Hail to the Chief

As the self-proclaimed (and totally baseless) New Yorker and The Onion of Durango, every now and then, we here at The Durango Telegraph have to bow to the master. And now is one of those times.

Recently, The Onion submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of parody, and it’s a doozy. The brief was submitted in support of Anthony Novak, who was arrested for creating a parody Facebook page of a police department.

“Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government?” The Onion wrote. “This was a surprise to America’s Finest News Source and an uncomfortable learning experience for its editorial team.”

The brief, in actuality, is a serious defense of parody in America. But it has its classic Onion moments, like a whole paragraph of nonsensical Latin words because “it knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks.”

In an interview with NPR, The Onion’s head writer Mike Gillis points out articles that have towed the line over the years: when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was named “the sexiest man alive” and a spoof story (that tricked some GOP members) about Planned Parenthood opening an $8 billon “Abortionplex” – to name a few.

Well, at least someone is standing up for the art of parody. We here at the Telegraph have surely had our moments. Except that time Missy challenged Boebert to an arm-wrestling contest. That was totally real. And we’re still waiting to hear back from the Boebert camp.