The Onion was not the first publication I edited and published. In my senior year at Cadwalader Preparatory Academy, I was in charge of the school humorous magazine, The Stink-weed. It was so named to remind the reader of the noxious odor of this vegetation and to lend an over-all air of non-refinement. But I assure you, it was all for the sake of harm-less jocularity.
I always made sure that The Stink-weed was filled with the finest comic doggerel, epigrams, and song of a light-hearted nature. Much of The Stink-weed’s success was based on the fact that its humor was so time-less. This was quite deliberate. Even at the tender age of 17, I found my-self bored and irritated by the ephemeral subject-matter of the great humor journals of the day, Punch and Puck. Many years from now, I precociously reasoned, who would give a fig about the tin-pot politicians and public figures who were lampooned in those publications’ pages? I believed it was far better to ridicule general foibles of human nature, which stay with us always. I think you will agree with my approach after you read this ever-green classic, an essay I wrote in the May 1887 issue of The Stink-weed:
“An Observation Regarding The Ways In Which The Gentle-Men Wear Their Waist-Coats. The way in which a gentle-man wears his waist-coat bespeaks much about his character. For example, if a gentle-man secures all the buttons of his waist-coat, it indicates that he is a sober Christian gentle-man who purchases his grain directly from the whole-saler. A gentle-man with one or two of his buttons undone is a gentle-man of leisure who is equally at home at brothel and beer-hall alike. The gentle-man with all the buttons undone is doubt-less an immigrant, Negro or one of similar low stature. And the gentle-man wearing no waist-coat? Why, to even describe him as a ’gentle-man’ would be of the utmost folly!”
It boggles the mind to think that such age-less yet wonderfully witty insight could have flowed from the pen of a mere adolescent! The difficulty of keeping spats clean, the lighter side of child-bed fever, the Polish race: no subject was safe from my jocose pen!
Unfortunately, I quit under a cloud. My cohorts wanted to turn The Stink-weed into a parody of the local town news-paper. This I would not do. Humorous or not, I wanted no part of any-thing that would mock the gallant news-paper trade!
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
