Cry Me A Paper -- Read It And Weep: Underneath The Onion's Layers Of Satire Is A Healthy Disdain For . . . Everything

MADISON, Wis. - Today, like every day, top editors at thousands of news organizations will hold story conferences to discuss which vital information should be provided to their readers, no doubt considering such weighty stories as "Peace Accord Lifts Hopes" and "Election Signals Party Shift."

There are other stories in this great land, though, the kind the mainstream media are afraid to print. In a dingy office here, one block from the Wisconsin Capitol, the fearless minds behind the Onion, America's Finest News Source, suggest such items for inclusion in their paper:

"Texans Elect Gun."

"Perky `Canada' Has Own Government, Laws."

"Christ Announces Hiring of Associate Christ."

"Marijuana Linked to Sitting Around and Getting High."

An editor, painting his fingernails silver, pipes up with urgent local news. "How about `Area Pie in Face'? No, `Pie Placed in Area Face'!" Other editors nod their heads, considering the political implications of such a bombshell.

If you don't get your news from the Onion, that's OK. You are probably a saner human being for it.

But soon you will no longer be able to remain ignorant of headlines like "Fed Chief Announces Lowering of Interest in Fed Chief's Wife." Because the Onion, heaven help us, is on the verge of becoming America's new comedy empire. What the National Lampoon was to the '70s - consistently, brutally hilarious - the Onion may be for the year 2000 and beyond.

In a world of 24-hour news channels, myriad online sources, the merging of fact and fiction, and corporate media synergy, the Onion is an antidote to hype and, oddly enough, a voice of reason. When the Onion publishes stories headlined "Geopolitical Balance of Power Somehow Unaffected by Death of Princess Diana" and "Jesse Jackson Honored for Providing Inner-City Youths With Increased Photo Opportunities," it raises the question: Who really delivers fake news? "People write us and say, `Your newspaper is the only one I believe,' " says editor in chief Scott Dikkers.

In the 10 years since its humble beginning as a sophomoric Badger State campus rag, the Onion has fine-tuned its satiric attack on the world. It's restricted to the format of a newspaper parody - wisely so, since newspapers tend to be interminably humorless and their conventions instantly recognizable.

It publishes editions in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and Denver (for a total of 360,000 readers) and also uses the World Wide Web (220,000 weekly visits to www.theonion.com) to widely disseminate its edgy absurdity - the kind that makes its readers teary-eyed with laughter while its writers cry in recognition of the crushing banality and hypocrisy of life.

With its print edition hitting nationwide chains, a book scheduled for release in the spring by Crown Books and television and recording deals in the works, the Onion may soon become a brand name: a Mad magazine for the mature, a Spy for the post-ironic, a USA Today for the laugh-starved.

Chevy Chase reads the Onion, and Larry David, the co-creator of "Seinfeld," is a fan. So are Steve Martin, Jon Stewart, "Mr. Show's" Bob Odenkirk and executives at Comedy Central.

Ponytailed, goateed, silver-fingered and wearing a white shirt embroidered with Land O' Lakes patches, Todd Hanson, 30, is a self-proclaimed "bum-slacker-dropout."

"I had long ago given up the idea of being anything other than a service industry worker," says Hanson. Now, to his surprise, he's the Onion's head writer, able to put his knowledge of arcane pop culture and his twisted perspective on life's unfairness to good use.

Like most of the Onion staff, Hanson attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, but in his case only "from 1986 to 1986." He worked as a dishwasher for many years before arriving at the Onion, considered then an occasionally funny campus weekly with entertainment listings and pizza coupons. He had no intention of becoming a professional satirist and launching a nationwide hit.

Surprised at the attention

Many of the other staffers also are surprised at the attention their work is receiving, or that their predecessors at the Onion have moved on to jobs writing for David Letterman and "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer." They joined the Onion with limited comedy experience in stand-up, improv or cartooning. They are in their late twenties - like the average reader of the Onion - and earn a few hundred dollars a week by making fun of whatever and whoever they want. They have vast knowledge of archaic and trashy popular culture, and a shared worship of Letterman's pioneering ironic voice, Monty Python's Flying Circus and early "Saturday Night Live."

Hanson's girlfriend, Carol Kolb, is also an Onion writer and the curator of the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue. (Don't ask.) "They have sex," managing editor Rob Siegel helpfully informs a reporter. Siegel, 26, makes sure that everyone files the copy on time, and he also edits the daily lunch order.

Presiding over all this is Dikkers, the 33-year-old editor in chief, who has a shaved head and a roguish smirk. His jocularity, though, masks the fact that the Onion's raw material is "the absolute unlivable agony of life."

Siegel, whom Dikkers calls "a Pandora's box of neuroses," says he doesn't think many creative people are happy. Writer John Krewson is an angry insomniac. And Hanson, who suffers anxiety attacks, says, "Every single person working here is whacked in the head."

The offices of the Onion have the ragged, slapdash feel of a college newspaper, with an empty reception desk, bean-bag chairs and clothing on the floor and pop culture detritus on the walls.

Real headlines from papers such as USA Today adorn desks as reminders that inane journalists will always trump the Onion: "Prolonged pounding may increase damage"; " `Fantasy Island' helps make Saturday nights fun again."

Amid such inspiration, the 15-member editorial staff labors. A board lists each writer's tasks for the week. (For the record, writer and cartoonist Maria Schneider's duties include "Seduce Wash. Post reporter.")

Midwesterners often succeed in comedy - Letterman is a Hoosier, Carson a Nebraskan - but rarely do they make a mark while sequestered in cow country.

Some staffers believe the Onion would have been successful a lot sooner if headquartered in New York or Los Angeles, the loci of American comedy; others believe it would have been swallowed up by a blockheaded corporation.

"The Onion is independent and unfettered by the things that fetter the rest of comedy," says Hanson. "We're not terribly bohemian, and we're certainly capitalist, but we generally count as underground."

Which means that the Onion has been able to revel in bad taste. It is not a corporate product, foisted onto the public with visions of demographic targets and standards-and-practices departments. Instead it gleefully offends, armed with a combination of puerility and intelligence.

Slavishly accurate

Attempts to analyze humor often ruin the joke, but here goes. The success of the Onion - like the success of any parody - is based on its absolute devotion to accuracy. Though no one on staff has formal journalistic training, its writers have mastered the deadpan, Associated Press-style news voice. Unlike other news-driven comedy such as "The Daily Show" and "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live," the Onion doesn't just comment on the news, it purports to provide it. For example:

WASHINGTON - In a surprise announcement with wide-ranging implications for U.S. narcotics policy, Drug Enforcement Administration director Thomas Constantine acknowledged Monday that some winners "may occasionally" use drugs.

The Onion's design is almost obscenely familiar; its model is the clean, cheery color of USA Today. Graphics whiz Mike Loew takes photos from online databases and alters them so that, for instance, Bob Dole really does look like a servomotored, bipedal animatron in the illustration to "Terrorist Bombing Damages Bob Dole's Outer Hull."

For the Onion, headlines are everything: The whole joke, whittled down to 10 words or fewer. Writers pitch headlines, not story ideas. Some readers peruse only the headlines without actually reading the stories, which doesn't bother Dikkers. "In 20 seconds you've seen what we think of the world," he says. "I love that."

The other Onion staple is the local "everyday" story, a description of typical behavior written as if it's a worthwhile news development: "Posters of Naked Women Fail to Draw Real Naked Women to Dorm Room." This is meta-humor - the utterly banal rendered funny by its format:

ODESSA, Texas - A saltless "Superpretzel" is still hanging alone in a bulb-heated rack at Horizon Lanes, officials for the Odessa-area bowling alley reported Tuesday. "Looks like there's just one left," said Mack Klausner, snack manager for the 12-lane alley.

Hypocrisy is the Onion's most frequent target. "Army Cadets Under Investigation for `Killing,' " for instance, was written in response to the outrages over sexual transgressions in the armed forces: "In what has been dubbed `the most serious military scandal yet,' the U.S. Army revealed Monday that several of its cadets may have been involved in a `killing' incident while serving in the Persian Gulf in 1991."

One should not assume that the Onion is liberal. Consider: "Maya Angelou Lauded for Courage, Blackness." "Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit."

Like all good satirists, the Onion is nonpartisan, just anti-stupidity in all its forms. But for Hanson, the humor is ultimately about one thing: "Life's nightmare hellscape of unrelenting horror."

From the Onion to the Stranger

In the beginning were Tim Keck and Chris Johnson, University of Wisconsin undergraduates in 1988. Lacking any publishing experience, they decided to create their version of a small-town newspaper - a parody of USA Today, Keck says, and an homage to the nearby Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper. From their apartment, fueled by beer and other substances, they launched 17,000 copies of the Onion's debut, whose cover story was something about a fishing accident at a lake. "A lot of people didn't know it was a joke," says Keck, now the publisher of the Seattle Stranger. (Johnson runs the Weekly Alibi in Albuquerque.)

Current Onion staffers believe an "onion" is old-fashioned slang for "a juicy news story." Not true, says Keck (and any working journalist). "Chris and I didn't have any money, and we were eating onion sandwiches," he says.

Originally a cartoonist for the Onion, Dikkers and Pete Haise, the current publisher, bought it from Keck and Johnson for $16,400 in 1989. For several more years it grew in relative obscurity, and in 1996 made the leap into cyberspace.

Dikkers has made tentative steps into other media, including an MTV pilot called "Virtual Bill," in which a computer-animated Clinton, voiced by Dikkers, introduces videos. But the most important Onion product is the upcoming book "Our Dumb Century," modeled after The New York Times' popular "Page One" series. It is a collection of the defining moments of the 20th century: "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg: Titanic, Representation of Man's Hubris, Sinks in North Atlantic." "Martin Luther King: `I Had a Really Weird Dream Last Night.' " "New President Feels Nation's Pain, Breasts."

As the Onion becomes a brand name, it will face compromises that undermine its indie credibility. "If you're underground and based on subversion, once you cross that line you're entering into unknown philosophical territory," says head writer Hanson.

Ultimately, the Onion's success will be determined by how faithful it can remain to its motto - the one that founder Herman Ulysses Zweibel, in Onion lore, created back in 1871. It speaks of the Onion's confidence as "America's Finest News Source," of its relationship to its readers, of its cosmic take on the world: Tu Stultus Es.

"You Are Dumb."

------------------------------------------------------ Headlines From the Onion, America's Finest News Source ------------------------------------------------------

NATIONAL

Congress Approves $540 Million For Evil.

`Midwest' Discovered Between East, West Coasts.

Nation's Educators Alarmed by Poorly Written Teen Suicide Notes.

New York to Install Special `Infants Only' Dumpsters.

BUSINESS

Bantu Tribesman Uses IBM Modem to Crush Nut.

Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes.

More States Shifting Welfare Control to McDonald's.

Nike to Cease Manufacturing Products; `From Now On, We'll Focus on Just Making Ads,' Says CEO.

EDITORIAL

I Had AIDS Before It Was Cool.

It's Not a Crack House, It's a Crack Home.

Many Civil War Reenactments, Sadly, Are Still Not Handicap Accessible.

INTERNATIONAL

Chinese Woman Gives Birth to Septuplets: Has One Week to Choose.

Crazed Palestinian Gunman Angered by Stereotypes.

New Cambodian Barnes & Noble: Will It Threaten Cambodia's Small Book Shops?

U.S. Ambassador to Bulungi Suspected of Making Country Up.

RELIGION

Church Group Offers Homosexual New Life in Closet.

Fox Defends Airing of `When Jews Attack'.

Lord Under Investigation for Failure to Provide.

SOCIETY

`Oprah' Viewers Patiently Awaiting Instructions.

Retirees Rise Up Against Gang Violence: All Are Killed.

Special Olympics Fixed: Many `Winners' Found To Have Lost Badly.

Study: Children of Divorce Twice as Likely To Write Bad Poetry.