Onionum8-1 Brave Virginia Heffernan launched a brazen attack against The Onion in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, slamming the faux-news organization's year-old Onion News Network. Chagrined, one of the Network's biggest supporters fired back with the following volley:

ONN plays, loud and proud, what you sometimes think you hear in mainstream news. On a typical news day, it’s like an auditory hallucination, that note of contempt, present in phrases like “the human cost” and “area man.” The contempt rings in the booming baritones of spokesmen and anchormen, and in the sneers of correspondents: over-the-top jingoism, xenophobia, snobbism, disgust, dismissiveness.

Who is this relic from the past, touting the virtues of what is clearly nothing more than a new media disaster? Find out after the jump.

Oh yes: it's Virginia Heffernan, 2007 edition. Forgive us our confusion. Sadly, we may have to agree with the 2008 side of this intra-Heffernan conflict:

The depressive, contemptuous voice that works so well in print for the Onion franchise can become suddenly loud and shrill. ONN embodies its misanthropic stereotypes in flesh-and-blood actors, and that means the occasional stab of sympathy can overwhelm the viewer’s willingness to laugh.

While The Onion's mastery of the print form doesn't seem to be dimming, the Onion News Network is so self-congratulatory in its humor that it might as well play with a laugh track.

The genius of The Onion was that it looked like real news. A video podcast doesn't look like real news, not after Weekend Update, The Daily Show, and Heffernan's preferred alternative The Colbert Report. The words 'Time Magazine Releases Its Least Influential People List' are best never spoken aloud.

Broadcast Spoofs [NYT]

4:38 PM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By carnevale
2,772 views
17 comments

Comments

VirusWithShoes at 04:44 PM on 04/21/08
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More to the point - who is this Carnevale person?

Tell all!
donmiguel at 04:47 PM on 04/21/08
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Um, not to put too fine a point on it -- but I'm kinda too busy right now being ass raped by the disappearance of any concept of a middle class, any hope of receiving social security should I stay alive that long, the looming depression, the ongoing war and the speedily shrinking lifespan of my own demographic to be much worried about how funny ONN isn't. END (soapbox ranting) SCENE.
DorothyMantooth at 04:49 PM on 04/21/08
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And so the mysterious "carnevale" strikes again.
I think I'm just gonna assume you're this dude. And since you're so pretty, you can get away with not knowing how to spell your own name!
donmiguel at 04:49 PM on 04/21/08
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Jeebis, the box ate my comment AGAIN?
PandoraSpocks at 04:51 PM on 04/21/08
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....Your point being?
skahammer at 04:53 PM on 04/21/08
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Easy on the Heff. That's all I'm gonna say.
dado at 04:54 PM on 04/21/08
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And then Virginia went to Tacky's Tavern to meet hubby Rick for a Long Island Iced Tea (or two!) but the big meanie never showed up.
carnevale at 05:02 PM on 04/21/08
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Carnevale is me, Alex Carnevale.

Associate me further with the one known as Cannavale and you shall pay the ultimate price.
ohkay at 05:15 PM on 04/21/08
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Ugh. Heffernan lost all possible credibility after this particular piece of ridiculousness: [themedium.blogs.nytimes.com]
travelina at 05:15 PM on 04/21/08
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I prefer the earlier Heffernan. She must have missed the wonderfully absurd ONN broadcast of a mock Congressional committee hearing on H.R. 766: New Technologies Initiative, where the convincingly disgruntled Rep. William Cummings (D-VA) insists on using various forms of the word "pronk" in his testimony supporting additional funding for nanotechnology. It's a scream:
[www.theonion.com]
LoveHandles at 05:28 PM on 04/21/08
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Ummmm... did you read the article? She's being a bit more nuanced than you let on (yes, I'm implying that you misled me, and I would like my pageview back, please).
DorothyMantooth at 05:46 PM on 04/21/08
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@carnevale: Yowza! Another Alex?!
(I'm allowed to still think you're pretty, right?)
Flashman at 05:55 PM on 04/21/08
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Who's got time for 'nuance'.
LoveHandles at 06:16 PM on 04/21/08
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@Flashman: not me! Oh wait... shit, does this mean I don't get my unemployment check anymore? Their rules are quite stringent these days.
MobileEMP at 08:49 PM on 04/21/08
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I do think that she is being less offensive than you make her article out to be, and actually has good things to say about the onion.

But as someone from Madison, who has grown up reading it, the humor is just incredible. Not only do they make real issues a little less serious, but amusing, they manage to make trivial things seem trivial.

To this day it is still refreshing to read something that is what it is. Making fun of celebs, your next door neighbor, and your president. And the "columnists" are awesome!

RIP Kornfeld. Mourn ya till i join ya.
BabyJewn at 12:12 AM on 04/22/08
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@skahammer:
Word. I love me some Heff....
raincoaster at 03:29 AM on 04/22/08
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@carnevale: Threats are good. I see where you got your star.