If we're being honest, the first issue of The Onion set a fairly low bar for everything that would come after. On August 29, 1988, locals were confronted with four words, "Mendota Monster Mauls Madison," accompanied by an appropriately grainy recreation of the iconic Loch Ness Monster "surgeon's photograph." Down at the bottom, below the fold, was a coupon for a gyro and the promise of more penny-pinching opportunities within.
To celebrate the upcoming 30th anniversary of The Onion, whose Latin motto is "Tu Stultus Es," ("You Are Dumb"), The Onion Comedy And Arts Festival included a panel discussion with current and former writers including Joe Garden, Dan Guterman, John Krewson, Todd Hanson, Maria Schneider, Rob Siegel and current editor Chad Nackers. Everyone present for the panel, which was moderated by Tom Scharpling, himself a headline contributor, got their start with the publication while it was still based in Madison. Many of them signed on before the publication even had a website.
Being someone whose sense of humor was directly shaped by The Onion, I thought I'd hop down to the Windy City, where The Onion set up shop in 2012 after some years in New York. I wanted to see if there were any fun facts and tidbits worth relaying back to the hometown crowd here in Madison, where the publication got its start and really established the voice and tone that would inspire sites like Reductress, The Hard Times and The Borowitz Report (to, let’s just say, varying degrees of success).
I went into this worried that there wouldn’t be enough Madison throwbacks to make my trip worthwhile, but Tom Scharpling had only just finished introducing the guests before Scott Dikkers, a founding editor of The Onion, rushed the stage, drink in hand, and hugged every one of the assembled speakers, prompting Todd Hanson to deadpan "That's so punk rock." Yeah, there would probably be plenty of wacky Madison stuff here.
Things we learned from the panel:
1. It never dawned on anyone that it could be a career.
There was a certain incubational benefit that came with growing as a publication in Madison, rather than a metropolis like New York or entertainment hub like Los Angeles.
Rob Siegel summed this idea up thus: "We were sort of in this cocoon. You don't really have a sense of who's out there. Because you're in Madison you don't really get to enjoy any of the fruits of having this thing, thousands of miles away from anyone."
As such, some of their biggest compliments — and the early moments they realized they might be on the right track — came to them obliquely. Like the time they got fan mail from Stephen Hawking, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the article "Stephen Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton," and the guys from Car Talk reading the article "Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia" more or less in its entirety to their entire NPR audience.
And then Todd Hanson interrupted to bring up the crazy but true fact that Rob was chosen as one of America’s 50 most eligible bachelors by People magazine in 2000 (First date: “Dessert by the lake.” Caveat: “I have a neurotic streak”).
2. Certain Onion articles have been shown to have medically curative powers, including "Seagull With Diarrhea Barely Makes It To Crowded Beach In Time," which got Tig Notaro through cancer treatments, and the appropriately on the nose "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer," which brought a smile to Airplane! And Police Squad! writer (and Wisconsin native) Jim Abrahams in the midst of his own battle against cancer.
3. One article that was written, according to Joe Garden, but ultimately spiked by the lawyers due to having "no satire value" bore the headline "Arrival of To Catch a Predator Crew Clears Out Entire Applebee's."
4. The list of big-time actors, comedians, and writers who toiled away behind the scenes at The Onion in some capacity over the years includes Chris Pratt (The Lego Movie), Aziz Ansari (Parks & Rec), Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Scott Rogowsky (HQ), and Marcus Parks (Last Podcast on the Left). After members of the panel collectively rattled off this admittedly incomplete list, Joe Garden exclaimed "Someone gimme a job, any fuckin’ job! I'll wash your dishes!"
5. Madisonians with long memories will lovingly recall the "Drunk of the Week" feature, which, despite having run its course before the publication made the jump to the internet, writer Maria Schneider (who writes as the characters T. Herman Zweibel, Jean Teasdale and Herbert Kornfeld) says has haunted her for years in the form of fans regularly, and optimistically, asking when it will return.
6. While The Onion is certainly known for its uniquely uncomfortable brand of acidity, there was a perceptible vein of bitterness between Todd Hanson and Rob Siegel, with the two sniping at each other more than a few times in a way that came off as more hostile than playful. When asked about some of their favorite headlines, Hanson brought up something written by Siegel ("Larva Celebrates Ascent To Adulthood With Bar-Moltzvah") that made no sense to him at the time, to which the latter clearly bristled. Later, Siegel unintentionaly stepped on a punchline when Hanson was describing the creative process behind one of his most infamous headlines, "Jenna Bush's Federally Protected Wetlands Now Open For Public Drilling."
7. Print editions of The Onion are not fit to wipe your ass with. When asked about what a nearly complete collection of print issues would go for, John Krewson dodged the question but casually informed the proud collector with a nearly unbroken run of Chicago editions that "The paper they were printed on is actually legally allowed to be lower quality than toilet paper. Toilet paper has to touch the human body, so it has to be higher quality than what we printed The Onion on." Something to bear in mind for any locals who have stacks of ancient Madison versions of the paper yellowing in their basement.
8. The Onion is famous for its rigorously structured articles, written in the pointedly dry future perfect tense favored by serious newspapers. But, asked a question from two UW-Madison students about how difficult it was to find your own voice as a writer, Krewson said he could still look at old articles and tell who wrote them. "Maria, Todd, uh... Chad, but Rob really went hard at it..."
Having read enough about The Onion's inner workings over the years, and now having seen some of the most formative writers in person, it's honestly hard to square the publication's place in the history of Madison specifically. What started as a means of selling ad space to pizzerias and Greek restaurants ended up attracting the sort of people who had, self-admittedly, all but washed out of society — until they found a place in this weird family of satirical shit-stirrers. That said, while the men and women who worked over the first few decades to build The Onion up might have felt less-than-married to the city where they found each other, the publication almost certainly could not have developed into what it became anywhere else.
It's entirely reasonable to think that The Onion would not have thrived long enough to get its bearings had it come up in the hardscrabble publishing world of a larger city, or that it would have morphed into some lame, watered-down version of the razor-sharp satire it ended up cultivating. The Madison that birthed it might be long gone, and its last connection to the city might have been severed in 2013 when they ceased physical print editions, but The Onion certainly still holds a warm place in the hearts of many Madisonians. The most fitting tribute of all? UW-Madison's recently redesigned Alumni Park unironically honoring a publication which was staffed almost entirely by UW-Madison dropouts.
Editor's note: We incorrectly identified Scott Dikkers as a founder of The Onion. Chris Johnson and Tim Keck founded the publication in 1988, and Dikkers bought it a year later. And the publication ceased print editions in 2013, not 2015.
