In 2016, Anthony Novak was arrested for making a Facebook page that parodied the local police page in Parma, Ohio. ‘No way to prevent this’: why the Onion’s gun violence headline is so devastating It sounds like an Onion headline, the filing points out, but it’s not. The outlet is concerned about the outcome of a case it describes in a headline: “Ohio Police Officers Arrest, Prosecute Man Who Made Fun of Them on Facebook”. This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.” “The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists. With such power, why does the Onion feel the need to weigh in on a mundane court case? “To protect its continued ability to create fiction that may ultimately merge into reality,” the filing asserts. It’s the source of 350,000 jobs at its offices and “manual labor camps”, and it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily”. “If it helps people channel their sorrow and anger and hopelessness,” he says, “it’s not so bad for 12 words.Claiming global Onion readership of 4.3 trillion, the filing describes the publication as “the single most powerful and influential organization in human history”. “But I usually recognize the headline as a concise indictment of a culture that’s hypnotized by guns and that’s signed off on people dying for the capital offense of being a fourth-grader or standing in the frozen food aisle.” “I worry it’s just another part of the mass shooting ceremony - thought ‘n’ prayers, don’t politicize, #GunControlNow, and so on,” he says. But, he says workwise, “mostly, it’s the TV staffing hustle.”Īs for his legacy as the author of The Headline, Roeder says when he is feeling cynical he thinks about how The Onion story is a part of the sad and morbid rituals that surround the epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. He lives in Los Angeles with “one overfed cat” and recently cowrote, with Mike Sacks, a college catalog parody called Welcome to Woodmont, published by McSweeney’s, and has another humor book coming out in the fall. These days, Roeder is still writing humour. “I’d certainly love to be remembered by sillier headlines such as Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex or Trojan Introduces ‘No One’s Pleasure’ Condoms For Bitter, Resentful Couples, but I think I know my destiny,” he says. “But I obviously wouldn’t put the shooting headline in that category. “It’s usually gratifying when your headlines outlast you, when you meet someone who’s an Onion fan and who has one of your jokes on their shortlist of favorites (especially when it’s a headline you didn’t think anyone loved except you),” says Roeder. “I think this one went in as is.” He didn’t imagine that it would have so much such staying power all these years later. “There’s often a lot of collaboration involved, but not on this occasion,” he says. Roeder, who worked for The Onion for six years and still freelances there occasionally, recalls jotting the headline down seconds before an afternoon pitch meeting, noting that there weren’t a bunch of drafts or back-and-forth. “My feelings can honestly be summed up as, ‘Here we go again.'” It’s the most awful merging of ghastly and monotonous,” former Onion writer Jason Roeder, who wrote the headline and original story, told Rolling Stone on Wednesday. “It always comes on the heels of unfathomable grief.
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