From Facebook:

Feb. 25, 2013

Dear Readers,

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive-not to mention inconsistent with The Onion's commitment to parody and satire, however biting.
...
No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

Sincerely,

Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion

Well it's good to have standards.

Why are people expecting tact and restraint from the Onion?

I thought it was funny.

milsorgen: Who cares, words are just words. They only have the power you impart to them and it makes no sense to me to keep making it the BIG BAD of words.

Says the guy who doesn't want to stop treating the people in his life horribly.

So, I made a little comment there about how this was also satirical and that Steve Hannah is a fake name. Some guy copied and pasted the names from the staff page of The Onion and called me an idiot.

I can't decide if I thought it was funny or not.

Vodka Zombie: the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

I can kind of understand the joke they were trying to make.  It's right up there with "Mr. Roger's dreams of burying hookers in the desert."

But, they fell flat on their faces this time.  And, that's what happens when you just try too hard.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

"Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhane Wallis is kind of a c*** horrible name to give a child."

FTFTheOnion.

catmandu: Vodka Zombie: the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

I can kind of understand the joke they were trying to make.  It's right up there with "Mr. Roger's dreams of burying hookers in the desert."

But, they fell flat on their faces this time.  And, that's what happens when you just try too hard.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

so, biatch or ho?

SpikeStrip: catmandu: Vodka Zombie: the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

so, biatch or ho?

biatch

To all the people who are all butthurt over The Onion calling Quvenzhané Wallis a horrible name: You embody The Onion's slogan, "Tu Stultus Es." Or, in English, "You Are Dumb."

Please don't misunderstand...I'm not defending them. What they did was in poor taste, no doubt about it. It crossed the line, for sure. But lest we forget - at its best, satire is supposed to do one thing. And that is: hold a mirror up to society, and show it where its warts are. And in calling the least-offensive person on the red carpet (a charming, poised, adorable, talented, and universally-praised 9-year-old) the MOST offensive word that exists, what The Onion was TRYING to do was to make us think.

How often do we dismiss some celebrities as being "bad people" without even knowing them? I know some people who claim to not be able to stand Anne Hathaway, or Taylor Swift, or who will not see anything Gwyneth Paltrow does, because they say they "hate" them. Many actresses in particular seem to suffer this kind of stigma. We just judge them so easily. Certain public figures just rub us the wrong way, and that's fine...If irrational, and often misguided.

Pointing that out was all The Onion was trying to do. To ask us to consider why we harbor weird prejudices against certain people we don't even know. By calling a beloved young talent by a nasty slur, the goal was the same as if they'd said, "Is it just us, or is Tom Hanks a piece of shiat?"

So, yes...What they did was ill-advised, and designed for maximum shock value. As such, feel free to lambaste them if you must. But for fark's sake...At least do it for the right reasons. Not because you were too thick to comprehend the impetus of their intent.

Shostie: Why are people expecting tact and restraint from the Onion?

Actually, good satire uses quite a bit of restraint.  The Onion is great because of the line it straddles.

yanceylebeef: I thought it was funny.

I did too. I guess we're just two crass jerks. Or some other people don't understand that the Onion was not actually calling her a coont but was instead making fun of Seth McFarlane.

So that little girl gets a free pass for being a c*nt just because she's young?

FishyFred: Diogenes: So that little girl gets a free pass for being a c*nt just because she's young?

The Onion would never dream of calling Dakota Fanning the C-word.

albeit a  legal coont.

FishyFred: Diogenes: So that little girl gets a free pass for being a c*nt just because she's young?

Actually, if what I'm reading in my Tumblr feed is representative, it's because she's black and that The Onion would never dream of calling Dakota Fanning the C-word.

/JUST THE MESSENGER HERE

Oh, I'm sure that has quite a bit to do with it.  I was trying to make light of it in general.

Children should be at least 10 before tossed into the Hollywood 'meat grinder'.

She shouldn't be subjected to that sort of language and name calling, not in Hollywood.  Nope.

Should that sort of thing be encouraged?  No.  Yet, I've no doubt that she's already been subjected to much worse.

I thought it was funny. Its satire, and it was making fun of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, not the girl.

Diogenes: Alright, who's next? [ image appears ] Oh, it's 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis.  You think you can beat me?! "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Wallis?" Also: The Alphabet called; they want theirletters back. Ka-bam!

Jennifer Lawrence, SNL Opening Monologue

You're forgetting that nobody watches SNL.

They were only saying what John McCain was thinking.

Meh, it's just parodying the essence of the nasty film industry. But I'm sure we'll get the President talking about how 'if he had a third daughter she'd look like....' Americans are still racist...., etc. etc. ad infinitum. reductio ad absurdum.

Donnchadha: Diogenes: Alright, who's next? [ image appears ] Oh, it's 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis.  You think you can beat me?! "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Wallis?" Also: The Alphabet called; they want theirletters back. Ka-bam!

Jennifer Lawrence, SNL Opening Monologue

You're forgetting that nobody watches SNL.

That's why I quoted instead of merely mentioning ;-)

But to be serious for a second, the whole monologue was about her "I beat Meryl" comment at the Golden Globes.  She took shots at all her Oscar challengers, but punctuated each with a nice compliment.

Extreme contrast and misdirection are common tools in a humorist's shed.  Whoever posted that used a risky medium in which to employ extreme contrast.  Twitter gives you no room to provide a context, or followup/correction (for when a joke goes wrong).

This kind of humor is tricky.

When it works, it's because what was being said was so outrageous that the audience is in on the joke. The humor is that both parties realize that what was said was ridiculous.

Unfortunately, at 140 characters of text, and given the usual expectations for Twitter, the joke doesn't come across as anything more than a mean insult.  Which means that it fell flat and instead of having a nice little meta-joke about offensive jokes, we just have something that looks like an offensive joke.

Ultimately, I think that it's a case of no real harm done. The Onion took a swing, recognized they had a miss, scrubbed the joke and issued and actually contrite apology.

At this point, the only people who are shouting are a) people who go out of their way to be offended and b) people who think that self-censorship is a traitorous violation of the 1st Amendment. Which is to say, in both cases, a whole bunch of stupid c%nts.

I guess the closest historic precedent to this is when they called Shirley Temple Curly Top.