The Onion
The Onion
A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.
Great Satire Writing:
Distaste for political dynasties perhaps? I don't really like Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada because his dad was Prime Minister as well. I hope he pulls a Biden and drops out before the next election to get someone fresh in.
Hillary Clinton willingly campaigned with "close family friend" Henry Kissinger after it was public knowledge that he conspired with the Nixon campaign to sabotage Vietnam peace talks to win an election.
Fuck her. She wasn't less corrupt than Trump, she just wasn't as stupid.
I mean, she's a LOT less corrupt than trump. There are scales to this. trump literally stole state secrets to sell to our enemies for a profit; he tried to extort Ukraine, he's so firmly in Putin's pocket that he may as well be a Russian agent, and he's threatening genocides and dictatorships and political violence daily, maybe hourly.
So yeah, she's a hell of a lot less corrupt. That doesn't make her blameless or uncorrupt, but there's shades of gray to this my man. :)
The Idiot invited Kremlin agents into the Oval Office to laugh about firing the FBI director, and we only found out because Russian photographers published the pictures.
She was a lot less corrupt than The Idiot.
Say Trudeau pulls a Biden, is there any MP you would be excited to see lead the Liberal party?
(Caveat: I am an NDP voter)
Chrystia Freeland isn't my favourite, but she would absolutely be a better choice than Trudeau. She can lock up our centrist voters, she's an easy 'economy good' candidate, and she'd absolutely dumpster Poilievre in a debate. She was lead editor for the Financial Times (London), she's half-Ukrainian and fluent in the language, and frankly I feel this this story says just how fantastic a candidate she could be:
During 1988–89, she was an exchange student at the Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv in Ukraine, where she studied Ukrainian, which she is fluent in.[19] While there, she worked with journalist Bill Keller of The New York Times to document the Bykivnia graves, an unmarked mass grave site where the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) disposed of tens of thousands of dissidents.[1] The official Soviet story held that the graves were the result of Nazi atrocities. She translated the stories of locals who had witnessed covered trucks and "puddles of blood in the road" that predated the Nazi invasion, adding evidence that the site was actually the result of Stalinist repression.[1]
While there she attracted the attention of the KGB, which tagged her with the code name "Frida", and Soviet newspapers, who attacked her as a foreigner meddling in their internal affairs over her contacts with Ukrainian activists. The KGB surveilled Freeland and tapped her phone calls, and documented the young Canadian activist delivering money, video and audio recording equipment, and a personal computer to contacts in Ukraine. She used a diplomat at the Embassy of Canada in Moscow to send material abroad in a secret diplomatic pouch, worked with foreign journalists on stories about life in the Soviet Union, and organized marches and rallies to attract attention and support from Western countries. On her return from a trip to London in March 1989, Freeland was denied re-entry to the Soviet Union.[20] By the time her activism within Ukraine came to an end, Freeland had become the subject of a high-level case study from the KGB on how much damage a single determined individual could inflict on the Soviet Union; a 2021 Globe and Mail article quoted the report by a former officer of the KGB, which had described Freeland as "a remarkable individual", "erudite, sociable, persistent, and inventive in achieving her goals".[20]
(Emphasis mine)
MP, you say? How about Maddie Phillips from Ghost Wars and The Boys? 😛
(Yes, I know what an MP is. It's a Member of Portishead)
That's not how dynasties work. Hillary was Bill Clinton's peer. She was an influence for why he got into politics, she pushed universal healthcare from early in the 90s, and she was elected to the US senate twice.
Stop comparing her to anyone's child, and slap anyone suggesting Michelle Obama get involved.
Honestly I was willing to accept Michelle Obama back when Biden was the nominee, because she had better odds of beating Trump than Biden did. They just need to be more competent than Trump, so... pretty much anyone.
You lived through 2016 and still think 'smarter than The Idiot' is the only factor?
Because the GOP spent decades microdosing hate for Clinton into the public discourse.
Hillary did enough, herself, for people not to like her. She was never really a palatable choice. Not being Trump wasn’t quite enough to get her elected. And, frankly, she didn’t work that hard to get it either. That bit her in the ass.
That, combined with a huge amount of voter apathy because it was inconceivable that a lying boob like Trump could ever win, and, well…
That bit ~~her~~ in the ass.
Hmm that makes sense. And yet something like 3 million more people voted for her than trump, right? Maybe Kamala can pull this off if people tend to like her any amount better than Hillary. Also, I think Kamala will put in the extra effort, whereas, as you said, Hillary didn’t seem to.
Had "No Confidence/Vacant Office" been an option neither could have been elected.
I don't think the people that didn't bother voting would have left their home to vote for that choice either, so one of the actual candidates still would have won.
That's exactly it. I remember voicing the same concern in 2008 when she was running against Obama for the Democratic nomination. The Republican media machines have been spreading so much hate for her since the 90s that it has resulted in a general feeling of discomfort about her, even if you're aware of it. That was in 2008 and it only has gotten worse since then.
AOC is going to have the same problem, I hope she has a plan to head it off.
Of course she's much more likable naturally, so maybe it won't work as well.
Of course she's much more likable naturally, so maybe it won't work as well.
And AOC actually represents change and progress as opposed to being a bland, corporate liberal
AOC only has her own political career to look after, so she's free to choose to stay true to herself rather than change to try to accommodate those who hate her. Hillary was young in much more sexist times, and set her ambition on helping push Bill's career rather than her own. So she had to adapt her look and persona in order to pass as the dutiful wife he needed in Arkansas. That established a tinge of falsehood she was never really able to shake, even when she embarked on her own career, especially after all of Bill's shenanigans.
Exactly! It’s been endlessly frustrating to see Clinton criticized for being inauthentic in the 2016 campaign, given the criticism she faced earlier in her career for not sufficiently playing the role of “spouse”.
During a debate before the Michigan and Illinois primaries, Bill was accused by a rival of delivering favorable contracts to his wife’s law firm during his tenure as governor of Arkansas, TIME reported. The comment rattled Hillary, resulting in her making a comment that provoked immediate backlash: “I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies and had teas,” she said, speaking of “the sort of thing that happens to women who have their own careers.”
Her comments outraged many American women into a fit of rage, as evidenced by theLetters section in the April 20, 1992, edition of TIME:
The response to her comment had plenty of ingredients and flavor but not much sweetness. For instance, there is the reaction of disaffected voter June Connerton of Princeton, N.J.: ‘’If I ever entertained the idea of voting for Bill Clinton, the smug bitchiness of his wife’s comment has nipped that notion in the bud.’’ Then add the annoyance of homemakers like Cindy Berg of La Crosse, Wis.: ‘’I resent the implication that those of us who stay at home just bake cookies. We hardly have the time!’’
She wound up having to participate in a cookie bake-off with Barbra Bush to smooth over her comment.
Hillary owned third way, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats_(United_States) politics just as much as Bill did. And Biden did for that matter as you'll see if you search that link for his name. They're currently very actively courting Kamala, but I haven't seen her embracing them yet.
That's just thinking in logical fallacy. Just because the Republicans spent a bunch of effort and time focusing on invalid criticisms, doesn't mean there are no valid criticisms.
The DNC being made up of mostly center right pushovers is a byproduct of the Clinton's popularizing Third Way politics in America. It was a way to get around the gridlock that was dominant in the 80s and 90s in Congress.
The basic theory was that you would work across the isle on the projects you could, even if that meant making deep concessions. In theory you would end up getting credit for "getting things done", and eventually become popular enough to leverage your bills through.
In reality, Third Way politics is only effective until the opposition realizes that they now how the initiative over policy. They get to work across the isle on the projects they want, and that's usually economic policy.
A large part for me was Clinton's role in establishing the ESRB to combat youth violence in the 90s. It showed how tone-deaf she was and still appeared to be
My problem with her mostly started when she went on NPR in the early 2000s and discussed her views on video games, particularly how she thought any game more violent than Mario should be banned completely.
Oh yikes. Like ma’am we have freedom of expression in part for the arts.
There's a legitimate concern about kids being in front of screens constantly. I'm sympathetic towards the idea that the constant attention grabbing stimulus is maybe not so great, especially when it's thick with advertising and other propaganda.
But the fixation on violence and sex, absent any concern for general quality of life for children, makes kids out to be this latent criminal element. The political inclination towards asking "How quickly can we start treating kids as criminals?" is a huge facet of social decay in the 90s/00s.
For all her talk of "It takes a village", Clinton seemed totally unconcerned with the quality of life in American neighborhoods.
I totally agree with you, but I do think this drive to censor constantly is a problem that we need to address. We stopped treating kids as latent criminals by infantilizing them. But we still have people on all sides clutching their pearls at legitimate artistic expression.
Where do we draw the line between art with mature themes such as Oedepus Rex, the Iliad, and Shakespeare and something trashy with artistic merit like a violent but artistic video game, a Tom of Finland sketch, a Claude Cahun photo, or the writings of Patrick Califia, or something completely devoid of artistic merit? Where is the line between Dostoyevsky and CSI? Between Shakespeare, Judd Apatow, Chuck Tingle, and lemon stealing whores? Is it just artistic skill? And why are we so keen on letting the government decide?
Where do we draw the line between art with mature themes such as Oedepus Rex, the Iliad, and Shakespeare and something trashy with artistic merit like a violent but artistic video game
I'm less worried about the degree of "trashiness" than the raw volume of content. If every corner of my street had a big screen flipping been Oedipus stabbing his father and fucking his mother, and TVs were blasting "Big Oedipus Coming Soon!!!" on top of a frenetic display of a roaring Sphynix ripping a guy's head off, I wouldn't like that any better.
The use of these images to grab people's attention, with each one big footing the last, is a problem. And you can hide behind "Think of the children", but I mostly see it as revolting to adults.
I've had my elderly mother say, more than once, that she doesn't like watching Rated R movies because they're too gratuitous.
I get that, and I can respect a “you’re free to do it but certain content needs a bead curtain style barrier”, but additionally I think we need to develop a cultural reminder that distaste is not a justification for such strict restrictions.
In short my main issue is that we live in an era where the stakes keep raising, and everything remains gratuitous to the point I dislike it and yet the responses only restrict that which is behind the bead curtain. We have saw movies but nsfw communities on the internet are being whittled away by credit card companies. The blue social space is dying for family friendly spaces while politicians remain vulgar. I demand my right to smut but I don’t want it on a billboard
I think we need to develop a cultural reminder that distaste is not a justification for such strict restrictions.
I don't think the issue is simple distaste. It goes to the aggressiveness of solicitation. If my mailbox is overflowing with beaded curtains, I would still consider that a problem.
We have saw movies but nsfw communities on the internet are being whittled away by credit card companies.
That's more market consolidation than censorship. Bigger and more profit-oriented pornographers can survive this rule in a way small fries can't. Even then, the so-called deregulated corners of the internet are the absolute worst of the lot when it comes to invasive advertising. Hell, the harshest criticisms of Google/Facebook/Microsoft atm is in how they've begun to adopt the advertising style of low-rent porn sites.
I agree that the Tipper/Hilary/Lieberman pearl clutching of the 80s and 90s was awful. And I'll happily spot you how attempts to censor and de-sexualize inevitably cultivated a class character (Skinamax and high end escorts are fine, but god forbid a poor person see a nipple during the Superbowl or get a BJ at a truck stop). We're seeing that come around again with the folks screaming "Pedophile" at every LGBTQ organizer. And I think Clinton herself has lived to regret the hysteria she helped fuel, after the Comet Pingpong hoax.
I demand my right to smut but I don’t want it on a billboard
I'm right there with you. And I can't help but think the calls to End Smut would be curtailed significantly if billboards were - generally speaking - dismantled and made illegal.
I think it’s that Kamala doesn’t seem to think she knows better than the young people and voters. Hillary was a great politician, I can’t imagine someone more suited to a vice presidency or Secretary of State status where you deal more with politicians and following someone else’s agenda than voters. But by the gods could she talk down to a crowd of voters, even when she was right she kept blowing it by not bothering to convince people first.
I personally saw the writing on the wall and made an active choice to dodge an orange stained bullet! To me, Clinton was the most boring candidate. However, I felt she would've provided stability which the USA needed while someone who could shake up the USA like it needs was found. I regarded her with neutrality because she kept her feelings fairly locked up, but I didn't see her as the type to completely fuck up the US like Trump would.
Trump was so disruptive and toxic, I dreaded waking up every morning to see what new fresh bullshit would have happened while I slept.
There's a lot of good reasons why Clinton sucks ass, going back to her time as what amounted to a Walmart lobbyist operating within her husband's gubernatorial administration.
But I'm afraid a lot of people are just voting on vibes. "Hilary is bad because she's sort of weird and off-putting, after years of molding herself into Generic Democrat".
Harris has substantially more personality, which is nice. We also haven't spent the last twenty years basting "Hilary Death List" / "Canckles" / "Ugly Lesbian Uppity B-" 90s tier slander with her. I'm confident the GOP hate machine will ramp that up quick and bombard her with it over the next four years, regardless of whether she wins. Then more people will sour on her.
A part of it is folks might not have taken a trump presidency seriously
…some believe democracy functions best when voters support causes rather than game the system against causes…
Kamala hasn't won yet.
If everyone doesn't get out and vote Donald McDonald's could get in again.
That's obvious? There was no doubt that Kamala has to go through the political process in order to win. It's just a silly satire post.
However, I will be certainly going out to vote, and encouraging others to vote. So that this November, Kamala has a fighting chance at victory. The only reason why the Alt Right are so loud, is because they are always worried about losing.
i think it's supposed to be about the support she's getting from the base.
I mean, according to Republicans (still, I heard a claim as recent as yesterday), Hillary is still behind the scenes, pulling the strings of the entire Democratic party.
ROFL, That's such a sad, unintelligent thought they've been nurturing. Sometimes, I'll read about conspiracies that the regressive party entertains. Their fear of a woman as president or even holding on to any kind of power runs very deep.