The fine folks over at the Onion are beloved for their vicious, unflinching senses of humor, but after the satirical organization made an extremely pointed and aggressive joke about nine-year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, many fans immediately demanded an apology. Let the record show the voices in the crowd won.
You can take a look at a copy of the tweet in question below….
”Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013."
After about an hour, whoever was running the Onion’s Twitter account decided to delete the comment, but the angry responses didn’t stop. So, this morning, Onion CEO Steve Hannah decided to take to Facebook to issue a more formal apology.
You can take a look at a portion of the statement below…
“On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.”
The organization’s biggest critics would have you believe the person who wrote the comment should be publically identified to be tarred and feathered, but to me, this doesn’t amount to much more than someone trying to make people laugh and most of the room collectively saying too far. The juxtaposition he or she was trying to make is pretty clear, and whether it was in good taste or not, it clearly wasn’t made specifically to hurt a little girl’s feelings.
Here’s to hoping this entire situation can be put behind us.
