Our Dumb Century
Encyclopedia
Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source is a satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
humor book written by the staff of The Onion
The Onion
The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...
and published by Three Rivers Press in 1999. The chief editor of the book was Scott Dikkers
Scott Dikkers
Scott Dikkers is a United States comedy writer and filmmaker. He was the founding editor of The Onion, and the leading creative force behind the publication's rise from a local college newspaper to an internationally acclaimed humor brand name...
, with specific sections edited by Robert D. Siegel
Robert D. Siegel
Robert D. Siegel is an American screenwriter for The Onion Movie and The Wrestler, as well as the writer and director of Big Fan.The Wrestler won the Golden Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival and has earned several Best Picture nominations....
, Maria Schneider
Maria Schneider (cartoonist)
Maria Schneider is an American humorist, cartoonist and illustrator best known for her work with the satirical online newspaper The Onion and her comic strip Pathetic Geek Stories....
and John Krewson. It was awarded the 1999 Thurber Prize for American Humor
Thurber Prize for American Humor
The Thurber Prize for American Humor, named after American humorist James Thurber, recognizes outstanding contributions in humor writing. The prize is given out by the Thurber House. It was first awarded irregularly, but since 2004 has been bestowed annually....
.
The book, spun off from The Onion weekly-newspaper format of dryly satirizing current events, features mocked-up newspaper front pages from the entire 20th century, presented as though The Onion had been continuously in print since before 1900. The publication of the book is in itself a parody of other end of the century retrospectives that had been published in 1999, notably Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
.
Summary
The book satirizes many common beliefs, trends, and perceptions. For instance, in response to the John F. Kennedy assassination theories, one headline declares, "Kennedy Slain By CIACentral Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
, LBJ
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
, Freemasons
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
" and that he was shot "129 times from 43 different angles." This is later followed up by an article proclaiming that the "Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
admits to killing JFK
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
."
The book often takes a cynical
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
look at American foreign policy over the ages, describing past events with revisionist
Historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
, modern-day perspectives. For example, the Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
attacks are described as being an attack on a "colonially-occupied US non-state
Territory of Hawaii
The Territory of Hawaii or Hawaii Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 7, 1898, until August 21, 1959, when its territory, with the exception of Johnston Atoll, was admitted to the Union as the fiftieth U.S. state, the State of Hawaii.The U.S...
" and President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
encourages Americans to fight in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in order to "make the world safe for corporate oligarchy." The article on the 1920 granting
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920....
of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
states "Women Finally Allowed to Participate in Meaningless Fiction of Democracy." The article on the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
is "WA- (headline continued on page 2)," with "WA-" in especially large print.
Smaller stories in the book satirize social and pop-cultural trends of their respective eras, such as the faux-advertisements and gimmicks that abound in the top and bottom corners of the pages. For example, from the 1920s: No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, based on Mandel's 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends...
Fever Bonus! Sheet Music from "Tea for Two
Tea for Two (song)
"Tea for Two" is a song from the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette with music by Vincent Youmans and lyrics by Irving Caesar. It is a duet sung by Nanette and Tom in Act II as they imagine their future.-Analysis:...
" Inside.
Since the book was written before the year 2000, its prediction for that year satirized Y2K
Year 2000 problem
The Year 2000 problem was a problem for both digital and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits.In computer programs, the practice of representing the year with two...
and religious prophecies, including "Christian Right Ascends to Heaven
Rapture
The rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
," "All Corporations Merged Into OmniCorp," and a small graphic listing meteors headed for Earth by size.
Running gags
There are a number of running gags through this supposed history of the twentieth century, which are not immediately apparent. One is the existence of a piece of farmyard equipment called 'The Chicken Raper'. Another is that every major celebrity trial, from Fatty ArbuckleFatty Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd...
to O.J. Simpson
O. J. Simpson murder case
The O. J. Simpson murder case was a criminal trial held in Los Angeles County, California Superior Court from January 29 to October 3, 1995. Former American football star and actor O. J...
, is referred to as 'the trial of the century'. A third is the newspaper fear-mongering by drawing a caricature of America's enemy du jour (among them, Spaniards, Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s) sexually assaulting an anthropomorphized Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
.
Three consecutive pages show a fictionalized end to Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
's presidency which loosely parallels the end of Gary Tison's
Tison v. Arizona
Tison v. Arizona, like Enmund v. Florida, was a 5-4 decision in which the United States Supreme Court qualified the rule it set forth in Enmund...
life: First Nixon is arrested for his connection to the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
; the next day's paper's headline says he then escaped and is on the lam; the third says he was gunned down in a shootout with cops (but Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States , serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland...
is still at large).
A more subtle satire is the rise of a (fictional) company called 'Global Tetrahedron', which first appears as a small business in the first decade of the century and gradually grows into a multinational behemoth.
Cultural references
Several events from the classic film It's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
are also used as stories, such as "Mr. Potter To Pay Fifty Cents on the Dollar" during the Great Depression
Great Depression in the United States
The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement...
and "Harry Bailey Wins Congressional Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
" in the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
section, with Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
quoted in the latter story as saying "we owe a great debt to George Bailey for pulling Harry out of the ice when he was 9" and saying George was declared 4-F because of his ear. Eventually, in the 1980s, George Bailey is indicted as part of the Savings and Loan scandal. Also present is the frequent theme of moral outrage at the amount of sex in popular culture, beginning with a depiction of women's undergarments reproduced from a Sears catalogue, then extending to jazz music (also thought to have sunk the Titanic), and culminating in "Hippies Celebrate Fuck Summer '67".
The space race is repeatedly covered, including such articles as "Bleeping Two-Foot Tin Ball Threatens Free World" about the Sputnik launch "Soviets Ahead in Dog-Killing Race" about the flight of experimental animals, and finally "Holy Fucking Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon", a recreation of the Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
landing, complete with a radio transcript filled with profanity.
Critical reaction
The book became a number one New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
best-seller shortly after its publication, appropriately on April 1, 1999.
Other formats
An audio version of the book was produced by Scott Dikkers and adapted by Tim HarrodTim Harrod
Tim Harrod is an American comedy writer. He has written for The Onion, The Late Show With David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien....
, and was presented as excerpts from the (real-life) nationally syndicated The Onion Radio News throughout the same time period and covering many of the same subjects.