Word: dumbness
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...that aside--even if it is a lot to put aside--The Phantom Menace is just what it seems: a good time and a chance to spy in on a world that's just as pretty as it is cheesy and dumb. Should you go see it? Well, yeah. That really isn't the question, though; it's whether you'll be satisfied with what you see. The answer is that you will, but only if you don't go in expecting to be magically transported back to your youth. Things have changed since then, and The Force can only...
...Dumb Century parodies recent historical anthologies such as Harold Evans's The American Century. Thankfully the Onion isn't the one making the real history, for where would we be today if in 1955, as Our Dumb Century reports, Rosa Parks had said "screw this bus shit" and decided to take a cab instead? How would television audiences of the '60s have responded if they could have heard the real conversation during the moon landing, which went something like this...
Obviously, much of the Onion's humor is rather low brow. Its real comic brilliance in Our Dumb Century lies in the way it uses irony to expose the raw, humorous side of human affairs. Headlines such as "Stock Market Invincible" in 1929 and "Archduke Ferdinand Declares 'No Man Can Stop Me"' in 1913 show the follies of complacency and our confidence to predict or control the future. Also, much of the Onion has a very proletarian feel about it, exposing the rulers of society as they dominate the common people, as when Woodrow Wilson promises to "make the world...
...take one of the most visible figures of the most twentieth century, let's follow Our Dumb Century's coverage of the career of Adolph Hitler. In 1937, "Kampfy the Uberhund," the adorable anti-Semitic mutt, is introduced by the propaganda minister to make Jew hating fun for German boys and girls. Later in 1937, the headline reads "German Jews Concerned about Hitler's 'Kill All Jews' Proposal." Samuel Eisenstein is quoted in the article as saying, "Most of Chancellor Hitler's speech I agreed with, except for the part where he said that the Jews are a parasite race...
...haven't seen the Onion anywhere on campus, they do ship to campuses all over the country. But, unless some-one wants to mount a campaign to bring the Onion to Harvard, you'll have to check it out online at www.theonion.com. Harvard even finds a place in Our Dumb Century, when John F. Kennedy calls himself not a powder puff but "Ich bin Ein Ivy-League playboy millionaire" and "Ich bin ein privileged, blue-blood Harvard...