Was The Onion Right To Apologize To Quvenzhane Wallis?

Throughout its history, the satirical news organization The Onion has made its mark by making people laugh. Sometimes by offering unflinching and biting commentary on controversial societal issues and sometimes by simply offering irreverent observations, the off-beat paper has found a huge audience without apologizing for its unique sense of humor, at least not until this morning.

Earlier today, the CEO issued a statement apologizing to nine-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis for making an extremely crass reference to her during yesterday’s Academy Awards statement. You can take a look at the since deleted tweet in question below…

On the one hand, it’s easy to see why people got so riled up about this tweet. There are few words in the English language people are more bothered by than the c-bomb, and there are few groups people are more protective of than little girls. Thus, it makes sense people would have flipped, and given The Onion needs readers to pay the bills, it’s easy to see why they apologized. On the other hand, the one thing the paper has always had going for it is its aggressive originality and unwillingness to cave. So, in that sense, apologizing is kind of foolish.

What do you think? Was The Onion right to apologize? Let us know your thoughts by voting in the poll below…

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