"A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by The Onion’s parent company to buy Alex Jones’ far-right media empire, including the website Infowars..."

"... ruling that the auction process was unfair. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said after a two-day hearing that The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, had not submitted the best bid and was wrongly named the winner of an auction last month by a court-appointed trustee.... Jones went live from a studio soon after the ruling and told viewers: 'We can celebrate the judge doing the right thing.' He had previously referred to the sale process as 'auction fraud' and a 'fraudulent sale.' Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a statement on X that the company... would 'continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.' 'It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case,' he said...."

NBC News reports.

"On Monday, X filed an objection in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars.... In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has 'superior ownership' of all accounts on X..."

"... that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion."

From "X's Objection to the Onion Buying InfoWars Is a Reminder You Do Not Own Your Social Media Accounts" (404 Media).

That article asserts that "Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends." But The Onion's desire to purchase the account that Infowars stuffed with speech over the years is all about stifling its specific viewpoint. The Onion has its own X account, but it wants the place that Infowars built up so it can stomp out that speech — rewrite it into a parody of itself. It could do that parody on a newly created account and thus give us more speech, more debate. 

So who's more against freedom of speech here? It seems to me that X is protecting it.

I'll concede that loving freedom of speech is a specific viewpoint.

ADDED: You can read X's filing here. Excerpt: "While X Corp. takes no position as to the sale of any Content posted on the X Accounts, X Corp. is the sole owner of the Services being sold as part of the sale of the X Accounts. While X Corp. has granted account holders, such as Jones and FSS, a license to use the Services, such license is non-assignable, both under the terms of the TOS and applicable non-bankruptcy law (i.e., as a personal services contract), and the Trustee cannot sell, assign, or otherwise transfer such license absent X Corp.’s consent."

"This week, The Onion began distributing a print edition for the first time in more than a decade and will soon deliver it monthly..."

"... to everyone who subscribes to its site. The move is a throwback to the publication’s roots as a campus weekly in the late 1980s. But it is also emblematic of a growing trend in the media industry — trying new ways to attract and retain digital subscribers.... The print edition is part of a variety of perks that the company plans to offer online subscribers, who pay $5 a month, said Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron. The company plans to offer invites to live events, access to The Onion’s archive of physical papers and sponsorship of ambitious editorial projects, such as a video titled 'The Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking-Sheet Dinner,' Mr. Collins said...."

From "No Joke: The Onion Thinks Print Is the Future of Media/The satirical site is hoping a newspaper with fake stories and fake ads will lead to real money" (NYT).

As for "roots as a campus weekly," let it be remembered that the campus was The University of Wisconsin, here in Madison. I remember (and loved) "Jim's Journal."

"Only an optimist would look around right now and feel convinced that there existed such a thing as a 'reasonable person'..."

"... let alone one who could be used as a standard in legal cases. But if you stop believing in reasonable people — even a person who is occasionally, initially fooled by something parodic — you stop believing that democracy is possible. If you don’t believe that most people are ultimately reasonable, why on Earth would you want them to be in charge of everything? Democracy, like parody, presumes that people are capable of noticing when someone is trying to dupe them. I have to think this is among the reasons autocrats distrust parody; not just because it shows them in a bad light, but because its underlying assumption is that people can see what is in front of them."

Writes Alexandra Petri, in "Parody is an act of optimism" (WaPo), after The Onion filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case, Novak v. Parma, about a man who was prosecuted for putting up a website that was a parody of a police department website.

Here's the brief. Excerpt:

"The Onion was NEVER fake news. It's just news written by a time traveler with a horrible sense of humor."

Someone tweets, looking at this Onion headline from March 25th:

Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure https://t.co/3bKatQGz04 pic.twitter.com/0kkhWzjl98

— The Onion (@TheOnion) March 25, 2020

Here's an Onion headline that somebody I know to be intelligent saw on Facebook and mistook for a real news headline.

"Rush Limbaugh Admits Presidential Medal Of Freedom Less Of An Honor Knowing That Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou Also Received It."

"Top 5 most-believed satirical claims by The Babylon Bee.../Top 5 most-believed satirical claims by The Onion..."

2 interesting lists at The Conversation, reprinted at Snopes, in "Study: Too Many People Think Satirical News Is Real/In a news cycle full of clownish characters and outrageous rhetoric, it’s no wonder satire isn’t fully registering with a lot of readers."

Both lists break down the poll numbers by Republican and Democrat, with Republicans more likely to incorrectly believe Babylon Bee satirical nonfacts and Democrats more likely to believe Onion satirical nonfacts.

Our study on misinformation and social media lasted six months. Every two weeks, we identified 10 of the most shared fake political stories on social media, which included satirical stories. Others were fake news reports meant to deliberately mislead readers.

We then asked a representative group of over 800 Americans to tell us if they believed claims based on those trending stories. By the end of the study, we had measured respondents’ beliefs about 120 widely shared falsehoods....

The most-believed satirical headline from The Babylon Bee was "Most Americans believe that major media companies should apologize for pushing the now-debunked news story of collusion between President Trump and Russia." Second: "Representative Ilhan Omar said that being Jewish is an inherently hostile act, especially among those living in Israel." Those are made-up stories, intended as political humor.

From The Onion, the most-believed story was: "Following the passage of Alabama’s new restrictive abortion bill, a 12-year-old victim of sexual abuse said during an interview that she doesn’t think she can be a mom on top of her already hectic life." Second: "National Security Advisor John Bolton said that an attack on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman is 'an attack on all Americans.'"

A couple weeks ago, some people were attacking Snopes for seeming to be fact-checking articles that were made-up as satire. Please remember that I defended Snopes. I said:

It doesn't sound as though Snopes is confused about The Babylon Bee and thinks it's purporting to be a real news site. But even when you completely understand the format is satire, like The Onion, you believe that the satire relates to something real. You have to wonder what is the real thing that happened that this is a satire of. So, for example, in the case of "If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?," you'd have to assume, if that's supposed to be funny, Ilhan Omar must have said some anti-Semitic things. The presentation of the quote as satire implies that there is something out there that is being satirized. You extrapolate....

It's not just this inference that something underlies satire, but that headlines get decontextualized in social media....

Isn't this how we know Bill Clinton exposed himself to Paula Jones?

"When Daniels came out of the bathroom, she claims Trump was lying on the bed in his underwear. They had sex. She then describes his genitalia in great detail. 'His penis is distinctive in a certain way,' she writes. Proof, her attorney Michael Avenatti says, she is tired of being called a liar by Trump’s people."

From "CNN’s Jake Tapper Dedicates Segment to Trump’s Penis" (Breitbart).

Oh, look! It's Roseanne. 1998. Dragging out the penile details:



Is the woman lying? To ask the question is to express a desire for corroborating evidence. If the offense is sexual, I'm afraid the evidence might trigger your ickiness reaction. Too bad! How would you like it if you stopped by to see the governor and he whipped it out, erect, and said "kiss it"? You're only hearing about it, not suffering through it.

From "Clinton scandal: Privates on parade as sex harassment case turns ugly" (November 7, 1997):

[Paula Jones's] lawyers have... named... women believed to be former girlfriends of the President, including Gennifer Flowers. She is the woman named during the 1992 election campaign as his long-time mistress, who has steadfastly refused to speak against him.

The strategy is two-fold: to show "a pattern of behaviour" in Mr Clinton's past and to demonstrate the veracity of an affidavit Ms Jones reportedly swore when she first brought her case three years ago that could prove her case. In the affidavit, Ms Jones apparently describes "distinguishing characteristics" of Mr Clinton's "genital area".

Last month, it seemed the puzzle of the distinguishing characteristics had been solved, when newspapers quoted "sources" as saying she referred to a curvature of the President's erect penis - a phenomenon said to be caused by Peyronie's disease. The theory was backed up by more "informed sources" saying that Mr Clinton had been tested for this condition during his annual medical examination the previous week.

Did we ever find out if Bill Clinton is really bent like that? The Onion had the story in 2005: "Bill Clinton Finally Just Shows America His Penis." Funny, right? It was 2005, and #MeToo hadn't clicked in yet. But time's up now. And it's not funny anymore.

ADDED: You may have reached the end of this post with the question what is "distinctive" about Trump's genitalia. And good for you if you didn't. What a fine person you are! If you did, you don't have to by Stormy's book to get the answer. The NY Post has it. Should I just send you there, or should I quote "He knows he has an unusual penis... It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool…like the mushroom character in Mario Kart"?

"Woman Starting To Worry She Just Has Type Of Face Where Makeup Looks Insane."

"'The second I put on eyeshadow or lipstick, I look like someone who just escaped from a mental institution,' said 32-year-old Greenwald, noting that whatever she tries—a natural look or even a subtle cat-eye—the makeup in combination with her physical attributes instantly transforms her appearance into that of a deranged, nightmarish mutant. 'I look completely normal without makeup, but as soon as I try something as simple as a sultry, smokey eye—Bam! I’m an unhinged, sleep-deprived, Jack-Nicholson-from-The-Shining-looking lunatic. Maybe it has something to do with my bone structure or my skin type that turns me into a creepy serial killer every time I try to contour or fill in my eyebrows, I don’t know.' Greenwald added that her makeup problem was exacerbated when she tries to do something nice with her hair and only ends up looking like a psychotic clown or a batshit crazy comic book villain."

From The Onion, but it's funny because it channels some real truth. I think a lot of women feel this way. Right? That's why I'm blogging this. That, and I think it's interesting that they used the name Greenwald, which I associate with a single person, Glenn Greenwald. By the way, I had a close call with The Onion using my name, back in 2003, when some people who assumed I'd taken my ex-husband's last name used me as the author of a book called "Post-Divorce, Pre-Death."

"A child's realization that his mother is a sexual being usually comes during pre-pubescence for boys, at around 11 or 12," [psychiatrist Ann] Cohen said. "But that association fades quickly when the boy turns from an inexperienced child into a sexualized teenager. After that, the mother becomes an anti-sex-symbol, a purified ideal of womanhood who's above, or at least outside, the realm of normal animalistic impulses. For a teenager like Derek, it must be incredibly traumatic to see his mother put herself on the dating market like a side of beef."

Added Cohen: "Think about it—your own mom? Looking for sex? Disgusting!"

Ha ha. So true!

"Elon Musk Wanted to Buy ‘The Onion,’ Now He’s Hiring Its Staffers for a Secret Project."

The Daily Beast reports.

“It’s pretty obvious that comedy is the next frontier after electric vehicles, space exploration, and brain-computer interfaces,” Musk said. “Don’t know how anyone’s not seeing this.”

See? He thinks he's a comedian.

He's also quoted as having said, last year, that he was paging through The Onion "in order to understand the essential truth of things." And "I think you can find [the truth] in The Onion and occasionally on Reddit."

There are lots of cool details at the new Alumni Park at the UW campus.

Take a closer look:

"Journalist Wondering Where To Mention Getting Yelled At By U.S. President In Article."

"'I can’t put it in the lede, of course, but I probably should at least bring up the fact that the commander-in-chief took nearly a full minute out of the press conference just to ream me out.... God, how do I even refer to myself in this? It’s weird if I say 'The president then yelled at a reporter from Politico,' but I also can’t say 'And then the president yelled at me.' Jesus, do I also have to include him saying I should be fired?"

"Admit It: You People Want To See How Far This Goes, Don’t You?"

An Onion piece from July 2015.

I can tell you’re practically salivating right now. And I’m going to keep riding this fascination, this little fixation you have with me as far as you’ll take me. You know I will....

You know what you have to do to make me go away. Just quit paying attention. Stop reading this right now.

That’s right, I didn’t think so. I have the power to make the next 16 months one of the most incredible times in our nation’s history, and not a single one of you can say you’re not at least a little bit curious to see how this wild ride shakes out...

Oh, yeah, we are curious. 

(Via John Althouse Cohen, posting on Facebook this morning.)

"Speaking to reporters, the practitioner of ancient South American religious rituals involving the hallucinogenic ayahuasca plant explained that..."

"... while he was ordinarily happy to share his culture’s spiritual wisdom with others, the constant stream of wealthy Silicon Valley executives seeking transcendental enlightenment had become an increasingly loathsome and disheartening part of his occupation...."

“I know it’s my job to guide them, but after meeting these guys, the last thing I want to do is witness the visions they have deep in their souls,” [master ayahuasca shaman Piero Salazar said]. “Even when I do manage to help one of them overcome a long-held fear, it’s always something really boring....”

"Beyoncé’s latest track is a spirited feminist anthem that sharply strikes at the patriarchy beginning with the opening verse, 'Ladies, don’t ever let your man tell you what to do'..."

"'... before offering potent validation to her predominantly female listeners by stating that "High-quality streaming audio was made for queens like you,"' wrote New Yorker music critic Carrie Battan in a review of the new track...."

From "Beyoncé Quickly Releases New Song About How Buying Tidal Subscription Most Empowering Thing A Woman Can Do" in The Onion, which takes off on the same New Yorker piece I was making fun of yesterday.

Let's everybody talk about Trump's "schlong."

1. He's making us do this. He's brilliant at causing the media to revolve around him, and this is a big one. He tossed off a funny word as if he just suddenly thought of it, off-handedly, and now all of us, new and old media, are going to talk about it all day. I woke up this morning, saw the story, and regarded it as my serious duty and amusing pastime to go on about all aspects of the statement that Hillary "got schlonged" by Obama.

2. Is "schlong" a verb? The linguists are activated. Give Trump's schlong some lingual action. Now, Trump knows something about taking a noun and making it into a verb — "verbing" it. People love to take Trump's name — names are nouns — and use them as verbs — as in the Hillary campaign catchphrase "Love trumps hate." She wants to be "love" and to call him "hate"? Does she think love, love is the answer with Putin? Speaking of verbing names, Putin works as a verb — put in — who hasn't thought that sounds like a good schlonging?

3. Trump is making us look at his penis — his use of the word for penis — so he's kind of the flasher here. But it's Obama's penis in the image: Obama schlonged Hillary. Are you tempted to call that racist? Good luck, you fool. You'll have to explain why. Go ahead. Go down that path, you idiot. Trump wants you to fall into that rathole.

4. You know who else's penis we had to talk about — a big fat politician made us talk about that time? Has there ever been a more talked about penis than the penis of the man Hillary Clinton is still married to? Speaking of Hillary getting schlonged. We've had a mental image of it so long that this worked as an Onion headline:

5. The left meme pushed by Think Progress is: "Trump's Astonishingly Sexist Attack On Hillary." But now you've got to explain why it's sexist. As the WaPo piece linked at #2 showed us, Trump used "schlong" as a verb once before and it was to refer to something a woman did to a woman: "I watched a popular Republican woman [Jane Corwin] not only lose but get schlonged by a Democrat [Kathy Hochul] nobody ever heard of for the congressional seat...." As Trump uses the word, if Hillary had trounced Obama, he would have said "Hillary schlonged Obama," just as many of us will say: She fucked him. Women can schlong men, whether they have a schlong or not, and if a woman wants to be President, she'd better have the capacity to (figuratively) schlong men. Trump is surely in the position to explain his use of the word that way. And if you keep up with the "astonishingly sexist" bullshit, he's going to schlong you.

6. A Meadhouse dialogue ensues:

MEADE: "Maybe Hillary has a huge vagina."
ME: "She can store several heads of state in there."
MEADE finds that very funny.
ME: "I don't know if I should put that on the blog."
MEADE: "HA HA HA! OH NO NO NO! When it's men's genitals we're talking about, it's okay, but when it's women..."
ME: "I'm just afraid people don't know the whole 'huge vagina' meme. They haven't seen the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'..."
MEADE: "You have to protect people from the idea of a woman's genitalia being huge, holding heads of state. 'Oh, what are we doing in here?' 'We're in President Hillary's vagina. She envaginated us.'"
ME: "Wait. What heads are you picturing? Who's in that dialogue?"
MEADE: "Putin. Angela Merkel. And I'm picturing the head of the new Trudeau, because he's so dreamy."

7. Meade wants me to show you this:



Meadhouse dialogue:

ME: "I like 'absolutely everyone can come inside' and taking care of you 'if you're ever frightened.'"
MEADE: "A safe space."

8. As Trump antagonists struggle to portray "schlonged" as sexist, they cause us to think more and more about the question of whether a woman is tough and strong and dominant enough to be President. Yes, most of us think that in theory a woman can be President, but like nearly all men, any given woman is unlikely to have what it takes. We know there's one thing she doesn't have, and that's not literally needed. But all the ideation about what it figuratively means is stirred up as we talk about the subject, which is what Trump is making us do, all by saying one little word and standing back and letting us do all the churning through of meaning. He never needed to say Hillary couldn't be President, but he made other people say things, things that they think will hurt Trump, and what they are saying is affecting the minds of millions of people, massaging our doubts, our resistance, shaping opinions that we don't want to have to talk about, that we know we shouldn't say out loud. Trump's one out-loud word did it all. That one word schlonged us.

9. And isn't it very funny that — in the same speech — Trump posed as the prudish man who thought it wasn't proper to mention that Hillary went to the bathroom:"Where did Hillary go? They had to start the debate without her. Phase two. Why? I know where she went. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting. We want to be very, very straight up." He won't even say "go to the bathroom." That's the kind of straight-up man he is. Straight up. What erectitude! Rectitude. Oh, you disgusting people. Get you head out of the toilet.

10. A list can't end at 9, and I do have one more thing to say. It's a nostalgic look back to simpler times, back before Hillary got schlonged by Obama, when Hillary had full hopes of winning. It was June 2007, and the Hillary campaign had just put out a slick ad. My response, a list of 5 items, had a point, point #4 about Hillary's deployment of phallic symbols:

Bill says "No onion rings?" and Hillary responds "I'm looking out for ya." Now, the script says onion rings, because that's what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She's "looking out" all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him? Carrot sticks! The one closest to the camera has a rather disgusting greasy sheen to it. Here, Bill, in retaliation for all of your excessive "O" consumption, you may have a large bowl of phallic symbols! When we hear him say "No onion rings?," the camera is on her, and Bill is off-screen, but at the bottom of the screen we see the carrot/phallus he's holding toward her. Oh, yes, I know that Hillary supplying carrots is supposed to remind that Hillary will provide us with health care, that she's "looking out for" us, but come on, they're carrots! Everyone knows carrots are phallic symbols. But they're cut up into little carrot sticks, you say? Just listen to yourself! I'm not going to point out everything.

Rolling Stone, Politico, and CNN step on The New Republic's Scott-Walker-Is-Boring meme.

At Memeorandum right now:



What's the evidence that Walker — that red-meat-talking "disgrace" — is actually just boring? Embarrassingly, TNR's Bruce Beutler's evidence is Walker's Twitter feed, which is wonderful in a midwestern way Beutler [acts as if he] can't understand:

Up early 4 a haircut. Got some Badger wear 4 my parents @ Kohl's.

— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) January 1, 2011

Beutler puts up 37 tweets of that sort and [acts as if he] believes his readers will buy the "boring" meme.

I've already said I love Scott Walker's Twitter feed — precisely because of the I-got-a-haircut stuff. It reminds me of the great old comic strip "Jim's Journal," written drawn by Scott Dikkers here at the University of Wisconsin back in the 1980s. Dikkers went on to co-found The Onion. Think about that, Beutler. Beutler?



(Much more "Jim's Journal" here.)

"Boss’s Clout Evaporates After He’s Seen In Shorts At Company Picnic."

The Onion reports:

AKRON, OH — Squandering the authority and respect accumulated during his tenure, Pantheon Systems senior manager Robert Crawford, 52, reportedly had his clout instantly evaporate Thursday upon his being seen wearing shorts at the company’s annual summer picnic. “Hey there, good to see you,” said the formerly intimidating supervisor, who moments after arriving at the Pantheon picnic site in a pair of khaki Izod shorts that rose above his knobby, pallid knees had caused his immense levels of influence to dissipate within a matter of seconds....

"So Charlie Hebdo was nothing like the Onion, eh? Did the New Yorker writer see..."

"... the Onion's article 'No One Murdered Because Of This Image' — with an illustration showing several religious figures, including Jesus, in an orgy, with genitals and breasts on display?," asks John Althouse Cohen (challenging Adam Gopnik). Jaltcoh continues:

While it may be ironic to imbue Charlie Hebdo with too much nobility or piety — attitudes that would seem to be the opposite of what the publication stands for — I actually think it's important to revere the irreverent. We've certainly been doing that with the Marx Brothers for 80 years, for instance. It's a strength, not a weakness, for a society to be able to not take itself too seriously.

Now, I don't find Charlie Hebdo particularly funny (what little I've seen of it), and maybe they haven't always exercised the best judgment about how to walk the fine line humorists often need to walk between being outrageously funny and causing pointless outrage. But there's no way to make sure that all comedians always show the most sensitive judgment; by their very nature, they're sometimes going to slip up and land on the wrong side of the line. This will occasionally cause offense. But that's just the price of living in a world with humor and satire — which serve a vital role in puncturing pretense, deflating pomposity, giving us permission to laugh at authority figures.

Humorists are like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who points out what everyone else is thinking but no one else has the nerve to say: the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. And if anything in the world is ripe for this kind of treatment, it's religion!

My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high? That is a price that varies from person to person, depending on how much they hold sacred, how strongly they feel the offense, and whether they believe that God calls upon them to take action. For some of us, the price is dirt cheap, nothing at all. For others, it's everything — it's their eternal soul.

In case it's not obvious, I don't think that murder should be seen as a way to save your soul, but what do you say to people who believe they are not murderers, but soldiers in a just war? As John puts it: "the enemy has been revealed by its decision to carry out summary mass executions, and to arrogate worldwide jurisdiction." Yes, this is why we need to see that we are looking at a military enemy. They are invaders. But if these terrorists instead held the power of government in France — or wherever they conduct these killings — then they would have jurisdiction, and they might, through law, criminalize blasphemy and punish it with the death penalty. You may think that's despicable, but it's part of our tradition too:



("'An Act against Atheism and Blasphemy' as enacted in 1697 in 'His Majesty's PROVINCE of the MASSACHUSETTS-BAY in NEW-ENGLAND' (1759 printing).)

"Unemployed, Miserable Man Still Remembers Teacher Who First Made Him Fall In Love With Writing."

My post yesterday about Stephen King teaching English to high schoolers reminded a reader of that headline from The Onion.