Culture

The Onion Seeks a Pulitzer

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America's Finest News Source is looking for a little peer recognition, reports The New York Times:

Editors at the satirical newspaper have submitted their work for consideration by the Pulitzer Board, sometimes in categories they could conceivably qualify for, like commentary, and other times in categories that would be a stretch, like public service.

Saying the paper's journalistic excellence should be overlooked no longer, The Onion is beginning a full-scale multimedia campaign to get a long-coveted Pulitzer. Readers, celebrities, world leaders and a nonprofit advocacy group called Americans for Fairness in Awarding Journalism Prizes are all contributing to the effort….

With an oddness that only The Onion could muster, the list of luminaries who have contributed testimonial video pleas to the Pulitzer board includes Gayle King, the radio talk show host and best friend of Oprah Winfrey, and the president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili….Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., an acknowledged fan of The Onion's merciless satires of him as a womanizing derelict, was said to be unavailable.

Be sure to read the rest of the article, which explains how "The Onion's ostensibly crotchety old publisher, a character by the name of T. Herman Zweibel," sees the campaign as "the ultimate revenge after a long-running feud with Joseph Pulitzer."

The Onioneers make their case here. I'm not sure the Pulitzers are good enough to be worthy of a winner of The Onion's high quality, but if the paper wants the prize for some reason, I'm happy to endorse its campaign.

Update: An additional argument for the constitutional scholars among you.