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Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source (Paperback)
by The Onion, Scott Dikkers, and Mike Loew
| Category:
Satire, Humor, Comedy |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
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¥ 168.00
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Life ain't always pretty, but with The Onion it is always funny. |
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Author: The Onion, Scott Dikkers, and Mike Loew
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Pub. in: March, 1999
ISBN: 0609804618
Pages: 176
Measurements: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00383
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0609804612
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- Awards & Credential -
A collection of the best Onion news that is worth your time and money. |
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- MSL Picks -
"World's Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg" may be the greatest headline ever about the Titanic disaster, yet without the benefit of the iconoclastic masterminds at The Onion, we might have lost out on that inspired bit of news reporting.
The Onion, with its weekly release of mock news-articles satirizing and lampooning the current status quo, is one of the most enjoyable humorous newspapers that currently exist. IT employs almost all types of humor, from subtlety to slapstick, from highbrow to lowbrow. However, nothing they write has even come close to the hilarity that Our Dumb Century brings to the reader. The book analyses the 20th Century from a not-quite- so objective standpoint, lampooning popular culture, spawning ludicrous conspiracy theories, ("Kennedy Slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons)and reveling in the stupidity of our country and the world in the 20th Century. Every page brings something funny and satirical, from "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg - 1912" to "President Confronts Depression with 'Big Deal' Plan: 'Big deal, I'm Rich!' Roosevelt Says - 1933" to "Reagan May Have been Elected, Doesn't Recall - 1981."
The true joy of The Onion is to be found in these faux-retrospectives. The humor is like those times when a bunch of friends are sitting around, and someone comes up with a preposterous way of looking at something. While the comment is funny in and of itself, the humor piles on in the way all the other friends chime in with their addendums and rejoinders, milking the concept for all it is worth. Our Dumb Century does just that. Each headline has an article with it, an expedition into the ridiculous. Be prepared to see the Apollo moon landing, World War II, and Clinton impeachment in a whole different light. No event is too sacred. No event is too mundane. The 20th Century is ripe for historical defilement, and Our Dumb Century serves up a hearty dose of lunatic revisionism for your enjoyment. Bon appetite.
The Onion has been insightful and relevant, but Our Dumb Century outdoes anything ever done with this publication. In the spirit of great satire, Our Dumb Century scalds all the racism, dishonesty, paranoia, pretentiousness, apathy and irresponsibility that plagued American (and other) institutions throughout the 1900's. No cow is too sacred. No figure escapes the uncanny sense of history. Andrew Carnegie, Neville Chamberlain, Jerry Garcia, Ronald Reagan, Ricki Lake, and Michael Irvin all get theirs. So here is the 20th century America skewered for all it is worth, leaving no shortcoming unnoticed, no historical event unmasked. Conservatives are blasted. Liberals are skewered. Apoliticals are tarred and feathered. Everyone gets their due in this volume. Highly recommended.
Target readers:
People who love the American satire/humor. Also recommended to the Chinese English majors and advanced Chinese English learners.
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Started by two University of Wisconsin undergraduates in 1988, The Onion began as an alternative weekly newspaper in Madison, originally meant to parody both USA Today and the nearby Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper. While some believe The Onion got its name from the slang for a "juicy news story," it was actually named when the two founders were short on cash and eating onion sandwiches. Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers worked as a cartoonist during The Onion's first year, then with Pete Haise, the current publisher, bought the paper from its founders. "For a long time we were kind of a Weekly World News parody combined with your usual sophomoric college-humor publication," says Dikkers. " In1995 Dikkers shifted the focus of the paper to a straight news parody and found the voice for which The Onion is known today. In 1996 The Onion made an unprecedented launch into cyberspace, and www.theonion.com soon became one of the nation's most heavily visited Web sites. The newspaper edition is available in bookstores and newsstands nationwide. The Onion has been called "surprising and sublime" by the New Yorker and "genius" by the Chicago Tribune. Rolling Stone named Scott Dikkers one of the nation's top-ten favorite writers. The Onion was also featured on Entertainment Weekly's 1998 "It" List of the 100 most talented people in the entertainment industry, and Time magazine ranked Dikkers number 43 in their list of the top 50 movers and shakers in the digital realm.
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From Library Journal
The Onion, a weekly newspaper out of Madison, Wisconsin, has established a hugely popular presence online with its laugh-out-loud mixture of sophomoric irreverence and savage satire. This book continues the Onion's mission from 1900 to 2000 with mock front pages twisting each year's signal events. 1906: "Should U.S. Set Limits on Indian Slaughter?" 1915: "Henry Ford Unveils New Line of Anti-Semitic Autos." 1933: "Stalin Announces Five-Year `Everybody Dies' Plan." 1942: "Ladies, Negroes Momentarily Useful." 1956: "U.S. Sexual Repression Reaches Boiling Point." 1976: "Cambodia to Switch to Skull-Based Economy." 1998: "Drugs Win Drug War." Though some articles will offend the delicate and a few fail to fulfill the promise of the headlines, this is terrific stuff. Even the graphics and asides have bite, like the "Countries Overthrown by the CIA Today" list from a 1964 issue.
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The Onion, Monday, April 24, 1995
AL GORE CAUGHT IN LOVE TRYST WITH ENDANGERED TREE OWL
WASHINGTON, DC
Scandal engulfed the Clinton Administration once again Sunday, when allegations were made public that Vice President Al Gore engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with an endangered tree owl, then urged the winged nocturnal predator to lie about the affair under oath.
According to an anonymous source within the administration, the vice president first met the owl during a meeting with anti-logging activists in Washington State's Olympic National Park, admiring the bird in its tree perch and praising it for its "majestic plumage." Suspicion was aroused when the bird began making repeated visits to Gore's White House office, which is more than 3,000 miles from the owl's Pacific Northwest habitat.
Gore, long known for his strong pro-wildlife stance, denied charges of an inter-species sexual liaison, insisting that his relationship with the woodland creature was "purely environmentalist in nature."
Experts on bird mating, however, say the owl's extensive molting and twig-gathering behavior, as well as its alleged lining of a nest with clumps of grass and feathers, suggest that the bird was sexually active during the weeks it spent with the vice president.
In addition, an unnamed Secret Service agent claimed that Gore ordered him to dispose of several fecal pellets found in the White House. He said the pellets contained the bones of small rodents.
A federal grand jury will convene Friday to determine whether the owl will be charged with perjury for an April 17 deposition in which ornithologists recorded the bird emitting a complex series of hoots denying the affair. Gore, if found guilty of encouraging the endangered owl to lie under oath, could face congressional censure on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and owl-fucking.
The Onion, Friday, November 22, 1963
KENNEDY SLAIN BY CIA, MAFIA, CASTRO, LBJ, TEAMSTERS, FREEMASONS
President Shot 129 Times from 43 Different Angles
DALLAS, TEX.
President Kennedy was assassinated Friday by operatives of the CIA, the Giancana crime syndicate, Fidel Castro, Vice President Johnson, the Freemasons and the Teamsters as he rode through downtown Dallas in a motorcade.
According to eyewitnesses, Kennedy's limousine had just entered Dealey Plaza when the president was struck 129 times in the head, chest, abdomen, arms, legs, hands, feet, back and face by gunfire. The shooting began at 12:30 p.m. and lasted until 12:43 p.m. CST.
In all, 43 suspects have been taken into the custody of the Dallas police.
Preliminary reports indicate that hitmen for the Giancana crime syndicate fired from a nearby grassy knoll, CIA agents fired from an office building slightly off the parade route, Cuban nationals fired from an overpass overlooking Dealey Plaza, an elite hit squad working for Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa fired from perches atop an oak tree, a 'lone nut' fired from the Texas Book depository, a shadow-government sharp-shooting team fired from behind a wooden fence, a consortium of jealous husbands fired from an estimated 13 sites on the sidewalk along the route, a hitman working for Johnson fired from a sewer grate over which the limousine passed, and Texas Gov. John Connally lunged at the president from within the limousine itself, slitting the president's throat with a combat knife.
The mortally wounded president was sped to nearby Parland Hospital, where doctors with ties to Johnson's inner circle performed a staged autopsy. They pronounced him dead at 2:18 p.m. CST.
The body was then chemically treated by J. Edgar Hoover and put in a decoy casket for transport to Roswell, New Mexico. There, space aliens using medical technology beyond the knowledge of man sealed Kennedy's 129 wounds. Kennedy's corpse was then reanimated and rushed to Germany for an emergency meeting with the frozen brain of Adolf Hitler.
After the meeting, Kennedy aides announced plans for the two leaders' sperm cells to be atomically sustained, planted in the womb of aspiring actress Judith Campbell, and grown into a super-race of 21st-century conquerors.
According to investigators, the assassination appears to have been carefully planned and carried out in strict accordance with both the Skull-and-Bones Blood Rite and Masonic "Killing of the King" rituals.
Officers found several hundred weapons within a four-block radius of the shooting site, including telescope-sighted Weatherby Magnum rifles, Italian bolt-action 6.5mm carbines, Thompson submachine guns, Russian Kalishnikov assault rifles, and one ray-gun.
The assembled killers were taken into police custody at Dallas City Hall. As they were being transferred to the county prison however, all 43 were shot and killed by Jack Ruby, 52, a Dallas-area nightclub owner.
The Onion, Tuesday, April 20, 1943
TOP U.S. NAVAL INTELLIGENCE REPORTS, 'THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME'
'No Book's Like a Dame, Nothing Looks Like a Dame,' Says South Pacific Command.
Cable report from the Pacific Theater
According to U.S. Intelligence officers stationed in the South Pacific, there is not anything like a dame.
Details of the report indicate that there is nothing like a dame in the known world.
"Lots of things in life are beautiful, but brother," read the secretly coded message that arrived on President Roosevelt's desk in Washington at 7 a.m. EST Sunday, "there is one particular thing that is nothing whatsoever in any way, shape, or form like any other."
"There is nothing like a dame," the message repeated.
While most details of the report remain classified - for fear of providing the hated German enemy with any advantage - the following information has been cleared by the War Department for release.
There are no books like a dame; nothing looks like a dame; there are no drinks like a dame; nothing thinks like a dame.
This new dame-related intelligence is expected to greatly improve the health of injured American solders. "Thousands of our boys are badly wounded every day by Japs and Jerrys," said Army doctor Martin Purcell, speaking from a makeshift hospital on a tiny, coconut-covered Pacific island. "But as we now know, there ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here that can't be cured by putting him near a girly, womanly, female, feminine dame."
A full version of Monday's report will be printed, set to music, and performed around the country.
The Onion, Monday, January 1, 1900
News From Rome
VATICAN CONDEMNS 'RHYTHM METHOD.'
Pontiff Excoriates Infidels for Fiendish 'Sin by the Calendar.'
Releases Papal Edict Outlining Forbidden Family Practices.
Italians in Attendance Vow to People the Earth.
VATICAN CITY, DEC 31
In a proclamation rife with the righteous anger befitting a clergyman of his most exalted station, His Holiness the Pope, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Leader of all Christians of the World, lashed out at those with the effrontery to use the calendar to defeat God's purpose of peopling the globe.
"This prideful 'rhythm method' is a blasphemy before God," Leo XIII declared to a crowd of as yet non-American-emigrant Italians at St. Peter's Basilica. "Those who would count the days He created against the ripeness of their good wives are indulging in the darkest brand of sorcery."
The reactions of lay civilization have been varied, as most prominent Americans are expected to seek the counsel of their bishops and priests for clarification of the edict.
The denounced "rhythm method," according to physician Hobart McGreely of Pittsburgh, is "the way by which a lady, having an intuitive grasp still elusive to medicinal science of the ebb and flow of nature, can divine when she is most conducive to the conception of young, and may choose to refrain from the painful process of copulation, in essence avoiding her dutiful role as a mother."
"Childbearing women have a responsibility to the Lord on High," added noted Chicago priest Father Willard Portkin. "In this advanced age of modern medicine, most mothers need only give birth to two or three still-born children before enjoying the fruits of living progeny. And now-a-days many of the gentler sex are enjoying full recuperation and survival of the birthing miracle. There is therefore no excuse for women-vessels to engage in trickery of God's plan for their fertility."
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
When I first got this book, I and the friend with whom I was reading it were trapped in violent paroxysms of laughter for about an hour before we forced ourselves, teary-eyed, to put it down, only to pick it up again when our sides stopped hurting a little. Honestly, this is about the funniest book you'll ever read. The writing is sharp (any of the Onion's staff could probably make it as "legitimate" reporters, they've nailed the style of newspaper writing so well) and the quality level is consistent all the way through - impressive considering how many stories there are (several per page).
Aside from being painfully funny, it's also very smart. The writers know their history, and know it well enough to skewer the last century's hypocrites, morons, and all-out villains, as well as its heroes. Which brings up an important point. Nothing's off-limits to these guys, and they ridicule with equal enthusiasm history's greatest and most awful moments (Great Depression, Holocaust, JFK assassination, it's in there). Fair warning: if you don't think history's sacred cows should be made into hamburger, you will probably be offended - while you're laughing. |
Jeffrey Friend (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
These people are using humor to further their liberal agenda. They poke fun at Nixon and Reagan, yet Dukakis gets only one article. Where's the balance? They make Nixon out to be a criminal, Ike seem distracted and lazy, and Reagan somehow dishonest. Carter is praised for being a hip streaker. It just goes to show that the writers of this book have a hidden sinister agenda. This book should be burned! I don't even know why they call themselves "The Onion". What is funny about an onion? Making fun of the homeless, like Rush does, is much more productive than reading this trash. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
I have just opened this as a Christmas present and this is one of those pleasant surprises you get to find under the tree from time to time. The Onion has moved from Madison, Wisconsin to a big eastern city and has only been around since 1988, but that certainly does not stop them from retroactively skewering everyone and everything before their time (beginning with President McKinley greeting the 20th century as "The Era of Coal"). You might not have heard the Onion, the Mid-West's answer to the Harvard Lampoon (only funnier), until they got a lot of national press for their brilliant and cathartic coverage of the tragedy of September 11th. But if you did get to see what they came up you can appreciate whether this time of humor is up your alley. Who says the age of irony is dead? Not moi, mon ami. And remember: It is never too late to pick up this calendar, because when you are making fun of the 20th Century it is not like the humor has some sort of expiration time... |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
Our Dumb Century is, simply put, the most entertaining book I've ever had the pleasure of reading. On every page, covering each year of the 20th century, The Onion's crack team of writers brings their devastating sense of irony to every important and not-so-important event that a history enthusiast could ever want to think of. No prominent figure, from Hitler to Stalin to Nixon, is spared as the Onion launches a full frontal assault on lies, hypocrisy, stereotypes, and various misdeeds with the irreverent wit that has made its website an internet mainstay for close to a decade and running. You might think one would have a hard time laughing aloud at news of wars, genocides, and other high crimes, but you just need to take a look at the below headlines to understand what I'm talking about:
"The Machine: Will It Replace the China-Man?"
"Stalin Announces Five-Year 'Everybody Dies' Plan."
"Dastardly Japs Attack Colonially Occupied U.S. Non-State."
"Stock Market Crashes; Debacle Linked to Jews, Negroes, Catholics, Anarachists, Foreigners, Women Voters."
"'The Man' hurt by Black Panther Accusations."
"Kennedy Slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons."
"Mr. T Releases 'Pity List '86.'"
And there's lots, lots more where that came from. Despite a few scattered moments of tastelessness, "Our Dumb Century" is chiefly one hilarious story after another, relentlessly lampooning the foibles of human nature and the train wreck that American culture has become of late. I've reread some of these stories as many as ten times, and they never cease to be funny. Sometimes (most of the time, actually), life becomes so absurd that the best way to deal with it is just to laugh, and The Onion has always been extremely useful for just that purpose. "Our Dumb Century" manages to cast the light of irony on some truly dark times, which is an achievement that should not be discounted.
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