Our Dumb Century is a tour de force, no doubt about it. (My favorite headline, predictably: "Nation Escapes Depression Through Fanciful Works of H. P. Lovecraft: Fantastical Tales of Better Times Allow Readers to Forget Troubles")
"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."
"Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."
"Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now."
I have read Our Dumb Century, and I have read John Hodgman's The Areas Of My Expertise, and the latter wins. Especially if you listen to the audio-book version, which features 50 state songs by Jonathan Coulton.
I admit it: The Onion bores me. The headlines are often funny, and then the articles are a hashing and rehashing of the headline until all you have is hash. They don't kill the horse, but they're quite willing to beat it endlessly.
Our Dumb Century might be consistently funny enough to be an exception, but I tried to read Our Dumb World, and found it to be full of country descriptions that once again picked a single funny thing and beat it to death. And that was at best; at mediocre, the page would be a rehashing of stereotypes, and at worst it was outright racist.
I think Our Dumb World is amazingly courageous. It is an attempt to turn all the horror in the world back on itself. Without doubt, I have never read the word "rape" used more often in a humorous context. It is a book that makes you fidget, in a way that I expect Swift's Modest Proposal made people of its day blanch. I expect quite a few people reading this won't like it at all. I think it's one of the best books I've ever read, despite the fact that it took me months to finish it.
As David St. Hubbins once observed, there's such a fine line between stupid and clever. You could see it as courageous that Our Dumb World uses the most offensive things possible to underscore how people are stupid; or you could just see it as offensive. To me, it's simply the latter.
I agree wholeheartedly about Our Dumb Century. It's the book I've bought most often as a gift. And unlike some of the other Onion efforts, the history of the 20th century provides range for many hugely different jokes, tahnan would probably like it. Our Dumb Century also created one of my family's favorite jokes. Lisa's semi-retarded uncle once interjected himself into a discussion about politics, insisting that America had already had a woman president. "Eleanor Roosevelt was president," he insisted. We later figured out that he'd picked up our copy of Our Dumb Century and read the page with the headline "Nation Hails Our First Lesbian President." So far as he knew, he was reading a book packed with snippets of history, and the humor, along with the word 'lesbian,' went over his head. We decided against trying to figure out what else he'd learned from the book.
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But The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy pretty much kicks all your honorable mentions (Bierce aside) to the curb:
"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."
"Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."
"Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now."
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Our Dumb Century might be consistently funny enough to be an exception, but I tried to read Our Dumb World, and found it to be full of country descriptions that once again picked a single funny thing and beat it to death. And that was at best; at mediocre, the page would be a rehashing of stereotypes, and at worst it was outright racist.
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Our Dumb Century also created one of my family's favorite jokes. Lisa's semi-retarded uncle once interjected himself into a discussion about politics, insisting that America had already had a woman president. "Eleanor Roosevelt was president," he insisted. We later figured out that he'd picked up our copy of Our Dumb Century and read the page with the headline "Nation Hails Our First Lesbian President." So far as he knew, he was reading a book packed with snippets of history, and the humor, along with the word 'lesbian,' went over his head. We decided against trying to figure out what else he'd learned from the book.
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