More Onion Fail

Shaker Llencelyn sent me the link to this Onion video earlier today, with the note: "The Onion has had some awesome articles in the past, but in recent months there's been a lot of fail. This one, for me, takes the cake."


[Full transcript with screen caps below.]
Wow. There's so much fail in this clusterfucktastrophe I hardly know where to begin.

The whole frame of calling a female dignitary a weapon is fucked-up for a start—and, yeah, it's different than equating a male dignitary with a weapon, for a whole fuckton of reasons, starting with the cavernous disparity in male and female world leadership and warmongering, and I feel pretty confident that I can safely say, on behalf of feminist women everywhere, that we'd happily give up our marginalization from power in exchange for full equality, in case any dudez are feeling the harrumph of unfairness that it's worse to call a woman a weapon.

But it's extra fucked-up to call Hillary Clinton a weapon, no less a weapon being used against poor and disenfranchised people, especially poor and disenfranchised women, given that she's used her position as Secretary of State to highlight the plight of suffering women around the world in a way no other Secretary of State ever has.

And then there is the Othering of people of color in the video—just a bunch of wild-eyed savages who wail and gnash their teeth at the presence of a feminist woman with "inflexible hair and pseudo-folksy hand gestures." I especially love the part about how all the brown people have been driven into refugee camps, because it reminds me of how there are really brown people in refugee camps all over the world, and of how the last time we had refugee camps in America, they were filled with brown people, too. Hilarious!

I also like the part about how the Hillary Clinton warning signals "sounded just a few minutes before she hit. It was too late for most people," because it reminds me of how people have died in tsunamis, especially brown people, because of a lack of proper early warning systems. HAR HAR!

And that last bit, about the new medical breakthrough in erectile dysfunction…? Oh, my aching sides! References to how men's dicks have more fixes than women's cancers are such knee-slappers!

Most of all, I adore how I'm supposed to appreciate it all as satire—even though the idea that Hillary Clinton is a horrible, unlikable, venomous, inhuman feminazi bitch is pretty fucking mainstream, and racism is pretty fucking mainstream, so this piece isn't so much satirizing anything as much as repackaging tiresome bigotry for laughs.

Contact the Onion.

Anchor: Pakistani officials are expressing outrage following what many in the international community are calling the brutal and unjustified use of Hillary Clinton against their nation. [video of Clinton deplaning, smiling and waving] Secretary of State Clinton hit Islamabad [map graphic of a flight made to look like a missile deployment] at approximately 9:00am yesterday as most civilians were starting their workday [video of women in headscarves crying and throwing their hands in the air] or attending morning prayers [video of men crying and hugging each other].

Woman sobbing and speaking in what I assume to be Arabic [sub-titled]: I was just five or six feet away from her, close enough to see her dead eyes.

Man slumped on ground, clearly upset, also speaking in a language other than English [sub-titled]: Don't the Americans care how much suffering their Hillary Clinton is causing?

Anchor: Just hours after Clinton arrived, the UN released a statement condemning the United States, saying, quote, "Under no circumstances is there ever a justification for the preemptive deployment of Hillary Clinton anywhere by any country." Joining us now is Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Hassan Amdiri. Thank you for being here, Mr. Ambassador. [ambassador, shown in split-screen with anchor, nods] Preliminary figures we have here showing over five hundred civilians suffered the full force of Mrs. Clinton, and over a thousand more may have suffered some exposure to her inflexible hair and pseudo-folksy hand gestures.

[graphic is shown reading: "Projected Impact on Citizens" with radiating impact effects]


Ambassador: It's horrible. Innocent women and even children have to endure her stiffly rehearsed stories about farmers she met who inspired her. [video of Clinton on an official state visit] She was even sent into a hospital.

Anchor: That's awful.

Ambassador: Mr. Obama clearly regards our people [video of Arabic men wailing and running through streets] as beneath human dignity to have unleashed such a woman upon us.

Anchor: The Red Cross has set up camps just across the Afghan border [video of refugee camp] for the tens of thousands of refugees who fled their homes to avoid Mrs. Clinton, is that right?

Ambassador: These are the lucky ones. Many more were trapped inside the Clintonized area and could not escape her clumsy attempts to relate to them.

Anchor: So people were caught completely unaware then?

Ambassador: I'm afraid so. The Hillary Clinton warning sirens—


—sounded just a few minutes before she hit. It was too late for most people. [video of refugees being given water] They had to endure her cacophonous fake laughter, and—

Anchor: Sir, we're just getting word that the White House has released the following statement: "We reserve the right to use Hillary Clinton in situations where all other options have failed." Mr. Ambassador, this sounds like a threatening tone.

Ambassador: It is horrible! The world must unite against this act of naked aggression. Let a thousand Hillary Clintons reign down upon those responsible for this.

Anchor: All right, Mr. Amdiri. Thank you very much for joining us.

Ambassador: Thank you.

Anchor: Intelligence reports have indicated that Pakistan is developing its own Hillary Clinton, in that a Nida Alvi—


—a stiff, humorless, provincial representative could be ready to use against a major US city as soon as 2011. Moving on: Medical researchers are close to finding another cure for erectile dysfunction.