The Onion: Best Part of Gay 12-Year-Old's Day Half Hour Spent Eating Lunch Alone on Staircase

                In the world of news reporting and journalism, The Onion presents the necessary comedic relief from the often drowning styles and intimidating amount of content that there is in the news. It is also known to take unusual or controversial stances on topics and makes them lighthearted and almost always inappropriate to some degree. The Onion’s “Best Part of Gay 12-Year Old’s Day Half Hour Spent Eating Lunch Alone on Staircase” is no exception to this trend.

                The article gives a special report on the daily habits and interests of gay seventh grader Ben McElroy. After being incessantly tormented for his high voice and feminine traits, Ben says his favorite part of the day is when he gets to sit by himself, alone, on a staircase. The Onion examines his habits that he displays throughout that half hour lunch, including humming to himself for several minutes, and laying out his lunch so that he can move through it piece by piece, a ritual that he carries out with much greater ease now that he is in his solitude.

                What always makes The Onion a joy to read is that its content and rhetoric go hand in hand, yet the topic itself is so absurd and treated so seriously that it adds greatly to the humor rhetoric present in the article. By using traditional methods of journalism, such as citing statistics and pulling quotes from the center of the article, but then applying it in ways that undermine the seriousness of the article are trademarks of this satirical news source. For example, The Onion cites that Ben has “been called a faggot 43 times this month”. The specificity with which such a statistic is stated usually is given only to “important” articles. When pulling quotes from Ben, The Onion writes how Ben states “I’d come here on weekends if they’d let me”. Such specific yet obviously ridiculous aspects of this article add to the humorous rhetoric of The Onion.