CultureI Got Punk'd By The Onion
by: Madison Richards
Last night I was surfing webzines. Because I spend so much time on my computer between blogging, writing, and website maintenance, AND because I have four kids and two horses, my elderly parents live with me and I maintain a household that frequently involves a revolving door of multiple high school and mostly college aged "extras" that seem to swim around on the surface of my life, I don't spend much time surfing other sites. I have my list of blogs and other writers' sites I frequent, and a few source sites (like ginkworld) that I really like, but that's about all I have time for.
Disclaimer
duly noted.
Like I said, last night I was surfing web based magazines,
some very serious and political, others dealing with pop culture. I was
basically running the gamut and trying to get a feel for what's out there. Some
were print magazines that also have online versions, some were purely
e-zines.
My longing to switch to the world of MAC aside, Internet
Explorer now allows you to open multiple windows with a tabbed browsing feature.
I pulled up a whole bunch of options just as my migraine meds were kicking in,
after which I pretty much passed out.
This morning when I woke up and
opened my computer screen there they all were, and I'd only gotten through about
half of them, so I continued my quest. Don't leave, the funny part is coming,
but do me a favor and wait to click on the links below until after you've
finished reading my part of the story...
I get to an online version of
"The Onion", which has decent circulation numbers and is apparently available in
many major cities across the US. One of its front page headlines read:
800,000 Privileged Youths Enlist To
Fight In Iraq
'We've Been So
Selfish'
I'm thinking to myself "Wow. That's pretty significant".
There's a picture of a group of nice looking, well dressed young men standing
outside a US Armed Forces Recruiting Station, presumably in NYC but it could be
any city USA.
I go on to read this article
which talks about how all over the nation the upper middle and upper class
college aged kids are enlisting in the armed services because there has been a
sudden swell of interest and empathy about the number of people their own age
who have died in the war against Iraq while they sit in Ivy League colleges and
wear cashmere. It got me all stirred up thinking about the differences between
people in general and how our country is so split on whether or not we should
even be in this war.
We recently re-watched a movie called The Postman with Kevin
Costner, which is an admittedly long and poorly reviewed tale of post
apocalyptic America. Maybe it's not that dramatic, but that's the general
idea...Kevin Costner finds an old mail truck and steals the uniform off the
skeleton, posing as a mailman and walking from town to town trying to get fed by
making up a story that the fledgling government has been restored under the
leadership of newly elected President Richard Starkey (which is the real name of
former Beatle Ringo Star but since the whole story is made up and not that many
people know that little bit of trivia in the year 2013, the story flies and the
people believe that he really is a postman).
Young people start wanting
to be postmen too, and so he swears in one young man - Ford Lincoln Mercury -
who then creates an entire postal system with an army of young people delivering
mail on horseback and forsaking the dangers of the rebel army that keeps all the
towns oppressed. The adults mostly shrink back in fear, doing whatever the
rebels ask in order to satisfy them and not make any more trouble for
themselves. Sounds like terrorism to me...
The letters give people hope
again. The mail makes them believe and be willing to stand up again. The legend
of the postman spreads. The idea of a restored government leads to unity among
the isolated towns.
The multiple metaphors in this movie regarding the
mail (messages of hope) and the youth of our nation not being willing to sit
back and do nothing really got to me. It was like they wanted someone to give them something to die for so that they could have something to really live
for.
I feel like that most days, and I see this same quality in the people I know and love - the crowd I hang with has that same fire burning in their hearts to make a difference - to
BE the difference. Perhaps that's why this story
piqued my interest. Perhaps that's why I wanted it to be true.
Just to be sure,
I checked it against CNN or MSN to find out if it was a real story or not. CNN -
nothing. MSN - nothing. Finally I googled "The Onion". Good old Wikipedia told me the real
story in the first two sentences:
"The Onion is a parody
newspaper published weekly in print and online. It features
satirical articles reporting on international, national, and
local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website known as The A.V.
Club."
Some of you already knew this and have been laughing for a couple
of paragraphs now. I'm just letting the rest of you in on the joke. This is how I got punk'd by The Onion.
So
much for considering myself a fairly culturally relevant intellectual... I got
duped by the same "War of the Worlds" gig that sarcastic political satirists
have been pulling since the fifties! I could hardly believe it...and I laughed
so hard I almost peed my pants.
So, did I get punk'd by being gullible or passionate?
Am I stupid and uninformed or is a part of my heart so committed to seeing a righteous unity rise up in the hearts of the people that I wanted to believe it was true? I guess a part of me is gullible and uninformed, but with all that's in me I want to believe that as a nation we could see something equally radical happen in our midst.
In The
Postman the youth are the ones who believe and who act, speaking into
existence that which does not yet exist (a restored government) and acting on
those beliefs at the cost of their lives until it becomes a reality. Now that's
faith in action.
What if we were able to write like that? What if we were able to speak like that? What if we were able to live like that? Would it
create a tipping point? Would it change the direction of a nation? Could it, in
fact, change the world?
The Beatles did it. Hush Puppies did it. Why not
you and I? We live in a free nation, a nation where we have power as
individuals; power to speak out and be heard, both in politics and in religion.
It's time for us to stand not only for what we believe in, but for what we can
currently only hope for - true revival, true reformation, and true freedom.
What if we started speaking positive words over one another - over our own destinies and over our nation? What if we started speaking what is not yet as if it already existed, and then walking in it?
We'd be changing the world, one word at a time...
©2006 Madison Richards
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