A Holiday Message from the Publisher
Editor’s note: Periodically and without warning, Onion Publisher Emeritus T. Herman Zweibel violates his state-sponsored retirement and mandates the publishing of his thoughts in The Onion, the newspaper founded by his great-grandfather. As per his explicit instructions, such columns are run in their entirety and without copy-editing.
God, what I wouldn’t give to beat my nurse. I see it play over and over again in my head like one of those moving pictures. What are they called? Zoetropes. Yes, that’s them. They have them at the penny arcades. My cane comes crashing down on her head until her blood and green brain matter dots the sterile white confines of the medical wing of my palatial estate.
Red and green. Those are the colors of the holidays.
Merry Christmas, everyone out there in the world. I haven’t been wheeled outside since 1958, so I don’t really know what Christmas is like anymore. Do they still have presents? Is Teddy still showing the Mexicans who’s number one? Is the Secretary of War keeping an eye on those Brazilians? I don’t trust them. How about snow? It’s a puffy ice substance that falls from the sky. It sounds almost crazy to ask. Am I off my nut?
The only way I know to gauge my sanity is my nurse. She’s the only person I ever see. And she never even responds to me. Just today I cursed at her at the top of my lungs for what must have been three hours straight, and she ignored me. Doesn’t she know I exist? If I could survive without her vital medical attention, I’d fire her fat ass and have her living in a cannery-row alley. No, I take it all back. I’d beat her.
Chief Forester Pinchot was Roosevelt’s pointman! Send Taft back to the Philippines! Traitor! Vote the Bull Moose ticket this year!
Christ, my cancerous prostate is sticking out my back. Whenever I roll over and have Helen get out the hand mirror, it frightens me. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame! Do you know what it’s like to pee kidney stones the size of silver dollars? Where is that sow? My bed pan is full.
At this holy time of the year, I like to take time to give thanks to those who make a difference in my life. And those people are the advertisers who keep The Onion in the black. It’s their unflappable support that has kept me in the top one percentile of the world’s wealthy since the day I was born. But I’ve always fought for the little guy! That’s why I followed my father and his father’s footsteps into the newspaper business.
But God damn the unions! They never get off our backs. The Lundrum–Griffin Act will show those filthy guineas! Get out and support! Wire the Congress!
I coughed up some phlegm, and a little blood, as usual. But there was also some greenish substance. Was it liver bile? Nurse! You wench! Get your waddling hind quarters over here and wipe this up. More codeine!
Christ died for us all, and it’s time we remembered that on this holiday season. But more importantly, let’s remember the advertisers.
I think I just urinated again. But I can’t know for sure. I have no feeling below my chest.
It’s the Germans again. The Monroe Doctrine be damned! Attack! Attack!
Oh, and to all you readers of The Onion. You never lifted a finger for me all my years. You can rot in hell. Rot in hell, you bastards!
