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WASHINGTON—In a legal measure that will greatly expand the options available to American sportsmen, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it would repeal legacy regulations forbidding the use of controversial chokeholds and eye-gouging when hunting game birds. “Although animal rights activists have long decried placing grouse in sleeper holds, piledriving pheasants, and headbutting doves, we recognize that these inarguably effective moves have a long tradition among wingshooters,” said President Donald Trump in a press conference, adding that no less a man than Theodore Roosevelt had thought nothing of roundhouse kicking a brace of ducks for his dinner. “They call the move the ‘Crossface Chicken Wing’ for a reason. Furthermore, banning the use of the common folding chair as an implement for slamming birds across the head is a holdover from the days of ignorant environmentalists who don’t respect traditional hunting. True woodsmen know that respecting nature often means wrapping barbed wire around your fist to pummel a Canada goose or digging your thumbs into the eyes of a woodcock, and that there isn’t a hunter alive who wouldn’t curb stomp a wild turkey.” President Trump then posed for photographs while repeatedly smashing a quail beak-first into one of the White House’s marble columns.
But that just normalizes the story and makes it more believable. In 1998 if you had told me that Bill Clinton had gathered a personal army to start a human trafficing ring, I’d have said that sounds made up. If you said it was an Onion article, I’d have laughed.
In 2026 if you told me trump was doing the same, I’d say “Well, yeah. It’s called ICE.”
All of the absurd things done in life in the modern day make The Onion impossible to be MORE absurd than real life. If Paul Rubens were still alive, you could convince me that PeeWee Herman would be our next president. Not Paul Rubens, specifically the character PeeWee Herman. ow imagine PeeWees Playhouse, and all the insanity, and imagine that’s just going to be the white house from now on.
Except, I could actually see that happening. If Paul Rubens were still alive, that wouldn’t seem that far off coarse from the crazyness we have now. I’d actually welcome it, because PeeWees Playhouse was never hateful. That crazyness would be an upgrade from what we have right now. So if The Onion tried reporting that, I’d read the article not realizing it’s not real…because it IS within the radius of realism right now. You’d hear that news, and say “Yeah. Sure. That may as well happen.”
Whereas if you told me PeeWee Herman (the character) would be the next president after Clinton, I’d just have to laugh at the absurdity. Today it seems just as real as anything else going on.
The point of good satire is a bit more than to just be absurd, it’s more to point out something absurd about a specific thing. Not that everything on The Onion does that necessarily, to be fair