Was The Onion Right To Apologize To Quvenzhane Wallis?

Throughout its history, the satirical news organization The Onion has made its mark by making people laugh. Sometimes by offering unflinching and biting commentary on controversial societal issues and sometimes by simply offering irreverent observations, the off-beat paper has found a huge audience without apologizing for its unique sense of humor, at least not until this morning.

Earlier today, the CEO issued a statement apologizing to nine-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis for making an extremely crass reference to her during yesterday’s Academy Awards statement. You can take a look at the since deleted tweet in question below…

”Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013."

On the one hand, it’s easy to see why people got so riled up about this tweet. There are few words in the English language people are more bothered by than the c-bomb, and there are few groups people are more protective of than little girls. Thus, it makes sense people would have flipped, and given The Onion needs readers to pay the bills, it’s easy to see why they apologized. On the other hand, the one thing the paper has always had going for it is its aggressive originality and unwillingness to cave. So, in that sense, apologizing is kind of foolish.

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Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.