On Monday night, the Onion’s Baratunde Thurston happily pointed out that there are two kinds of people in this world — those who understand the Onion is satire, and those who don’t. “We are America’s finest news source, we may not always be factual, we are always honest, the subtle difference is important,” Thurston, the site’s digital director, said. “The Onion is not a hoax website, it’s satire, there’s a long tradition of satire that goes back thousands of years, but some people are stupid — it’s a diverse society in every way,” the author and comedian said before an audience at the National Press Club.
Thurston was addressing last week’s kerfuffle that commenced when Rep. John Fleming, R-La., posted a 2011 Onion article on his Facebook wall that announced Planned Parenthood had just opened an $8 billion “Abortionplex.” Fleming thought it was real. The article clearly was not, containing quotes such as this: “Our hope is for this facility to become a regular destination where a woman in her second trimester can whoop it up at karaoke and then kick back while we vacuum out the contents of her uterus.” You get the point. “So recently we republished it around the Komen thing and some idiot Congressman, which is to say some Congressman, posted it on his Facebook page,” Thurston explained. “Someone wrote, ‘how did you ever get elected?’…By you, dumba–,” he cracked.
Thurston, who grew up in Columbia Heights, was visiting his hometown to promote his new best-selling book, “How To Be Black.”
