Internet Reacts to The Onion’s Quvenzhané Tweet, Onion Responds
By ALEX ALVAREZ
Last night, because duh, Twitter exploded with all kinds of jokes about celebrities and their outfits/hair/relationships/seams/what have you. But one joke, sent as the Oscar show drew to a close, drew particular attention. Which is to be expected when someone refers to a 9-year-old girl as a term for female genitalia.
Around midnight, the Twitter account for the satirical news/entertainment site The Onion, sent the following (and since deleted) message:
The response was swift, with Jezebel founder Anna Holmes urging The Onion to simply “do better.” PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill tweeted that she was “done with The Onion,” and Vibe magazine called the tweet “outrageous.”
Reuter’s Alex Leo had some thoughtful advice for the satirical site:
And comedian Baratunde Thurston, who happens to be The Onion’s former Director of Digital, had this to say:
There were also plenty who defended the tweet — either by suggesting that it indeed was genuinely funny, or more implicitly by citing either The Onion’s First Amendment rights, its satirical nature, or its irrelevance, as they see it.
The online discussion over the tweet even included talk of whether there was a racial component, and would The Onion have made the same tweet regarding a white child.
Through it all, The Onion remained quiet. Until this morning, when it issued the following statement via Facebook:
