THE ONION STORY

A longtime editor of the fake-news standard-bearer would like to correct the record.

Humor writer Dikkers (Trump’s America: Buy This Book and Mexico Will Pay for It, 2017, etc.) knows that he has a negative reputation in Onion circles. He absorbed the blame for the popular humor publication’s divisive 2011 move from New York to Chicago, resulting in mass staff firings, and he’s direct (if a bit officious) about his role in it: “The principles I’d pioneered and championed for twenty years were kept alive with great devotion in my absence,” he writes. “Then, suddenly, I became the enemy.” So his book is less a yuk-fest, or even an autobiography, than a series of defenses: an explanation of his role in setting the paper’s editorial direction, his noble efforts on behalf of writers before things went south, and a celebration of his accomplishments in comedy outside of the Onion. Dikkers more or less stumbled into the editor’s chair of the paper, founded in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin, where he helped to sharpen its AP-parody voice, got the publication on the web, and spearheaded the classic collection of spoof Page Ones, Our Dumb Century. Dikkers presents himself as a multimedia comedy maestro, pushing the Onion brand onto the radio and online video, but his own movie efforts were modest successes at best. Christine Wenc’s history, Funny Because It’s True, puts the Onion story in more perspective, and while Dikkers’ version of events doesn’t contradict Wenc’s, it does lack True’s high-spirited humor. More often, Dikkers postures as the person who truly understood the Onion’s brand, bristling at others’ lowered standards. His book emphasizes his point that good comedy is hard work, but it doesn’t make for particularly funny, or fun, reading.

A surprisingly sour take on a comedy icon.