Kabul-based journalist Tom A. Peter contends that The Onion has published some of the best commentary on Syria in recent weeks:
It can be exasperating playing it straight when you write news about a situation that regularly produces absurd scenarios. The Onion’s format allows its writers to plainly make sense of ridiculous situations that can be difficult to explain or fully appreciate in a normal news article.
During many of the trips I made into Syria, I met conservative people who supported the insurgents who used to fight Americans in Iraq, yet these same people were now calling for the same U.S. soldiers they wanted to kill six or seven years ago in Iraq to come to their aid with an intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, as of at least March, the CIA has been compiling a list of targets for potential future drone strikes inside opposition-controlled Syria, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Onion managed to explain this dark, complicated reality in just one fake headline: “Target Of Future Drone Attack Urges American Intervention In Syria.”
Head writer Seth Reiss discusses the site’s approach:
I think one thing we have tried to do with our content is humanize the Syrian people. For example, this piece isn’t calling for U.S. intervention so much as it’s saying that these are people with mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who, obviously, value their lives and relationships. It would be too easy and doing a disservice to the issue to stake out some sort of hardline resolute position i.e. “We should not intervene!” or “We should intervene!” It’s murkier than that. And in that murkiness there is comedy. Dark comedy, but comedy nonetheless.
(Screenshot from this Onion story. Recent Dish on the satire site here.)
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