The Onion Tweet Apology Tries to Smooth Over Inappropriate Post
The Onion, a satirical publication, issued an apology for an inappropriate tweet regarding a young child actress.
The outrage was swift over a poorly written tweet published on The Onion's official Twitter feed, and the apology was issued just as fast as an internet firestorm was sparked. A derogatory term was used to describe 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis while she attended the Oscars on Sunday night.
"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," Steve Hannah, The Onion's CEO, wrote on Facebook Monday morning.
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"No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire," he added.
The Onion has been a form of amusing reading for years, but a tweet from the publication's official Twitter account deservedly caused a harsh response.
"Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a c---, right? #Oscars2013," the now-deleted post stated.
The tweet was sent around 11:42 p.m. ET and was quickly picked up by those also posting on the Twittersphere. It was removed from the account nearly an hour later.
As expected, there was a rush of contempt for the author of the post, who seemingly went after a young child in a poor fashion, with some calling for the author of the tweet to be identified.
"Identify the writer. Let him defend that abhorrent verbal attack of a child. You call it humor I call it horrendous," Wendell Pierce of The Wire wrote on Twitter.
In a night that was deemed a success by many viewers and critics after host Seth McFarlane keep the mood light and provocative, the message will now be filed with a long list of unfortunate comments on the internet and will not be soon forgotten.
"The Onion made a pretty significant faux pas tonight on Quvenzhane Wallis. They deleted the tweet, but the Internet doesn't ever forget," Wrote Yahoo! Canada's Greg Hughes.
