“You watch the news today, and you don’t know what is real. When I was doing newscasts at CNN, people would come up to me and say, ‘That story can’t be real.’ Now the lines are really getting blurred.”
— Former CNN news anchor Bobbie Battista, now an anchor on the satirical news site The Onion, doing her part to blur the lines between real and fake news even further. Although hesitant at first to accept the job at The Onion for fear that her former CNN colleagues would think less of her, Battista nevertheless doesn't see it as a step down.
Sometimes cell phone cameras and portable digital video cameras can turn innocent bystanders into a police investigator's best friend. But in the case of a dorm room fire at a party at NYU, the partygoers' documentation helped as much as it hindered the investigation. After sifting through 40,000 images and videos of young women making out, posing with goofy sexy faces, and people drawing penis pictures on a passed out student's face, police finally determined that the fire was caused by a dropped, lit cigarette.
I love Czech novelist Franz Kafka as much as the next brooding existentialist, but I never want to land at his namesake airport in Prague. Named as the world's most alienating airport, Franz Kafka International takes the confusion of air travel and multiplies it by a million. The average delay?
Rep. Gregory White, Democrat from New Hampshire, is really, really sorry for what he's about to do. So he apologizes to his wife, his constituents, and to his children, who are soon going to be privy to his sexual fetishes.
When you're an A-list celeb who's just given birth, or even an obscure person who suddenly finds herself with 16 babies (whoops — how ever did that happen!), a baby these days pretty much guarantees a tabloid cover, plus a nice sum of money. And for the lower-tiered stars? Well, The Onion imagines that, like the rest of us peons, they'd have to suck it up and fork over some cold hard cash just to get attention.
Are you insufferably exuberant? Do you beam if a stranger so much as looks your way? Do you see the silver lining in even awful situations?
Television shows like Rock of Love and Flavor of Love put undue pressure on real world skanks to outdo the unrealistic levels of skankiness they see on TV, according to the American Media Institute. (It's hard out here for a skank!) “Only 2 percent of skanks will ever get to ride in a stretch limousine," says one pundit, "much less pass out in one.” The funniest part of this Onion Network News clip is how the anchors kept a straight face while pretending to be serious about this. That, and the new band name idea I got from the clip: Skanks Across America.
Forget the sexual messages Bratz dolls send to little girls who buy them (nice blowup doll lips, Miss Bratz!). The Onion is worried that the takeaway message for girls is that "in order to be beautiful you have to have a head that's twice the size of your torso." Says one concerned mother, "I want her to feel good about her head.
Meet Ship's Captain, the first openly gay horse to compete in a major race. Rumors have swirled around a number of famous horses since time immemorial, but since they chose not to disclose their sexual leanings, other homosexual horses, including plough horses and ponies, have had to remain in the closet. (That must be one huge closet!) Thank heavens that horses who love horses of the same sex can now love openly, and without shame.
What with hurricanes and tornadoes scaring the bejeezus out of everyone, meteorologists are chasing that next big news story that will make them feel relevant. The solution? Report on "an extremely brisk Autumn" filled with loads of "crunchy leaves" and kids out playing ball in "extremely moderate weather."