The University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1980s was the perfect breeding ground to create the self-described “single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”
Before The Onion was a leader in satirical journalism recognized worldwide, it was the baby of a few imaginative Badgers. When founding member Christine Wenc returned to Madison in 2017, the results of the 2016 presidential election and its fallout in national media inspired her to revisit her college years.
But the history of The Onion’s rise to fame was murky, so Wenc decided to use her research and writing skills to get it all down on paper in her new book “Funny Because It's True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire.”
We’ve all seen a headline in the news that seems so ridiculous you question whether or not it's satire. Wenc said The Onion’s 1990s staff used to love being confused with real news. But in a political era where “fake news” can be used as propaganda, the implications of this are a little more sinister.
Wenc said she thought, “This isn’t entertaining and funny, this is sad and horrible.”
“Funny Because It’s True” shows readers how satirical journalism can work effectively. Wenc writes about the conservative administrations which The Onion formed within, and said that humor was a good way to combat false information.
“News satire… to me it’s one of the few effective remedies against spin. And I think that The Onion’s satire is trying to make the world a better place,” Wenc said.
Wenc defined satire as something that points out hypocrisy and punches up rather than down. “It’s pointing out the flaws in the human condition and the way, at least to me, how politics can exploit that,” she said.
One satirical comic, “Jim’s Journal,” was led by previous Cardinal editor-in-chief Scott Dikkers. Dikkers was the longest running editor-in-chief of The Onion, from 1988 to 1999 and 2005 to 2008.
The Onion’s path to fame is not a perfect one. One difficulty Wenc experienced in her research process was the lack of consistency in each staff member’s recollection of events.
“You take any situation and you talk to five different people who were there and get their opinion of it, and they’re all gonna say something different. And so I did try to use stuff that at least a couple of people were in agreement on,” she said.
Since she left, The Onion went through various transformations which Wenc had the opportunity to track. Despite the many changes, it was clear there was a core belief at The Onion that would never leave the staff.
“Love and protect: those two words actually came up a lot when I talked to later people, which was really touching having been a person who was there at the beginning,” Wenc said.
Madison is at the heart of this story. In the book, Wenc argues that it was the perfect place for something like The Onion to originate. Madison has a long record of dissent, particularly in the protest culture on campus. Pranksters have always flourished in our student body, seen in our iconic pink flamingos and Lake Mendota Statue of Liberty tradition.
However, Wenc said the biggest contributing factor to The Onion’s early success was an economic one. The low cost of living allowed The Onion’s original staff to juggle their journalistic pursuits, a minimum wage job, and classes (if they hadn’t dropped out yet).
“Madison was cheap enough that people could make stuff like the Onion,” she said. “People weren’t getting paid, but we also could do whatever we wanted. At that time that was a really important thing.”
That “creative flowering” is apparent in “Funny Because It’s True.” The inclusion of scans of old Onion front pages allows readers to visualize each stage of The Onion’s life. During the writing process, Wenc was surprised to find that one of her past articles became famous within The Onion’s fandom.
“I would find it on Ebay. The person who was selling it described it as ‘the iconic Penis Fear issue.’ I was like, ‘the what? I haven't thought about this in 35 years!’” she said.
The publication of this book and presenting it to The Onion’s original audience at the Wisconsin Book Festival in March acts as a full-circle moment.
“It was just really nice to have that many people show up and have people really excited about the story,” Wenc said. “It mattered to me as a Madisonian.”
“Funny Because It’s True” is, yes, a historiography of The Onion, but it’s also a love letter to Madison. Watching the progress of a local publication go on to influence the entire country’s sense of humor should warm the heart of any UW-Madison student.
