Seth Reiss is the head writer for The Onion, the popular satirical news publication whose website receives over 7.5 million unique visitors per month and whose print circulation numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
Harvard Political Review: Can satire have an effect on politics, and have you seen this with The Onion?
Seth Reiss: I would say no. I mean, I don’t know. On a very small level, maybe, it can have some effect on somebody’s mind. But is it going to change the world? I would say no. I don’t think I have to be so, so brash, to say that we can change the world.
But, for example, when Al Gore appears very wooden in the Saturday Night Live skit, people might be inclined to give him a second look. They were saying that he was being wooden; he had to be less wooden. I can’t think of an Onion article that does the same thing. I can see somebody reading the Onion or noticing it and saying, “Oh maybe this is worth picking up,” but that’s as far as it could go towards actually changing someone.
HPR: The recent presidential election had lots of moments that seemed as if they came right off The Onion. Which of these moments were the most striking or comedic to you?
SR: I think Barack Obama’s terrible first debate, Mitt Romney’s 47-percent comment, the Democratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention.
Everyone always had that Cliff Eastwood thing. But just looking at the mechanics of the goal of a convention is inherently funny. “We are out here to prove that Mitt Romney is not just a businessman, he is a family man.” Everyone picks that angle. And then you have a Hispanic person speaking at the DNC, and it’s, “By the way, people, the real reason that this is happening is because we want you to know that we’re a party that is very, very inclusive.” There are all these weird subliminal messages. The parties think they’re pulling the wool over people’s eyes, but everyone knows what they’re doing.
HPR: News agencies in both Iran and China have recently published Onion articles as if they were fact. What was the reaction within the publication to these things happening?
SR: It’s always fun when that kind of thing happens, with the Sexiest Man and all that stuff. It’s fun. It happens a lot at this point. I remember when we did this story that was “Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama,” and it was picked up by the Iranian news agency as fact. The bigger the level, the more fun it is. It’s not so much fun to trick somebody. For real, we’re not trying to trick anybody. It’s not so fun when some person’s says, “I can’t believe it! I thought this was real!” That’s not as fun anymore. When it gets up to the level of the Chinese government and Beijing, that’s still pretty fun.
HPR: Have you ever gotten news services in the United States thinking that you were reporting real news?
SR: Oh, yeah. I remember we did a story like that. I forget the headline, but it was something like “Barack Obama Sends Rambling, Angry 750,000 Word Email to Country”. Fox News ran that as true, which is funny because, now, if you spread that [email] to everyone in the country, that would [include] the people at Fox News that reported it as true. They would have had to receive an email from Barack Obama.
And then we did a story about a Planned Parenthood opening a new abortionplex, and one congressman I know put that on his Facebook page and exclaimed, “See what the support of Planned Parenthood is doing!” Yeah, it happens. It happens more than it should.
HPR: What makes good satire?
SR: I think what makes good satire is being able to write a heightened version of reality that is both smart and accessible to people. That’s what makes it really good and worth it. In The Onion, when we write a headline, we basically just create a brand-new world, because The Onion’s always doing fake news. It’s commenting on what’s going on, but it’s creating a fake world each time in order to do that. Whenever we do that effectively, we create a fake world that people totally understand what we’re trying to do. Hopefully, it’s an idea that is interesting and isn’t the same thing that everybody else is doing.
HPR: What is your favorite example of the perfect Onion article?
SR: One of my favorites is, “Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.” Another one of my favorites is “You Can Tell Area Bank Used to Be a Pizza Hut”.
HPR: What makes them so good?
SR: Well, “You Can Tell Area Bank Used to Be a Pizza Hut” is so good because it’s such a great observation. It’s such an observation that is rooted in the human experience that you don’t necessarily think about, but it just rings so true once you see it.
“Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.” is obviously a little more of an intense satire, but it does a great job of really highlighting just how draining the Middle East saga is—to a point where you just have to throw up your hands. That article does a good job of also being black. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, and it also makes a good point.
HPR: What other publications do Onion writers read for inspiration, in terms of style and in terms of what they see as good examples of satire?
SR: I just started to read more graphic novels. I know that a bunch of us, or at least two of us, read graphic novels and like comics a lot. In terms of other satire writing, I don’t know. We just tend to read things that are honest. We gravitate towards things that are very honest about the human condition and we gravitate towards things that have a really great, interesting idea.
HPR: I was thinking about the Newtown article that you wrote right after the Newtown shooting. That was satire, but at the same time was very serious.
SR: Right, absolutely.
HPR: What was the process behind writing that?
SR: I actually wasn’t here when they ran that. But I can tell you the steps of those processes because I was here for when the shooting in Aurora happened.
Basically something happens and we all realize that this is a very big event. We all come up with headlines for that event and then we get in a room together and we pitch the headlines. We highlight the ones we like, and from there we decide as a group what we’re going to go with. After we decide it we brainstorm what the story’s going to look like. Then a writer goes off and writes it. In the case where it’s a very quick turnaround, the writer will write one draft and he’ll go to an editor who will do an edit of it. Our main editor, Will Tracy, will do a final look at it, and then it goes up.
HPR: How do you guys manage to deal with these very serious themes in a way that still fits into the satire structure?
SR: Well, it’s not satire because what we did for Aurora was “Sadly, Nation Knows Exactly How It’s Going to Play Out”. So we’re creating a world where the people of Aurora say, “We know how this is gonna be…” or the nation is saying they know exactly how it’s going to be. There’ll be a candlelight vigil in three hours, President Barack Obama will talk about it in six hours, he’ll do a visit in 12 hours, and it’s sad that I know this, but that’s the case. So, we’re saying this happens all the time now, and we know the routine. That’s what we were trying to say with that article.
So the satire is in heightening what people know to be true, but putting it in their mouths and having them say that the people know the events step by step.
HPR: The Onion recently issued an apology about their tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis. How does The Onion determine this line that divides what’s appropriate and what isn’t?
SR: I don’t necessarily want to comment on that. But I will tell you in terms of the line, there is no line. But we try to make sure the targets that we’re making fun of are worthy targets.
HPR: How necessary is The Onion and how necessary is satire to a healthy public discourse? Do you see this as part of your role, or do you see your role as something else?
SR: The Onion is very necessary. It’s necessary twofold. For one reason, because in our lives and in our culture, there are a lot of skeletons in the room that we don’t talk about, and The Onion is sort of one of very, very few places that not only talks about it but really makes an effort to talk about it in an intelligent way. So I think it is necessary.
It’s necessary for another reason because I think The Onion is funny and, in terms of just humor writing, there’s very little prose humor writing out there. When you’re attracted to something that you find funny and you see it, you say to yourself “Oh my God, this is funny, this is my sense of humor, this place has my sense of humor.” That’s really important just for an Onion fan, to know that there’s an outlet for their sense of humor somewhere.
This interview has been edited and condensed.