling Lena “my nigga”.
I dont think you can find 1 or 2 people who would call Wallis a cunt in real life, she seems all kinds of awesome. That combined with it being the Onion makes it funny. Lampinelli isnt funny and she just does stupid shit in general.
I find the whole concept of there being “standards” on Twitter humorous.
Haha. I agree. The Onion says “The tweet was taken down withen an hour of publication.” Or maybe it just moved to the bottom of everyone’s twitter feed and was never seen again.
Msot of the outrage I’ve seen (on my Facebook newsfeed, admittedly a self-selecting sample) wasn’t because she is a child, but because she is a black child. One went as far as to say “The Onion would never say that about a white child,” which is missing the joke on every possible level.
On the other hand, it is now safe to say that The Onion would never say that about a white child.
Still missing the point, of course, but it’s safe to say it now.
As much as I’d love to say that only the Left has this problem, lots of people on my team got their panties in a knot a few weeks back when Jamie Foxx joked about killing white people in Djanjo.
That joke was funny, and so was this one.
(By the way, how many people ripping The Onion laughed their asses off at that joke? A lot I bet).
@ stinky – this is why the onion should have, instead of posting an apology/retraction, made the same or worse jokes about every comparable individual they could think of – make it a running game.
This is why I don’t have twitter. I just don’t care, about anything.
Humor is about absurdity. If people don’t understand the absurdity of calling a little kid a “cunt,” especially when the premise that everyone is thinking it but are just afraid to say it, then those people are stupid.
So, every other subject the Onion has targeted is just dandy, but this one time it’s “horrendous”. Okay, got it.
I hate all children, and I’m certain that she’s no special snowflake exception from the fact that all children are assholes. I approve of the tweet.
Whereas Lena Dunham is and never will be anything but, ironically, a cunt.
Some humorless fucks are offended by a humor-joke? Fuck those humorless fucks in their stupid ass-cunts! I will personally rape the corpses of their grandmothers, even the ones that aren’t dead!
It is a strange phenomenon, getting mad about things people say insincerely. I’m sure I’ve gotten upset about insincere statements by, say, Rush Limbaugh or someone (by “insincere” I mean things the person doesn’t even pretend to stand by, as opposed to bullshit that people — i.e. politicians — claim to believe when they probably actually don’t), but I think that’d usually only happen when I thought the person was being sincere, and if the person or someone else told me that the person had been joking, then I like to think I’d let it go. So what I’m wondering is: 1a) did these people know from the start that the Onion is a jokey publication/twitter feed, or 1b) did they not, and only found out later via @replies; and 2a) did they remain upset afterwards because its having been a joke doesn’t excuse it from their perspective, or 2b) did they remain upset because they had too much pride and stubbornness to admit that their initial umbrage was “invalid”? I’m guessing 1b+2b is the most common explanation, right?
Interesting questions. It feels like the most outrage stems from her being a nine-year-old, which fair enough, and then being a black nine-year-old, which, no. Race has NOTHING to do with the joke — it stems from Wallis being the most adorable, friendly, likable kid ever. That’s the only reason it “works.”
Twitter is one of the worst things invented. It gives people a chance to say whatever comes to mind without having to think about it.
Actually, you just explained the good thing about twitter – you see people without their PR shields up. That’s the only good thing about it – you see how they really are – and the answer is mostly stupid, racist, and illiterate, with some exceptions where you see that some people are really ingenious and funny.
A couple of thoughts:
- 9 year olds shouldn’t be on Twitter
- “Cunt” is the worst word in the entire English language. Maybe that’s what the writer was going for, but swap it out for “jerk” and this isn’t a issue.
- I’d wager the writer had a few drinks at the time of that tweet.
- People still don’t get the Onion.
A) probably, but not the issue
B) you don’t fucking get humor, go hang out on brobible you cunt.
C) doubtful – it seemed funny to me stone sober.
D) shocking yet true.
I love getting the ridiculously easy-to-be-offended all riled up. Here’s my contribution for today.
Q. What’s the difference between a group of women joggers and a tribe of pygmies?
A. One is bunch of cunning runts.
Gotta go. PC police are ringing by doorbell.
I just re-followed them for that. I got bored of them but that’s made me go back. Wish they hadn’t apologised and just deleted if they really needed to.
I wouldve let it go too. but wendell pierce is scary
Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt… of a name to spell correctly. Oy vey.
Also, who the fuck is Wendell Price?
Just a humble mothererfucker with a big-ass dick and no sense of humor.
Nobody got it.
if it was a white girl noone would have been outraged
To be fair, no one denies that 9-year-old white girls are all cunts.
if you can’t call a child a cunt in America then i don’t want to live here.
AMERICA!
Amen.
As the father of a daughter…they can be cunts. JESUS CHRIST THEY CAN BE CUNTS.
Can anyone definitively tell me that they were wrong?
Yes, it was. Reasonable people cannot disagree about this. Next question.