Thursday, February 24, 2011

Progressive Onion

In the past I hadn't been a huge fan of the T. Herman Zweibel columns in the Onion, since there's only so much fun you can have laughing at a behind-the-times old guy for being a behind-the-times old guy. But playing him as a Gilded Age plutocrat opens up comic opportunities that weren't there before. This is from his column on Scott Walker's attack on the Wisconsin unions:
My first question, of course, was whether or not these Union toilers could be replaced with vastly less expensive workers under the Confederate model, but I was informed that for various complex reasons this may not be feasible for several years.
I don't remember the Onion being as political in the 1990s as it is today. I mean, sure, they'd write political satire, but they tried harder to be evenhanded. But now I see them standing squarely with Stewart and Colbert on our side. They do it well.

I don't know how to sort out the causation/correlation issues here, but this definitely goes along with the rising popularity of progressive views among young people.

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