Calling the devastation “heartbreaking and appalling,” President Barack Obama toured South-Carolina-ravaged South Carolina Tuesday , vowing never to turn his back on the 4.6 million residents whose lives have been turned upside down by the horrors of South Carolina.
Such were the first words of a story recently published by The Onion, a satirical newspaper that targets all with its fictitious headlines, hilarious quotes and satirical sources.
Tonight, the staff will speak at 8 p.m. inside the Russell House ballroom.
Associate Editor Will Tracy and Lang Fisher, a staff writer, will present background on The Onion history and the process of putting together an issue, combining old stories from the paper with audio visual elements.
“It’s going to be lively and fast-paced,” Tracy said. “We speak at a lot of colleges because it is a good audience for us. College kids seem to know and like The Onion, so it is always a good, fun crowd.”
For those unfamiliar with The Onion, it is an entertainment newspaper and website that presents everyday events as newsworthy. It strives to express universal truths about real people in society, even if what they are doing isn’t real.
According to Tracy, people shouldn’t read The Onion and take it as fact, but should instead read it and think “Yeah, that’s true.”
“It’s based more with universal truths; a general truth of how things seem to work in our culture,” Tracy said.
The Onion, created by journalism students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was originally a way for college newspaper writers to make fun of their campus and local news and make some money from local ads. It has since broadened over time with popularity, and is now a general parody of all news.
USC now has News From Last Thursday, or its own version of The Onion. The newsletter is published periodically but updated frequently at newsfromlastthursday.com.