Cambridge Forum; WGBH Forum Network; The Onion: Comedys Creative Power to Persuade

Joe Garden was born in Chicago and raised in rural Wisconsin gardens started at The Onion in Madison Wisconsin in 1993 which makes him quite old Cree. He created the characters of Gin Gin and show chowder and Jackie Harvey. He's currently features editor where he oversees popular features such as American voices national news highlights and stach shot. In addition Gordon has co-written two episodes of a PBS educational cartoon word girl as well as three books as a part of the writing girl group action five Wisconsin native John christens started writing for The Onion in 1991 making him slightly younger while still in college chaffer realize that last come after realizing he was neither active nor impartial enough to work in journalism today he holds the title of a sports editor and contributes to the main paper as well. In addition to his onion writing

John has somehow managed to occasionally moonlight as an automotive road tester. Although this has not yet led to any uncomfortable comparisons to Jay Leno. So welcome to the Cambridge forum. Joe and John. Thank you Sasha. I just want to clarify two things. The we are not currently. We were never owned by Comedy Central. We there was some business talk and it fell through. We are still entirely independent. We more so than some other people. So yeah. So there is no we have no corporate We have no corporate overlords to say what we can and can't say. Therefore you can expect a string of very racist tirades later on as this evening progresses. Secondly we also have a question here for you to fill out in the back of the room. We would appreciate

I mean we appreciate more than 60 percent obviously just a simple questionnaire to let you know rate us as we as speakers and as right on how great the onion is how it's doing. Just your name phone number mother's maiden name social security number. Right. You know a couple credit cards and you know some day you'll be out of town for more than three days on vacation. Favorite pets name street you grew up on. And also Social Security number you happen to know besides your own. Right. And you know how cute you think we are on the scale of. Very true. Really. Third thing we should clarify. I am slightly older than Joe not slightly younger by two years. I'm a spring chicken. I'm an old bastard. So one of the big questions you know for those that aren't familiar that is it just sort of wandered in off the street. You might want to know. We just should probably clarify what is the onion. Has anybody ever read The Onion before. Raise your hand if you

haven't read The Onion. If you haven't read The Onion OK OK what the heck are you guys doing here. OK well to clarify. The onion is a satirical newspaper. We turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else that the onion is a satirical news hit her and depending upon who you ask. You get two different answers as far as what are what the the on news background is. So to provide the I'll be providing the if you ask the onion you'll get the following answer in 1756 German immigrant Friedrich Zwiebel treated the sack of yams for a printing press and started this newspaper the mercantile onion Morgenthal an onion with the only two words of English that he spoke right. He didn't even know the word. That was just sort of luck that he stumbled upon that word. In fact it's funny because it was missing all the S's and that's how he began the craze of using Efes for S's back and old typography. That's our salt. In 1783 the mercantile split off from the onion in a disagreement over allowing

advertisers to control the content for money. The Onion was very much in favor of controlling content for letting advertisers control the content for money. The mercantile had some sort of journalistic standards. We were clearly far ahead of our time right in 1896. His great great great grandson Hermann's we all took over as the editor in chief a position he held until 2001. You would think he passed away. But no he actually was launched into space by his evil robot man servant Mr.. Right now in the archives you can find his firsthand editorials right. He periodically does will he will contact us from space with various sort of missives such as Can't you sell more ads. Why aren't you selling more ads. Put a banner ad on that. Things like that are a good job and we have a particularly large and obtrusive ad then 1982 the Onion Radio News was founded then from 19 1922. The only reading this was founded on nineteen twenty three to 1999 was a period of

prosperity and an unprecedented in recorded history for any newspaper or any other business for that matter. We opened up an onion in Milwaukee. Right. And the upshot in Milwaukee was very briefly. But it was still very good. PJ clubs and subs saw fantastic free smells. And then in 2009 we hit it a little bit of a roadblock. In 2009 the onion was briefly purchased by a there's a salvage fishery and adhesives corporation. Right. It was a Chinese salvage his unit of corporation called you one may. And so we were briefly owned by foreign foreign concern but fortunately we found out that print industry is dying and so they sold it one week later. Right. So we were once again we're still independently owned and operated. It was terrible they didn't print the most outrageous lies. Right. Such as China strong and it Fish time. Right now those fisheries are big on when his fish time which turns

out to be all time all time is fish time. Robustness is unavoidable. I just can't get that slogan out of my head so badly. But then I turn over turn over the real history to Mr. John Cruzan the real history is of course one of the same kind of struggle you find in any American corporation. We started out very small on a college campus and now we're very small in New York City. That's known as a success story. We were founded in 1988 as the good doctor told you by Tim Cook and Matt Johnson and to get those names right. I was mixed up. Tim Cook and then chopped and kick him. Johnson if they're listening. Hi guys. We miss you. Yeah what are you doing watching public television. You're very successful now. They sold a year later too for an undisclosed sum but very small four figure sum. Yeah yeah. Sue Scott digger's who became the publisher then and was for

many years. We had many false starts in the world of business. We opened up a second Anea on the campus of show Champaign-Urbana in northern Illinois. Not exactly a thriving metropolis but a beautiful beautiful town. However it was followed by a big success because in 1993 we closed our office in Champaign-Urbana Illinois which is a huge leap forward for our company. At that time we were still more of a weekly world news kind of tabloid kind of thing. There were a lot of it was basically in Madison Wisconsin so there was Monster of Lakeman Doda the big lake there malls Madison and with the kind of you know Loch Ness monster kind of thing we thought that alliteration was very funny but it works for the Weekly World News. We didn't realize that we were trying to satirize a satirical parody publication which is kind of a false start but still there were a lot of coupons for pizza. So and we're here today so I must have been doing something right. We had a 50 foot and B Davis monster or turning local institutions and university buildings and B Davis played the maid on the Brady Bunch. Now you know the rest of the story yeah.

So and that brings us to today. Well know in 1985 we decided that this weekly world news thing was not working out so we style the paper more after USA Today which made a lot of people instantly think that we were USA Today because if anyone was familiar with USA Today it's kind of you know a self-parody in and of itself. So. And but as you see a colored graph innocently that it buys you credibility. So for those of you that are working in any sort of journalistic fashion that want to get a little bit more credibility put a colored graph on the front page or if you're just rating you know some sort of socialist screed that you're handing out on the street corner you know a graph always looks very good. They were the first people to add pie to charts therefore making them more popular amongst the burgeoning middle class. They were called round charts before that it didn't make any sense. Yeah the word pie chart you know Insley made you want to know what kind of sunscreen people are buying. In 1996 we went on the Internet with our first web site which was

actually if I remember correctly kind of protested among many people on the Onion staff who didn't understand what it was or how it would make us any money. Today we know exactly what it is and we still don't know how it's going to make us any money. I remember actually you remember thinking very distinctly at the time was like why would anybody look at the onion on the Internet. People get their news from newspapers. Exactly. I mean who even owns a computer that they can just take anywhere with them. Right. But until I can read this on and on and on and on a bus I was taking the bus a lot of the time until I'm taking this on the bus. I don't want to take it I don't want to an internet version. In those days if you had a portable phone it came with its own satchel. Remember also in Miami Vice That was a great show anyway. So there we are on the internet not knowing how to make money. That's today we know how to make money you click here to see the rest of the naked lady but we don't have many naked ladies in 1999. We decided to cash in on the trend of millennial books and released the onion our dumb century which became a New York Times best seller.

To our great delight and surprise and our minimal profit. In case you don't own it that is wrong. You should run out and buy it. It's the history of the 20th century an uneven front pages including such headlines as we saw with the BIG are on the second page. When World War 2 begins earthquakes celebrate San Francisco. So obviously gay day with the earthquake the world's largest metaphor hits iceberg the Titanic disaster. And there's one we can't about the moon landing we see on the radio or in church people swear a blue streak because they can't believe they're on the cursed Moon. Yes it's me. I wish I had some sort of device that would actually enable to me to beep every every I'm sure they do. WB so we can just start somewhere. I mean I used to watch zoom that thing blue. Oh there was smoke on the floor in my room. And in 2001 we leverage the success of our book and our failed deal of Comedy Central into moving to New York anyway anyway we're where we all wanted to go if were bought by a major

corporation and had the money. Turns out we didn't have the money so we moved anyway to New York where we immediately were deluged with dozens of opportunities to do exactly the same thing we'd been doing in Madison. But you know a much larger city costs a lot more money to live in. It costs a lot more money to live in and there's a very competitive newspaper industry and we got into a knife fight over advertising with the Village Voice that shows no signs of stopping. It's overall a really bad move but hey we're in New York so that's what's important. Go Yankees. I didn't mean that. I don't like them either. I was I grew up a Packers fan and if there's two franchises that are any more opposed than the Yankees and the Packers in general principle I don't know what it would be. Well for one is one is a baseball team that has a football team that will oppose. And one is supported by the community and the other one is funded by an evil Grecian shipbuilder. He actually understands a lot more about sports tonight so I should have been correcting him. It doesn't mean I understand a lot about sports. No offense job. Seven and

Eight. We launched the Onion News Network which is are probably self-destructive moved to stamp out literacy in our lifetime by taking our humor and putting it into a medium where you don't have to be able to read. Words are overrated at least at least the written words are. Yeah I understand that they hardly ever get writer's cramp at all of the operation so that's good. So that brings us up to the present day except to the fact that we have now come because we're never going to get to getting an honorary degree from Harvard by standing here and talking to you. Right. So. So this is this is this is a lifelong dream of mine to to give. To speak in close proximity to though not necessarily at Harvard. So yes. They did used to have the national imp the Harvard Lampoon here. They did at one point. That was good. And they still do not really. I know. Yeah. I think Andre honoring the shooter or former a former the guy we fired he fired the utterly shooter was not fired. He was fired

anyway. Boy that really really tarred and feathered him once we found out he had written to the garden. Anyway I just got thrown for a loop there I didn't know what all this and I felt myself getting very defensive for Andre. So anyway that guy Andre if you're out there if you're listening please please please. Andre forgive us. Any time people discuss Andre they always use that sort of stereotypical Eastern European voice anyway. So basically what we do you know the onion has has made its stock in trade of sort of you know as a parody newspaper making basically making jokes at the expense of religion. Contemporary figures in popular culture political figures respected institutions. Is there anything you miss everything. Fat people fat people thin people blondes brunettes people have too much or not enough sex generally lazy apathetic Americans in

general and of course the media itself which is a big one on our list right. So if we do that we have like several There are several different ways we do that. We have several different sort of tools that we sort of work at. We sort of exaggerate the exaggeration of behavior for example in order to sort of make fun of something we'll just pick it we'll pick it one one specific target about them and just sort of blow that up such as King of Pop dead at 12. Michael Jackson jury. Yes. Which was a little sad. I have a little I don't have it here. I'm afraid they don't actually. But it was a very sad and poignant story. And if you if you read it you'd you'd well up with tears and laughter at the same time. That's how that's how deeply moving it it was fairly tributary. Actually I have to say I was really kind considering. I mean I think the problem with that is that everybody had spent so much time making sport of Michael Jackson and he became sort of like the late night pinnata of joke telling. And

so it was just like you know is sort of time to give it a little bit of a rest and then the next day we actually ran a timeline where we made all of our cheap jokes. That was nice. That was one nice thing we had to say about Michael Jackson. Everyone likes to imagine Michael Jackson when he was 12 or 14 and then just really stop. You don't want to think about that. You want him to have recorded thriller at 14 and then that's it. Right. Probably another great example of exaggerating someone's behavior in a very blatant way in order to make very simple satire of him was one of our most quoted headlines from Bush's inaugural address which was Bush Colan quote Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over. And we have that printed out or you know this is embarrassing I don't have that printed out there but he talks about the nightmare of the Clinton years that it's untold economic growth and mostly global era of peace is being over he promises to embroil us in a foreign war within three years.

Remember this is early 2001 and that. And that he would tank the economy the way it's meant to be. So we can go back to the glory years of Reagan when there was gross economic stratification and mistrust among Americans and that's known as being really lucky impression. At the same time. So that works out really well. He was a hard president to satirize actually people say oh you must have had a great time with President Bush in the office. But he's self-satisfied so many times I mean his cabinet was shooting people in the face he was walking into a locked door as he was dropping his dog he was homesick. And so it was well that was the other Bush thing. No way. He just did a pretzel. His dad threw up in Japan. Right. Because the Japanese automakers made him nervous. Overall it's a great family. But yes so he was actually hard to make jokes about. We got really lucky with that one on very early rants and that was often often quoted by Tom Friedman loved to quote it all the time which is nice to be courted by somebody all the time.

Tom Friedman is a good man and one of the other tools we have is the. As opposed to the exaggeration of behavior we have the inversion of behavior where you sort of you know you make you take the switcheroo. You got a guy and you make him do the opposite. That's kind of funny right. It throws his actual behavior into sharp contrast and as always when discussing comedy I feel like an idiot talking to you. You must feel like I'm an idiot speaking to you as if you're idiots but it's actually harder to pull off than you might think. When we win again Bush was hard to make fun of. So early on we had Bush doing things like finding errors and for me lab's calculations. Delivering an impromptu but brilliant oratory on Virgil's minor works after a state dinner and generally not choking on things or dropping his dog or walking into locked doors. I got to tell you I didn't like him very much but I was one of those people who were like because he didn't like the president didn't want anything bad to happen to him because I didn't want to react in a gleeful way. And every time he walked towards that helicopter I was like oh don't hit please duck please duck. I

don't want to feel the right kind of joy. If something happens in Marine One just you know it would not have made me feel like a good American. And then after after September 11th what it became when suddenly there's a whole new focus on the president. People stop making the dumb jokes. I guess that's when we could have started making the dumb jokes but we opted not to. For a while it was. We started making it. There was a series of jokes we were making. But the economy is tanking so Bush on the economy will invade Iran or Iraq. This is before he invaded Iraq. And it's like Bush or North Korea will invade Iraq and that was his that was sort of the running joke. He was just going to keep on like spoil our joke by going in invading Iraq. Right. And that is the worst thing that happened during the invasion of Iraq. That is the biggest crime possible. I will never forgive him for many things but ruining all our jokes about him probably. I think everyone will agree. The worst thing he ever did is President Hu and whatever the hell he did with education by making everyone take tests at all.

So yeah there's a there's another one of the other versions we had recently. It was Lou Dobbs deported which Lou Dobbs born. Born in Mexico. Luis Domingo's so is Colombia I thought of Colombia right. He was a he was sent with his family of 12 came here on the top of a bunch of bundles of cocaine in the hold of a cigarette cigarette boat in the early 80s. And when they raided his home they found a sweat shop churning out fake designer goods and a thriving lawn care business that he was presiding over. I think our actual picture of him had him in a sombrero or something just ridiculous. I think that's the great thing about Photoshop. Yeah you could put a sombrero on anybody. Yeah that's the great. I mean but inverting someone's behavior is great. I mean the regular news does it too. I mean it's not just us inverting someone's behavior the regular news likes to point out that many staunch anti-homosexual lobbyists of the religious or

conservative bent are actually gay. But that's in real life. So that doesn't really count although it's still very very funny. That happens oh yeah there was a guy who went to Europe and took a bunch of boys with him. Well you just took what was a porter. He took a guy to carry his luggage. Come on let's be fair. I mean it's very hard to find good help can you. You know you need to if you're looking for a good larger wheels on it if it looks like it's had all his things in it it's looking very good. Porter you can't just look in the normal spots you need to look in the game and if you paid the extra luggage charge. So then we also do our very I think he was having sex with them too. Was Are you saying he may have had sex with them. We don't know that for sure. And if he did it was two consensual adults one of whom was very was much less hypocritical than the other one. We also do a lot of we don't do. One of the things about the onion is we don't do a lot of very of the moment jokes because we're not I would say we are not. We

lack the sort of live nature of a real news organization. We're also very lazy so we don't want to stay there until like 3 o'clock in the morning reading a news story to put up the next day. We have done in the past when the 2000 election was hanging in the balance and Florida was in doubt in everything we did a whole issue about how the U.S. was plunged into chaos and there were tanks in the streets and the Nader lights blew up a dam and. We quoted Bob Dole as saying Bob Dole's been shot. Clinton declared himself president for life and that that day we stayed up until 2:00 in the morning. We're just remaking that issue. But that's very rare we can do that. Right. But it's funny because the issue before that which was actually came out on Election Day just segues perfectly into it and without even intending to because we you know are we were published the day you know we go online and in print the day after the election in any given presidential election year it

always we it that particular issue was Bush or Gore. A new day dawns and it was basically treating it like it was the same person who had won. It was just like Bush or intended saying the name it was just a Bush or Gore and it just worked out perfectly to segue into that. So history history smiled on us on that day. Yeah. Because now we can pretend that's what we meant. And I think looking back at it now saying that Al Gore and George Bush were the same person that doesn't work so well. No they're quite a different thing. Life is so much simpler when I was when I was 30. Wait no. 28. No wait. Stop that. Oh God. I don't know. I was only 37 or something. I was 30. But yeah I remember going to see Gore speak in complete sentences and thinking there was no difference between him and Bush and that really did. Oh dear. Anyway if we can turn back time like we do jokes funny jokes one of the things we do also is we know the onion. The Onion itself is you know while we write a lot of stories about about people one of the

big conceits of the onion is that the onion is itself a news organization and you know we are sort of we're mean we're vindictive. We are advertiser based. We're clueless. We don't care about the reader and we like that becomes sort of the character of the of the onion on the onion as a character is great because he has no compassion it's opportunistic and it's all too willing to parrot people who are also ignorant or lack compassion and are opportunistic. So sometimes you know and it's a great way to you know poke fun at the media itself which is getting harder and harder for reasons that we've already hit on. But some of the examples for that is a black man asks nation for change. That was our Obama begins his campaign. Right Thing. And on the face of it it looks like OK. That's one of the things that if we hadn't carried it off right we would have looked really bad. But the whole idea was that people didn't understand who this black man was why he was quoting the Bible and and speaking in a very loud voice in major

cities and wanted change so bad. What will he do with this change if he gets it. What if we don't want change. We don't want to give him this change that he wants. And the closer is brilliant just as I think this guy should stop yelling about change and get a job. So and then we also have other other things where the weather we just play with the news voice itself and usually what we try to do we try to make the the one thing that makes our jobs difficult is that you may have a lot of very fun jokes but you also have to present them in the driest possible form conceivable which is the sort of like an aping of the AP news style. So everything has to be done very very plain and very like everything has to be done in the inverted pyramid which is a word I only know because when I work here because we work at the Onion. But but we also like sometimes we like to play with that we like it. It's fun. You can do it a lot and you like it. You get to break the news voice. And one of the stories

we recently ran was sometimes a woman just feels and that was the story it just trails off. It just trails off is an ellipsis there. Yeah. Undefined terms are really fun to put into journalism there because you know journalists only do it by accident then feel bad about it. When we do it it actually makes it very funny and a lot of the stuff an area woman just feels just comes just short of a conclusion and then stops. So then there was also the front of find the exact I don't want to get the head line wrong. Oh here we go. It was years middled Mideast conflict intensifies as blah blah blah et cetera et cetera. The kind of story you've read a million times and you can finish it yourself so why don't you just. And so on and so forth and yada yada yada. You know troops were poised on the were were poised on the border between. And. While people stay at the table until noon in the morning trying to come to a compromise with

Al tensions. So wake me when it's over. Right. Yeah. So the Middle East. A barrel of laughs. And again no joke about the Middle East that's a joke about the reader's attitudes your attitudes towards the Middle East stories and also the newspapers the interchangeability of the you know exactly very boilerplate. Right. So I think that's a good introduction to the paper itself. That's generally not specifically what we do. We also do stuff that's not always up on its high horse. I just want to point out we were not above running a really stupid joke like like what what are some. Oh I can't think. We've been trying to think of how smart we are all day and now we can't remember what we do the other 80 percent of the time. Oh here's one an editorial Excuse me but I'll be handling the gentleman's discourse for the rest of the evening by a bottle of whiskey. Oh one of the stupidest ones is the tech. The tech columnist we have. He's only appeared twice. He's not like you're not expected to know who he

is but his name is Bebo a dolphin and he reviews the he reviews the the new technology the iPhone the iPad. You know the new tablet computers except for they all start out in very dry tech speak and then he takes them underwater and he gets very angry because they don't function the water. There's no real point that it's really a social satire. That's what makes us great That's why we won the Thurber Prize right here. Oh and Michael Phelps referring to his think tank at SeaWorld. Fantastic. Yes. Good sports headline. Well I think you have a couple of we also did Tiger Woods announces a return to sex when you have. Lots of golfers here. When he had his we brought it up just when he was doing his his press conference announcing how very sorry he was that he had you know done all these things that he seemed to really enjoy doing if I'm reading it all correctly at the time. But although kind of a nilla if you ask me anyway. Yeah we ran that and it was just more frank and everything and and

guy we love Tiger Woods. He's such a great character. So anyway maybe we should bring Sasha up and she can start prying us with some apprising us so she's picking in our brains if anyone else wants to play the piano during the transitionary I really think that was so far the highlight of the. That was fantastic by the way. I'm very appreciative. Magnificent. So as you both know I'm a child psychiatrist so this is going to get personal. I need to know some developmental information. You've taught us tonight how one writes satire what satire is made up of. But I want to know were you born this way or did you have to learn to be this way. My own birth for for laughs. OK. I mean I think it's both I think you know I don't think you're really born with it I think you just sort of I mean I think everybody kind of grows up with a certain

discomfort around authority in a certain discomfort. I mean I know I was going to say everybody grows up a certain discomfort around other human beings but no that's only a slight. Well here we are in a church. OK. Oh sorry. We're just going to momentarily. OK. OK. Yeah so I think you know I think you know we were you sort of develop a sort of discomfort around authority figures and you just develop a distrust of authority figures. And when you're only reading material when with most of the beating with material around the house is stuff like a Doonesbury anthology and punch cartoons of the 1950s these really sort of it's really sort of tends to push you in a certain direction. I think so at school were you funny and did people. I was not I was the class clown and everyone knows the class clown is the least funny. Really God if anybody there out there went to high school with me. I'm really sorry that I was trying to be the class

clown. I did a lot better when I just sat back and was thoughtful I want to be so obviously I'm not I don't really have a gift for performance. So writing was where I actually felt like I actually found my groove and I had the attitude that I wanted to be funny and I think I wanted to be funny about the right things. I don't really think that funny is something that I have. I've known Joe even longer than when you were writing for The Onion I think Joe's always been a joy to be around and a funny person. I am not I am dour I'm kind of angry a lot of the time and I don't know any comedy I encountered growing up that I loved was MAD magazines that I wasn't supposed to read. Or late night TV I was supposed to watch. There's always been a subversive element there for me which is good because it keeps it exciting. So but I don't know. I think comedy comes from a lot of different places and different people. It does beg the question. You said you didn't feel you can

be impartial enough to be just plain old journalist. How did you both decide to use comedy as the venue for changing the world as I know you do. When I decided to change the world with my comedy No I actually started to change the world with my vote. And when I realized that wasn't working. I decided to go for comedy. And so far it also hasn't worked. So I think I'm going to become a mad super villain and develop some sort of laser orbital laser device it'll get people talking. It'll get people talking and I think that can actually change the world. I think we you know it's funny because I think I got into comedy by default. I've never been a mean person I know that it's funny because there are a lot of people that are now we're were John and I started at The Onion when it was very in it's in its It wasn't in its infancy it was a toddlers ship or whatever you would call it at that point or you know it it was this many it was this many.

So for those listening on the radio John held up three fingers but he. So anyway but we got involved in it because we wanted a creative outlet. And the onion was the creative outlet in Madison that we most wanted to be involved with at the time. I was I personally have never been terribly ambitious. Now there's people that are terribly ambitious whose goal it is to work for The Onion and I feel like that's sort of a weird thing personally because I was like really you want to yeah because I just you know you have so much talent. Why do you want to actually I did say to somebody he's like well I'm thinking about going to med school. He was a writing fellow at the I'm thinking of going to med school or I'm thinking about maybe maybe I should just keep writing for The Onion. I was like you know the world needs more doctors than it does. He's more smart asses so. Really. Whatever he does however still work a little bit with comedians without borders so

he goes and where people are starving or in need of irrigation and does stand up. So good for him. Good for you Dr. Morsi a rubber chicken in every pot. That's his. But he. But anyway. So I didn't think about it as a means to change the world when I started at the Onion I actually thought of it is something. Something fun to do. It wasn't the onion when we started it when we started there we didn't start it was like I said more of a weekly world news kind of thing it was an alternative to the other campus papers. And it was just comedy. It was fun and it was people who knew each other more or less. And it took us a while to understand that when we did hard news stories there were actually more popular and more meaningful and more media and that we could actually get a little more traction out of them but it was never the kind of thing we are like oh I'm going to change the world but how. I mean Madison was full of people that tried to change. Oh yeah. Are now investment bankers Yeah lawyers for

AIG or Pepsi. True story both of them. Oh and don't forget the one editor at The Daily cardno who is the social a single mom whose father was the president of the New York Stock Exchange and is now working for sports is a V.P. of a sports team the Florida Marlins. All right. Anyway obviously all these people were on the leftist paper because the hit of their parents and wanted to you know control their means of production or something. But the daily Cardinals advocacy journalism student paper on the campus of the UW-Madison very well regarded has turned out some brilliant people. Anthony Shadid book when when when night falls I think is one of the is when the Pulitzer and is a great example of daily life in Iraq during the occupation and he was at the time he was like the

the news editor of The Daily Cardinal who you know was very frank about whether or not someone had the chops to be a journalist there and I guess he should know. So it's not like good stuff doesn't come out of campus papers. I mean I think that's where most journalists come out of. And there are some very good ones working today. However for us that wasn't it. I mean I realized early on I did not have the disposition of a journalist I want there to be journalists. I think they're more important than I am. And I think I'm very very important to so. So there's that. But I mean and without them we don't have a job. If someone is now they're writing big long intense thoughtful very lucid and very brilliantly written stuff for the Economist I don't get to you know you know crank out 500 words on Tiger Woods has sex again. Is there anything despite what you said that you'll mock anybody anything. Absolutely.

For one thing those stuck up jerks at The Economist. Is there anything untouchable like the Haitian earthquake. Would you leave that alone for a while you actually did what the Haitian earthquake introgression Isabella Rossellini is comfortable making fun of her because we're thinking one day she might actually read the paper and notice. You never know. Come on guys. Is free after all. Well frankly no if they deserve it or if we can get some laughs out of it for a good reason we will we won't pick on someone indiscriminately. All jokes have a point to them and we sometimes I guess maybe even fool ourselves when we try to think that everything we do is is there for a reason not just for sheer laughter. I mean anyone can can make a joke you know. And there are tons of people out there doing it about about people just being fat and lazy. We talk about why they're fat and lazy and it's a small thing but it's very important. And you know with Haiti we actually our story was about about how the earthquake uncovered this this heretofore unknown civilization known as Haiti where we're talking sort

about how you know because it was but the point there was that you know things have been going terribly in Haiti for a long long time and we just sort of like well it's Haiti what are you going to do. And suddenly this massive earthquake hits and then suddenly people that then everybody are is texting texting $10 to Haiti if they'd have done that a long time ago they would have been better off to do with the earthquake. For one thing. Right. But we're OK. It's easy to say but it's also worth saying that we tend to ignore places like this until something some act of God happens is easy to figure out what you think about an act of God. I am anti. Earthquake. OK. And I don't think there's any of you out there who are pro earthquake and if you are you would get the hell out of here just wait a second before you start blasting earthquakes John. Here we go. Earthquakes all have a great part of the tectonic scheme of things always one and they think they're cool. You know I am cool. My mom said so. It. Was Mom's cool.

But yeah so everyone's anti-Catholic but not everyone is anti Oh I don't understand the political situation in Haiti that Papa Doc maybe he's trying to do the right thing. It turns out that they're chopping people's arms off with machetes and it's actually you know it's easy to be anti-growth weak is probably pretty easy the anti machete too. Well it's hard to know who to send your $10 to. And you know if people put in the homework maybe we'd figure that up before there's an earthquake. No I'm saying. So would we. I think I just said that we might have prevented the earthquake. I think OK just when you're now understand why I'm not a journalist I think I've just illustrated that quite the fact that we don't have further nations or nations from having for the earthquakes please text $10 to the Jaiku and I also want to point out that I know that's not how earthquakes happen. It's because you didn't pray hard enough. That's why they happen. I want one of the Joe doesn't think that's true. The whole thing is fraught with a whole bunch of complications. So maybe I don't know quite what satire is but I don't know. I was mentioning before when I go to the Walgreens to get something you know I

look at the magazines and there's one that's right out there saying 300 pound lady gives birth to that baby doing well. Is that satire or what is that. That is parody. There is a different satire is trying to exaggerate truths and make a point parody you say. Wouldn't it be funny if a family that gave birth to a baby monster that would be a funny thing to look at. So again it's not like we don't do both but the Weekly World News which is where the bad boy came from actually did a fantastic satire in the form of their columnists at anger Who is this he would always start off saying how he was pig biting mad about something or how he is mad as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs or anything and he just start and it would just be this insane. It's just beautifully insane rant about how some some sort of like slightly left of center or even centrist causers event in the news just had him so worked up and he's like I was talking to my uncle over Potter and he said you know it was great.

And that was actually fantastic satire. So like there is satire in play in things like that if you know if you look past the bat boys and the Martians meeting with the aliens meeting with Clinton I think it was an early model for the brilliant comedian Bill O'Reilly who was himself a brilliant inspiration for the British comedian Stephen Colbert who inspired Glenn Beck so we can completely see the evolution of Colbert. I'm serious about 75 percent of that I think Bill O'Reilly is probably a jerk but I really think Glenn Beck is going to. I mean come on Nick I can't believe all that stuff. Two years ago I was going to be say on cable TV. That is going to burst into tears and condemn Mexicans. I wondered if you wanted to talk about more of your ancestors like you Joe. You talked about David Letterman. And I was thinking about Tom Lehrer. George Carlin do you want to comment on those. Or more of them. Well you know I grew up like I said I grew up in with a book of Doonesbury from the 70s so somehow by the age of 10 I

knew I knew who Henry Kissinger was and had a vague idea of what he actually did. I know knew about the secret bombings of Laos and then I also you know we had a book of punch cartoons and you know fortunately we we got public television and we were watching Monty Python's Flying Circus in my house all the time with further work for me. I think you can even though go back to like even things like the little rascals like watching The Little Rascals was something whereas there was you know it was a gang of scruffy kids who were always anti anti-establishment and they were always. And somehow they always came out ahead which is absolutely untrue. The anti-establishment underdog always get squashed in the end. In real life. But you know it was a great fantasy while it lasted. And I think you know there's other things Steve Martin was a big you know for me Steve Martin was a big influence. We had his two albums Let's Get Small and wild and crazy guy and you know originally when you're probably 10 years you know there's some adult themes in there and you sort of giggling at the wrong words and you're laughing at the fact that he says Excuse me but you think back

and I look back at that. And you know that just the structure of his jokes and the just the weird absurdity and the you know that was just that was fantastic. You know it was. Go ahead. That was very much what it was for me who was listening to stand up which is something obviously I'm not involved in personally right now. I still involved personally by watching it. But. Yeah that's where it comes from for me is just anything that was funny Looney Tunes cartoons every day after school. Mad magazine. I used to read joke books and be. Really disappointed them because they weren't funny. They really weren't true. I had a you know a thousand and one insults which may have been funny when I was eight. But then yeah. But then as you get older just like there's nothing. This is just so hyper structured. There's never an occasion where this will make sense. And then you know when I was in my early teens you know early Saturday Night Live which I thought was brilliant. Now I think some of it was and some of it wasn't.

It's really hard. I mean there was no there's no really clear evolution Besides that I I'm happy to see I tended to like the either the really smart stuff or the really really dumb stuff. I mean there was a joke for a long time in the office of how we sit around try to be highbrow all the time and impress each other. But what really makes us laugh are the really stupid jokes. If you pitch a joke you know we have headlined pitch meetings every Monday. If you pitch a joke in there and everyone likes it it's going to be a brilliant headline everyone everyone will nod and say that's really funny but they won't actually laugh at you. If you make the stupidest joke possible about like that. If you if you like Joe likes to do spit takes in the meetings or if you fall down or something we'll laugh uproariously. That stuff is still funny. I was going to do it but take a demonstrate and I realize how inappropriate was to do that in a church so yeah. I'm sure it's happened here before you know. But during the witch trials you think she's a what. I mean I know it's a 17:00 but come on.

You know what about responsibility in terms of again. No thank you. I'm protected I'm always responsive. No if if the if the Indian government misreads you or if something happens like that you feel like you have to think ahead as to how you may have an impact on international politics and crises if we are having a huge impact on international policies and crises this world is in a lot worse shape. Than even I think it is what she's referring to is you know go ahead. She's referring to an incident last year when we ran a story about Neil Armstrong being convinced that he never walked on the moon. He meets a. Conspiracy theorist who tells me he never walked on the moon as our stage side and Neil Armstrong says Oh that explains a lot. I now believe that the moon landings were faked a Bangladeshi a couple of Bangladeshi newspapers picked this up and ran with it

and they called us then said oh oh you guys should take this down because it's really turned out it's not true. Which without which we thought was very irresponsible of them. There was another one earlier when we ran a silly story it was actually about Stadium referenda Congress threatened to leave Washington D.C. unless they got a new Capitol built. And actually the funniest thing is they threatened to leave Washington D.C. for Toronto. Was one of the cities was Toronto was either Memphis or Kansas City or Sarasota Florida or Toronto any place where they'd be happy to have a large legislating body to draw a crowd and sell souvenirs and seat licenses. And we ran a graphic with a brilliant retractable dome Capitol so that you could legislate in the open air and harangue each other on nice days. You know like today's 1:00 day game which almost made me late Thank you. And the sixth largest newspaper in the world I think the Chinese

the Beijing Evening News picked it up and ran it on page 5 of their newspaper complete with our graphic. They just completely cut and paste our graphic into their layout. And when. I think of Sacramento Bee Sacramento Bee reporter called them up said what. Why did you. This is from The Onion right. We know it's from The Onion it's a story about America it's pretty typical. Well the onion is a satirical newspaper and they said well what's that. And I think that actually goes back and forth for a while and then like maybe you should check your facts because you should check your facts. Maybe you should look up this onion see if if they're wrong then we're wrong. They said well. So the retraction they wound up printing was apparently there are newspapers in America who will run any garbage for money. Apparently they thought this would sell papers and we were duped duped we say into running a false story that we didn't bother to check on even once. So but we had the last laugh because the reporter who turned into the Beijing Evening News was shot.

Oh wait that day. That's very speculative for a reason. Reporting on the lead in toothpaste. But you know. I must say that when I told Joe and John that they'd be staying on the same street that is the street where Julia Child live. Joe told me that it was good news because they'd be doing a cooking demonstration tonight too. And I thought my goodness do I need to get a stove it and I'm still waiting for the cookies. Oh no. I think well people believe your. Child was a spy which was the entire world which is why I've bugged this entire place. There's microphones everywhere. It's sort of a funny joke of I'm talking to a microphone anyway. Yeah. Well we actually do have a chili. Our children cooking in the back and everybody is in is invited to come back and have some chili at the end of the presentation. Alyssa Xolair is mix up with the with a food group that's meeting at the local stores. The locavores locavores. What are they. I mean I love the locavore movement.

What do you do in say early May when there's no like I guess you live in Santa Fe New Mexico. Oh cactus again. I have sand. I look sprouts again anyway. Anyway I like locavores. Next question I'll ask one more and then we'll open it to the audience. This may be before your time but you know Lyndon Baines Johnson lifted up his shirt to show his appendectomies. That's not all he lifted up to show people. Just so you know. You. Do you know about the stories. It's apocryphal but can we get this out. I think what you just say it and they can bleep bleep whatever is necessary. I think what happened is he was talking about like he was talking to his advisers and they said well what gives you that. You know it was I think it was an adviser was saying you know what gives you maybe if somebody else knows they can chime in. Correct me on this is what gives you the right to do this what gives you the right to do this. Lyndon Baines Johnson you know is rumored to have had a very

large penis. And so he basically said what gives me the right and he pulls out his penis and he says this gives me the right. Yeah. This is not a story that I sort of the I have both heard independently and would not make this up. This is again more than once to some. So Republicans didn't invent everything. Yeah. And also there's also an interesting story in the realist. Well Paul KRAS is speaking in the Johnson Paul Krassner did a story once about the Navy. JOHNSON Well I'm not going to evolve. I'm really not going to get your documents all that just Google just google search. Paul Krassner the realist. Linda Johnson after a heavy meal. I guess one last last question for me because we didn't we totally skirted around that question. I think I'm really sure we all predict joke instead. So anyway yeah Lyndon Baines Johnson. Do you think anybody could learn to be like the two of you.

I don't know why in the world they would want to do that. OK. I'm actually offering you as far as I'm offering courses. I mean for about for me you can actually come for $3000 you can come live with me for a month and I will tell you how to be like Joe Garden. It means hey there's some perks. My wife is a great cook. You have two loving cats hanging out with you. I mean you know you get to sort of soak up the Joe Garden vibe that we're really sort of shape you as a satirist as a modern day Jonathan Swift. I guarantee you will be a Voltaire by the time you leave my care for $3000 a month limit limit five per month. I don't offer that. All right. Give me $3000 as far as actually learning how to how to do. We learned a lot of it. I mean if you have the sensibility for it I mean I encourage anyone to try it. I suppose in your spare time it's a great hobby. It's enrich my life. I think if

you it's one of those things where it's such a strange job it's such a strange industry that if you really want to do it you probably already doing it or trying to do something like it. You know I mean it really is something that sweeps people up and it's it becomes a lifestyle and its own little comedy culture which is as as as much a minefield as any other little strange culture. Like if you took up being a locavore or build your own canoes. But I think this is much more important than either of those two. If you want to share just you know there's no one way to get into comedy. It's just going out and trying to do it. And I wouldn't recommend trying to start your own campus newspaper. It's a miracle that we made it this far. OK. So you are at the Cambridge forum and I'd like to open up the floor to the audience to ask the questions because we have the luck of having Joe Garden and John Christen here to answer your questions please. You line up

against a come up to the mike please. I have a feeling this would be a lot about Lyndon Baines Johnson. The nature of your business is I'm sure it skews certain. People are wondering if you ever have had a bad controversy with someone who felt. As though they've been taken. And also wondering if you watch the Daily Show The Daily Show. Oh absolutely. I don't have I actually don't have cable. It's a truth. If it's true I don't think I should watch a daily show or admit that. But as far as being is angering someone who didn't feel that we were fair to them. I'm sure that a lot of people open the paper to see that were are shown usually the paper and see that we've made fun of them and don't like it but I don't know if we've ever had any real feedback on it I think.

Well it's it's there is it is public knowledge that Janet Jackson once tried to sue us for a story we wrote it was it was about Make a Wish Foundation scenario in which dying child gets which to poor Janet Jackson that can be bleeped. Yeah but that was her lawyer her lawyer called our lawyer and our lawyer. I think what happened ultimately to be honest I didn't I didn't I didn't really pay attention at the time. If I yeah I can't but we don't we really don't worry about that too much just because if we did it would you know it would color our color reading the First Amendment God bless it and please everyone support it. I'm assuming you do because you know you're not throwing things at me. Covers a multitude of things and satire is absolutely protected. One of the Great Onion spikes of awareness was when Bush was going to appoint Supreme Court justice and he was going to he was looking at Harriet Miers his own White House counsel who turned out to be just a complete

tomato can. At that time we had a weekly address and the president we had a we had a Bush impersonator on staff who was very good and who had a message in the White House from the Oval Office every week and we promoted this by having a little presidential seal Harriet Miers office call us up or sent us a letter actually and said please take that down. You're not allowed to use the seal of the president for satirical purposes. And I think our response was Yes we are you evil Biddy or something like that and nothing more came of it. We were smart enough to get that out into the press and it was in the New York Times and it was great. We got a lot of supporting letters and the evil body went away and no one's ever heard of her since. So. Now is when she pulls back the curtain with the knife in. It's like Oh it's awesome. Death by Harriet Miers. My name is Q And I'd like to know in the event that any of us in this room are listening to

the subsequent broadcast do you have any advice for our future selves in the future. Wait for yourselves. We already know about what happened at this point so I'm not really sure if I can give you what is your answer. I just love to get advice when it's way too late and it's an excellent opportunity. OK. You know what Janet was the one on that trip. Yeah. And the trip to the river that was the time. I'm sorry. You'll be reasonably content with your life but you'll never be truly happy now that you've let her go. And yes he's he's everything you ever could be. But you know she didn't know that at the time. So well-played. Thank you sir. Have you. Have you or anybody else in the NBA never been threatened with violence by people who don't have a sense of humor like say so not because of work like say Scientologists or are religious fundamentalists or we never have nothing and we've never actually been threatened with violence.

I think people who are dead has no sense of humor and use to threaten me with physical violence seven times a day. But we think people are faster to work on litigation. And I think we've gotten as we've gotten bigger people have been less like people just sort of like you know people are less likely to do that now. So I you know but nobody's ever ever like physically. I think we've made fun of Scientology and we've made fun of a lot of it's hard to do. I mean it's reasonably airtight but we figure hey it's our it's our job to poke fun at this. This this very scientifically proven religion science ology or Scientology. Yeah but no. Fortunately nobody is. I mean in bars probably people have had. Not like the tone of our voices and not like the cut of our jib. But but that's about it. But never professionally I think like a similar question going back to the headline you mentioned earlier about Obama black men as America change. And then I also remember the headline you ran after you been given nation's

worst job. Yes. And I'm just wondering you know did you have conversations about Arbi going too far with this or are there different versions harder version softer versions in choosing or just kind of go where you always we fiddle we can't help fiddle with the wording of every single thing we do. But the simplest possible thing was what you have to go with there. I mean the early one was obviously people not being able to recognize or acknowledge the fact that a black man might be running for president. They're kind of stunned and kind of not sure how to feel about it. And the second one was of course there's really terrible terrible mess to clean up. Who does that in this country. You know historically. So that's what that's based on there as far as fiddling with it. Yeah. I mean we fiddle with everything. But we knew what we wanted to get out of it. We never said we can't. How dare we come and say that you know that they make black people clean things up in this country. You know we never would have occurred to us to ask that because there is some evidence that that's the case.

I can't wait for the first Mexican-American president. I really can't because we'll be able to do that again. Do you ever just plain tell the truth and find that very funny. We have. There was a story we ran once. That was it was actually a black guy photoshopped into causes called black eyes Photoshopped in. Yeah. And it was basic. It was actually based on a university Wisconsin thing where it was a it was a picture of some students and it was clear that there was a black student had been Photoshopped into it to make it look it was a bad job or is looking the wrong way. Slightly larger. Yeah yeah. And so I think that was it. And that was just I mean you can make the comments about how you know how people how they were trying to make it you know make it falsely appear more diverse in terms of marketing their diversity. Right. Marking diversity in what was not a particularly not a terribly diverse campus. But yeah.

So that was like but that was like the facts were changed but that was the gist of it was absolutely true. And we've got a couple of other things but I can't like not very often. Like we we really try not to do that anymore. Usually it's just for the purposes of a commentary like what was the headline for his obituary. Strom Thurmond finally finally dies. Is one. Oh and then there was also the. I mean this is maybe this is close. It was sort of like the year end of the year in review for 2006. I think it was a bastard old bastard dirty bastard old dirty bastard dies and it was old dirty bastard Reagan filmmaker Russ Russ Meyer and old dirty and who's the fourth I can't remember. But yes that was yes some some some horrible politician. Yeah but it was so it was Saddam Hussein of all those people. I've got Russ Meyer over Saddam Hussein would you want to know about my background as a journalist

or lack thereof. Yeah but sometimes the truth lies. I mean that's the problem. Sometimes the truth often trumps what we try to do so. So usually we just leave it alone like there's a lot of things we find it hard to comment on just because they're so silly to begin with. I mean and of course now they're all escaping me. Right. That's the that's the problem mean the the gift of the of having us having us here at the forum is that together we have some 117 plus 70 plus 90. We have 36 years of experience between us. The curse is that in 36 36 years we've forgotten every everything is sort of run together. And so we've forgotten a lot of the headlines. So that's a downside but it's not unheard of. That's also zipping up a signal that actually sort of a follow up to his question. I noticed that New York Times a couple of days ago kind of gave the onion a nod for one of your headlines. It was it was an article

about babies being social path and oh yeah yeah I was just wondering does this happen often or is it a little to get a little nod like. There comes times Friedman used to love to quote Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over or you'll see all once again the onion called it and then we did some silly headline that they are now talking about all the rhumba is exactly what they were talking about. And that's always nice to see ourselves quoted as being pression in which case we're just lucky. But there was there was one article that we wrote that was one of being very prescient prescient and that was this is going to have to be bleeped because there's no way to actually I could. I can dance around the swears. But really it's it was an editorial by the. OK. I mean. It could be recorded correct. OK. So Ambridge shit. So it was it was it was an article by the CEO of

July and it was called Fuck everything we're doing five blades. This was three years before they actually had a fight. Right. And that was like it was really funny. It was like I wrote it and then Carol kobun Amy Berridale were my editors at time and they just like they just polish that to a sheet. It was a beaut. That article is probably the thing I'm wondering. I want the entire thing engraved on my tombstone. So it was so i'm so happy with that. And then they came out with a five blade razor and I was just like well there it goes. And Joe gets in touch with them and said hey we call this years ago and their response was like yeah yeah fine just again can we get yeah we'll send you the article can we get some. Don't send us the article I will send you. We'll send you some razors and one razor to refill those remarkably cheap. They could have actually sent a bunch of razors I mean those are those refills are expensive. But yeah I so some of I am not above pandering for Schweiger. Anyway. I think. Yeah. Yeah I think there's that answer kind of got off track.

But yeah. I was just curious are you going to do anything about that. I mean do you do any like recourse like say anything back to the New York Times or in any articles. No no not really. I don't know what we would. I don't know. There's no like back it might look a little fawning. When Brian wound's used to court us a lot so we had him do the intro to one of our books. OK. So is Brian Williams. You know he's a handsome devil. Handsome devil Brian Williams said of the onion I don't know exactly. Thank you. Hello gentlemen. I read The Onion pretty regularly. Like you do on a lot of the times. You know I laugh out loud and then sometimes there's humor that's just like really dark when you care about your personal problem. Like like for example on the inauguration day of Barack Obama or maybe the day before you read an article that was George W. Bush

passes away quietly in his sleep that wasn't anywhere near the end of it. We've been killing him for a long time. But you could talk a little bit about the kind of dark humor that we were so tired of when we were just having him die in terrible grotesque ways. He fell on a running table saw he was in a helicopter accident wasn't he. I think so yes. He belt sanded his face. What else did he do you go like Bush. He's always in critical condition recovering at Annapolis Naval Hospital right at the end of every single one of them. He's always in the motorcade drag him three miles. He didn't notice he slammed his leg. Yes. So by the by the end of that I mean it might not have been professional but it was because it was funny. So we were just having him die or nearly die because he was recovering in a terrible terrible way. So in the end having him pass away quietly in his sleep was kind of like saying well you know avoir coda. There was there was like actually one story that the story we ran recently that

got the most virulent hate mail we've gotten was and I think it's like it was it wasn't even funny per say I'm not going to say it was a laugh out loud thing but it was just sort of like it was it was extremely dark and it was a story that was kidnapped boy rescued in mind of kidnapped boy. And the whole thing it's like. And I liken it to the little matchstick girl where at the end she dies she like has the fantasies you like to match has the fantasies and then at the end she dies. Well that's kind of what happens in this except for a kidnapped boy instead. I don't if you don't like feeling horrible. I don't advise reading it but if you like if you like interesting interesting fiction we're not afraid to do some pretty dark stuff. Yes. If it's in the service of pointing out something interesting. Anyway you guys try to point out with the kidnapper a complete lack of hope. We're nihilists. That's what we are trying to point out. All is darkness.

You'll never get to sleep again. Do you ever feel that reality is offering a little bit of unfair competition for what you do. Reality is our fiercest competitor. Well them in two and a half men. They're both. They're both so wildly unpredictable and they both star Charlie Sheen. No. Yeah. I mean it's I thought Charlie Sheen co-starred in reality but he's always overshadowed by his father Martin. I don't know is it isn't. I don't know. I mean I think sometimes yeah we do compete with him sometimes pitched jokes that just seem like they're just too close to the skew too close to reality and we can't really we can't really top it so we just sort of let it. We let the joke go. But yeah I don't know. I mean the thing is like we but somehow we bravely persevere. We

just we hold our chins high and we just march ahead into into nihilistic oblivion. We might not always have an easy week making jokes but we're not going to do things to make fun of any time soon. It's you know reality will provide and. And even though sometimes you know we elect a president who's so unbelievably bumbling that it's hard to satirize them you know. I think we'll muddle through somehow. So just let's not ever do that again can we. Is there a conservative counterpart to the onion on part two. My question is Who's your audience. Do conservatives have a sense of humor. Well John Birch Society members I'm a staunch conservative you take mad at Bush because he let down the side so much. You can take my gun when you get out of my cold dead hands. So I don't I don't believe you. Quit looking me right in the eyes you are a woman. The only reason I agreed to do this is because I admire your city's history of witch trials so much.

I don't think I to go across the street and burn down Harvard as soon as we're done. I distrust higher learning. But I promise the churches won't be touched. I don't know if there is a conservative counterpoint to the idea. I don't know that we're necessarily. I mean we we try not to just skew too closely to a party line or to doctrine. I mean we have it's not like we haven't picked on Democrats or anybody else who you know codified as a political point of view but sometimes it's just like I mean our you know our motto is you are dumb. We're actually it's to start us asked which is in Latin you are really bad Latin really bad Latin. If anybody knows better Latin please come. Clarify that. We're not going to change it though because it's too late. We can play the piano and let that happen. But yeah. Anyway I don't think I mean but we try not to be too partisan.

We we try to like handed out evenly but sometimes it's just difficult to do because you know right now I mean we were when the Democrats were sort of flailing and they were like you know floundering to try to to try to find direction we were you know we would make fun of that. Now the same thing is happening to the Republicans so it's very easy to make fun of and they've also chosen one of the. They also chose as a vice presidential running mate last time Sarah Palin and any party that does that is extremely just very deserving of scorn. And you can't like you can't I can't. I mean even from a nonpartisan standpoint you can't say empirically that there that person is qualified to be a public official. I don't think so she quit. Yeah she has a new book coming out November 2nd book. Oh yeah. Wow. Now there's going to be a whole bunch of people out there who have only read two books three.

What we try to make fun of is lack of human compassion lack of imagination willful stupidity apathy and knee jerk meanness and an unwillingness to be flexible mentally or spiritually which is a very broad way of saying we try to make fun of jerks and if one party has a lot more coldhearted jerks than the other then they're going to be in for more of the stick. That's just the way it is. So if you sense that that's happening in our paper maybe it's not necessarily our fault. It's not like we haven't made fun of Democrats for being you know that American politics tends to fall into the classic crime novel thing where it's not so much good versus evil as strong vs. weak and it's a lot more fun to make fun of the strong that is to pick on the weak. So the Republicans have been dealing from a place of strength for long enough that they've come in for more satire from us picking on the weak just kind of feels like almost useless there. They're weak. They're already

picking on themselves. So yeah that little you know we'll make fun of anybody having to let this guy get to his question. So I think I'm really saying the same thing a lot. Stand up straight young men do as I say not as I do. Would it have killed you to wear a tie. Those shoes in church really. OK. Next. So I have a large collection of the onion articles written at my house and one of my favorite parts is the horoscopes. Oh yeah. And I was just wondering how on earth who writes them and how on earth do they think them up because they're new every time and they're brilliant and they're just the funniest things. Well for years I wrote them and then he did. I did. And then Dan Gillerman is written them for the past few years. And actually lately he's been rerunning some of the old ones just so you know so people closer attention you. How do you come up with them. This is dangerously close to the where do you get your ideas thing which is always

a question that tends to infuriate creative people. But the only answer to that is you'd sit and you try to think of horoscopes. You try to. You start with the idea of a horoscope. I mean I'm sorry but that's all it is. The idea of a horoscope and then you. Extrapolate that as best you can to someone getting hit by a bus so a night journey halfway over water or a tall dark sky you will meet a tall dark stranger who will cut you up into tiny pieces for you and digest you and you go from there. There's a lot of that horoscopes are a great place for Wordplay cruelty and making fun of people who you know look to arbitrary movements of you know astrological bodies in order to tell their future. So. So that's it yeah. I'm glad you like them they're fun to write. But thank you for that I will pass along to Dan Guterman because he'll be thrilled to hear that because he's always he's on. He's also addicted to instant messaging and I'll I'll open my computer. He'll be

like OK. As soon as I get on or they go what are you doing Dan is like scope's. All the time is a constant. It's a constant thing. But so he will he genuinely will appreciate that so thank you. It's nice to know that someone sees even the smaller less promoted details of our paper. So any more questions because we're about to finish and Joe and John will be here to sign books. Doesn't have to be when we wrote. I'm particularly fond of. Particularly fond of citing Hemingway books also on the works of Elmore Leonard in his voice how dare you to face the force of Elmore. This is a great ending How have you changed a lot of people say that they only get their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert from fake news sources anymore. I don't believe that for a second because they wouldn't know what we're talking about. We do jokes based on the news and if they don't know what the news is.

Then they wouldn't get us. I think that I don't know if comedy can change the world but I think the comedy is really great at preaching to the choir. I think the comedy is great at lifting the spirits of people who already believe a certain way but think that it's hopeless. And now they think that well it's hopeless but at least this comedy source also thinks it's hopeless. So I'm not the only one. I think comedy is good at that common good piling on. Once that once the ship of popular opinion has started to change course companies really get to trying to you know jump right on there and help. And that's a great mixed metaphor. Comedy will hold you hold you and rock you to sleep at night. Yeah comedy is not more important I don't think than lucid careful analytical thought about serious issues. I just think comedy can make that a little bit more bearable. Actually I think that's its purpose more than actually trying to affect societal change. I think it just helps societal change be easier and it maybe because you've actually changed endorphin and serotonin levels more

important than anything interference or turning up as it reminds me of an article that brain chemistry do tonight that reminds not have really bad levels of those things. Anyway we have to come to a close I want to thank you for coming to the Cambridge forum. I want to thank. I want to thank Joe Garden and John CREUSA