Judases! You are all Judases! That’s right—you! I work my fingers to the bone for nearly a century to bring you a nice news-paper with crisp news-print and that lovely fresh-ink smell, and how do you reward me? By listening to the wireless-radio news dispatches! Judases!
Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been betrayed by you lousy readers. Back in the autumn of ’21, The Onion’s reader-ship plummeted, with people flocking to buy the Hearst papers for the latest news-items on the murder scandal involving the famed clown-prince of the moving-daguerreotypes, “Fatty” Arbuckle. I tried my best to recover my lost reader-ship, at one point offering Charlie Chaplin $10,000 to kick a baby in the face in exchange for his exclusive story. But the sanctimonious Chaplin refused, calling me an “amoral brute.” We finally increased our circulation after we began printing hair-oil coupons on the front page, but I learned a hard lesson: Our readers are a fickle bunch of pulers whose favor can be gained only by dangling a shiny bauble in their pasty, infantile faces.
If not Hearst, then who gave you the 30 pieces of silver this time, you Judases? Judases! Judases, all! Well, take a number and step in line, because you’re joining a by-no-means-exclusive club of people who have forsaken me during my long life. These infamous individuals include my child-hood wet-nurse, my instructors at Cadwalader Preparatory Academy, all my senior editors at The Onion, my accountants, my wife and sons, Sen. Robert M. LaFollette, Doc McGillicuddy, Mr. Tin, my pet eagle, and the fellow who draws Moon Mullins.
Well, that tears it. If you think you can give T. Herman Zweibel the brush-off whenever you like and then pick up his news-paper as though nothing has happened, you are mistaken. You are not allowed to read this paper ever again. Go on, put it down. I command you. You turn-coats, traitors and double-crossers are not welcome to peruse the Republic’s finest source of news-worthy material. You are unworthy. Only the pure-of-heart may read The Onion.
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.
