Beasts of the Southern Wild star and youngest-ever Best Actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis is a lovely little girl who shows plenty of signs of turning into a reliable talent and a charming presence on the awards-season publicity circuit. And for some reason, she became the target of some of the most unpleasant jokes both during last night’s Academy Awards and in the commentary about them.

Seth MacFarlane cracked that “to give you an idea of how young she is, it’ll be 16 years before she’s too young for Clooney.” It was a line that could have been at Clooney’s expense, if it hadn’t seemed so congratulatory—both MacFarlane and Clooney have a tendency to date much younger women. And as I wrote earlier today, MacFarlane immediately defused any sense that he was going after Clooney by tossing him a mini-bottle. Mega-stars, it seems, must be protected from any hurt feelings or criticism, but little girls? Not so much. Things got worse later in the evening when the Onion’s twitter feed Tweeted, and subsequently deleted “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a c—, right? #Oscars2013.” It was jarring and appalling to see that kind of language directed at a nine-year old girl, even if there’s a world where the concept of the joke could have been funny. Suggesting that a little girl who carries purses shaped like puppies and has a habit of flexing adorably on the red carpet or when the camera comes to her is secretly a Machiavellian schemer or a diva is a reasonable joke to me, and a similar schtick was a long-running and successful plot point on 30 Rock. It even could have been a riff on the irrational haterade directed actresses like Anne Hathaway. But the Onion’s choice of sexual, nasty language blew up that possibility: it was programming to the character length, not the actual quality of the gag.

To the publication’s credit, the Onion appears to have realized this. The company’s CEO, Steve Hannah, just published a Facebook post asking for Wallis’ forgiveness:

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. No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire. The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible. Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

But beyond the Onion’s apology, it’s worth thinking more deeply about why the attempts at satire aimed at Wallis went so badly last night.
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At Netroots New York this weekend, I went to an interesting workshop by John Hlinko, the man behind Left Action (and, interestingly, the write-in campaign to get former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty reelected after he lost the Democratic primary) and Julianna Forlano, the Brooklyn College media professor and voice behind the Ironic News Report. They were discussing how to use comedy to recruit people for activist projects, which is, of course, different from comedy for comedy’s sake. But the presentation raised some interesting questions for me about how best to make arguments through comedy — and whether, as progressives, it makes more sense for us to be rallying the troops internally, or to be working on converting the unconvinced.

“What makes people laugh,” Julianna said, is “surprise and a feeling of superiority…this is one that can be used for good or evil. You can use it to create a feeling of solidarity with your people, or you can do that thing I mentioned, where Mexicans love gardening. What we want to do is turn our focus on those people who are in power.” Which I think is true, to a certain extent. But there’s always the danger that in cutting people down to size, you end up confirming your (and your audience’s) own biases in a way that disarms your ability to fight hypocrisy and damaging ideas. Take the idea that Republicans are stupid. John used, as an example, a campaign he used to attract followers to LeftAction, getting people to register Facebook likes for the concept: “Can this horse’s ass get more fans than Mitch McConnell?” “It was clearly tapping into the kind of community,” he told us. “It pre-sold them on the concept. And then I said if you like an edgy, creative approach to left activism, like LeftAction.”

I get the impulse, especially if you’re feeling beaten up, to take refuge in the idea that your opponents are stupid. But that’s not actually an argument that’s going to dislodge people who agree with the arguments you’re not actually addressing, a project towards which I am more temperamentally inclined. By contrast, there’s something like Hustler’s Jerry Falwell parody, which was both funny because it was obviously not true, and because it provoked him into a response that made Larry Flynt’s point for him: that Falwell was thin-skinned, brittle, and humorless. The parody ad worked precisely because Hustler was coming into it from a position of confidence, rather than insecurity. He didn’t scare them enough for Flynt and company to have to reassure themselves that they were better than Falwell was—in fact, the ad copy is written completely straight, and sets Falwell up as a figure of authority within the context of the joke. “The greater the prestige of the target, the greater desire of people to see them equalized,” Julianna said. “My theory is we all know this is an illusion…Some of us on the left have to get over saying we love everyone and go on the attack.” The question is, what’s the best way to expose that artificiality? Dismantling illusions takes more work than just stating that they’re mirages, but it’s probably more effective in the long term.

I brought this up in the session, and John and Julianna and I talked about it afterward, but I also think it’s important to remember that comedy can be an incredibly valuable tool for reframing debates. The funniest bit of Louis C.K.’s environmentalist riff on his current tour and in his special isn’t necessarily the bit about people who think the natural world is there for them to exploit. It’s him as an aggrieved, and slightly naive, God, asking, “What the fuck did you do to my duck? It had a green head and it was so awesome and you fucking killed it!” When our debates become about who is smarter, or cooler, we’re losing focus. Sometimes the most important thing about environmentalism is the wonder of the duck.

Yesterday, The Onion caught a tremendous amount of flack for tweeting, as a kickoff to a longer Twitter narrative related to a story about a hostage-taking scenario in Congress (riffing, of course, on the debt ceiling debate), “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.” The publication followed that tweet almost immediately with another that was a clear joke, “BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen. #CongressHostage,” but the initial tweet had already been dramatically amplified beyond the account’s followers and had people questioning whether real violence was underway.

So did The Onion go too far with the first tweet? It’s an interesting question that’s the result of a collision with two sets of norms: first, The Onion expecting that everyone will know that anything comes out under the publication’s name is a joke; second is the assumption that in the case of grave tragedy, everyone breaks character to respond to it. The latter norm is, I think, stronger, and in the age of Twitter, we haven’t really accounted for the few exceptions to that rule. I can’t think of a single situation where The Onion’s broken character. I mean, they did the September 11 attacks brilliantly, but they did them by digging deep and getting back to the core of what had made the site great, and pulling approximately no punches. This story about a Muslim kid getting bullied on the playground is heartbreakingly predictive and really damning, as was this savaging of commercial exploitation of the attacks.

So in a way, I appreciate The Onion’s resolute willingness to go a little too far in the service of what was a fairly sharp story. But I think they should have included a link to the actual story. If you’re playing by a slightly tweaked set of rules from everyone else, it doesn’t hurt to reaffirm that, especially when touching on sensitive ground in a medium that encourages misinterpretation and often loses context in the process.