As you leaden-pated slow-coaches are too thick to realize that running a multi-tentacled news-paper empire takes an iron will and a strong stomach. If you do not exercise a certain low animal cunning with regard to your employees, occasionally put a business-rival to the garrote, and maintain a strong cash position, the Swiss will be running your news-paper in jig time!
Unfortunately, it is that last one that has brought me up short this time. While I try to keep the Zweibel coffers swollen well above the two-fathom mark, of late they have dwindled considerably. It is possible that I over-did it somewhat on the gold-leaf when iron-lung-refurbishing time came around this year. Also, I have acquired quite a taste for using crisp new hundred-dollar bills to light the gardeners.
But no matter. It is with an eye toward replenishing my assets that I announce the following: The Onion’s Middle-Western distribution district, along with all of its facilities, residents, and chattels, is for sale. And if you live in an area where this editorial is running–coastal readers are presently enjoying my report on the virtues of varying grades of enema cloth–then you are part of the bill of goods.
I must admit, I have never thought much of my grand-sire’s purchase of the Middle-Western states, a marshy and mosquito-ravaged swath of cow-dung that soon became known as “F. Siegfried’s Folly.” But that was back in 1793, and while the nick-name remains, the region has almost tripled in value since that time. My solicitor Beavers informs me that the rail-head burg of Chicago, a municipality which once held no higher ambition than being hog-butcher to the world, has doubled in size, despite my best efforts to burn it down for the insurance money. There are even reports that there exists a double-metropolis of some size in the Viking settlement land of Minn-Y-Sow-Tah, and that everything from corn to alfalfa is to be had in the region. I am sure this will push the asking price for the area well up into the millions of dollars–more, even, if I can start a rumor that you people are being considered for state-hood, though I do not believe any-one will fall for that old chest-nut in this day and age.
I do not know who your new owners will be, people of the Middle-West, but I certainly wish them better luck with you than I had! Perhaps some dusky Arab, recently drunken with funds from the popularity of rock-oil as a tonic, will be your new land-lord. Good riddance, I say!
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.
