The Onion is undeniably a brilliant publication of satire, parody and wit. But it’s also one of the best-edited publications you could hope to find. Sure, the stories are fake, as are the quotes and, often, the subjects, places, events and settings. But there’s plenty of bad literature to dispel the notion that only nonfiction requires editing. The Onion isn’t any of that — it’s smart, clever and entertaining writing while staying in the genre that it’s trying to imitate. Most often, that’s community and metro newspapers.
With that in mind, I was shocked — and delighted to a sad degree — to find a typo in The Onion’s latest video, “Excitement Growing Among Beatles Fans For Paul McCartney’s Funeral.” The video’s actually quite good, as usual. But take a look here:
The message is not to pick on The Onion. Honestly. It’s just to note that nobody’s perfect, even the masters of smartly finding the funny — and that every once in a while, despite all its flaws, a spell-check is a good thing to use.
James daSilva 