The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis Controversy

Overview

The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis Commentary was a social media controversy over a risqué tweet posted by the satirical news organization The Onion calling the American child actress a "cunt."

Background

During The Oscars ceremony held on February 24th, 2013, The Onion posted a highly irreverent tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis, a nine-year-old American actress nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, in which the satirical news outlet described the nine-year-old actress as "kind of a cunt" (shown below).

Notable Developments

The tweet was immediately met with widespread criticism, with many Twitter users offended by the tweet spreading the hashtag "#unfollowTheOnion." Within one hour, The Onion deleted the tweet from the feed.

Several celebrities chimed in on Twitter criticizing The Onion, including actors LeVar Burton and Wendell Pierce, actress Holly Robinson Peete and political commentator Keith Olbermann.

The Onion Apologizes

The morning after the incident, The Onion CEO Steve Hannah issued an official apology in a post published on The Onion's front page.^[1]

Dear Readers,

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive--not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

That morning, former Onion News staffer Chris Sartinsky tweeted that the Wallis controversy would be used by Hannah to grant The Onion's management and advertising sales more editorial control and New York Times staff writer David Carr criticized the message being delivered by Hannah to The Onion staff.

The same day, the Adult Swim comedy website ThingX,^[2] ran by former employees of The Onion, published a satirical apology mocking the public outrage for the Wallis tweet.

Dear Consumers,

On behalf of Thing X, I'd like to offer the following public apology for everything we've ever done:

I am sorry to the thousands of people who took offense when we suggested that water chestnuts were worse than the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The fact that I find their sickening, crunchy texture and utter lack of flavor personally disgusting, is irrelevant to the millions who died in that terrible tragedy.

Also on February 25th, the tech news site Wired^[4] published an article accusing The Onion of perpetuating the "media's cruelty toward women" and praised The Onion for issuing an apology. On the following day, Forbes^[3] published an article about the apology, criticizing Hannah for apologizing and threatening to discipline staff writers for the tweet. Also on February 26th, The Guardian^[6] published an article about the possible negative consequences the apology might have on the company's ability to perform proper satire.

Search Interest

External References