Maybe the weirdest thing about September 11 was that it presented our generation with an experience we couldn’t collectively make fun of, for the first time in our lives. It robbed us of our most marked characteristic: our cynicism. In the week after the attacks, it was almost embarrassing to walk around campus all day, stopping and talking to people without being able to make jokes. Who are the youth of America if not a sarcastic, wisecracking, skeptical bunch? And yet here we were, this time last year, scared to say anything funny.
And then, after a two-week dry spell, The Onion came out again. I think everyone was a little nervous about the post-September 11 issue of the free weekly humor newspaper; The Onion is notorious for its ruthless coverage of the depressing, shallow materialism of American middle-class life.
But The Onion rose to the occasion famously. A banner across the top of the first page read: “Holy F***ing S**t!” Articles included “A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bulls**t Again” and “U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is That We’re At War With.” At Washington University-and colleges and high schools through the country-we once-cynical youth laughed and breathed a sigh of relief. Those weeks without The Onion had been scary, sad, and disorienting; its return reminded to start being ourselves again.
On National Public Radio that October, Onion editor Robert Siegel talked about his newspaper’s decision to write about September 11 rather than ignoring it. The staff met a week after the attacks. “We were all sort of assuming that we would do material that was not related to the news,” said Siegel. But after talking for a few hours, covering the attacks started to seem “like it was the only thing we could do,” he said.
The Onion’s coverage was hilarious and, in some cases, touching. Siegel said that many of The Onion’s post-September 11 articles dealt with “the sense of helplessness everyone feels,” and articles such as “Not Knowing What To Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake” gently pointed out how stupid we were acting while respecting the gravity of our situation.
As one of my friends noted, the brilliance of The Onion is that it doesn’t mock world events; it mocks Americans’ reactions to world events. For our self-conscious generation, that kind of humor is particularly resonant, and, perhaps, necessary.
Our worries have an intensity and quantity that few, if any, generations before us experienced. We grew up scared and touched by the destruction of the environment, the threat of nuclear war, ever-heightening conflict in the Middle East and ever-increasing American involvement, corporate corruption, dwindling social security and AIDS. To address these tricky problems-most of which are simultaneously personal and worldwide-our generation has used sarcasm, cynicism and mockery like a shield; we hope they keep us protected while we fight our battles. And The Onion, with its brave, poignant humor, is our paper of record.
In the weeks following the attacks, I felt guilty whenever I laughed about anything, but it shouldn’t be that way. Humor-even if it’s our generation’s jaded style of humor-is an honorable a tool as anything. As The Onion shows us, humor can lead us to self-knowledge-a valuable quality in a country like ours that loves to throw its weight around.