When the Onion’s groveling, sniveling Board of Directors approached me with the idea of hiring someone to act as supreme imperator of all advertising-related matters, I was so shocked and enraged by their presumption that a fulminating cascade of bilious ichor shot forth from my nostrils. I appointed those spineless puppets to carry out my wishes, not to display any sort of initiative or independence what-so-ever!
However, once I had demoted my Director of Marketing to boot-black, I began to see that the idea had some merit. A supreme plenipotentiary of advertising would be extremely use-ful, after all, particularly if the man in question had the courage and backbone to kowtow to our advertisers at every opportunity, bravely sacrificing our journalistic standards to the slightest whim of any distiller, fried-meat purveyor, or slattern-clothier with enough capital to purchase space on our back page. That, if you ask me, is the sort of flexible, biddable leader this Republic is begging for!
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that we have hired Hammond Morris, lickspittle without peer, the living embody-ment of obsequity, master golfsman, and also, I am told, my five-times-great grandson-in-law. He is a master of “Social Net-Working,” which, I am given to understand, is the use of certain vile technologies to advertise the existence of advertising itself, a practice which seems long overdue. He has participated in success-ful advertising campaigns for soft beverages, cigarillos, and sofas, increasing their sales despite the fact that so many of you slack-jawed lack-wits would have sat around on sofas drinking sugar water and smoking any-way. He is free of the tainted blood of the Irish-man. He has a handshake which caused me to experience exotic yet extremely businesslike flutterings in the ancient dust of my loins despite my loathing of the warmth and life of other human-beings. And he was willing to marry a Zweibel woman, all of whom are notoriously vapid inbred brood-mares concerned with only the accumulation of shiny objects and the time of their next feeding, and therefore he is exactly the kind of man we need for the job of Onion Advertising Czar.
I am reliably informed that Hammond, who was more than happy to indenture himself to us under the provision that we help him in his vendetta against a certain roots-beer company, will be analyzing the latest “trends” in advertising so that we may best employ them for our own purposes. He will also be keeping a careful eye on the advertising industry as a whole; and since I am given to understand that advertising is now the only industry remaining, he should never lack for work.
Therefore it is with full faith and conviction I introduce to you Hammond Morris, Czar of All the Advertise-Ments! All shall soon kneel before his pronouncements of quality, affordability, and availability. Now get back to work!
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.
