NEW YORK (AP)
-- The Onion is apologizing for calling the 9-year-old star of "Beasts
of the Southern Wild" a vulgar and offensive name on Twitter, an attack
that led to a firestorm online.
The satirical
newspaper on Sunday referred to Quvenzhane Wallis with an expletive
intended to denigrate women. The Onion was lambasted overnight and asked
for forgiveness Monday.
"It was crude and
offensive - not to mention inconsistent with The Onion's commitment to
parody and satire, however biting," The Onion CEO Steve Hannah wrote on
Facebook. "No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless
comment masquerading as satire."
Hannah said
the offensive tweet was taken down within an hour and the newspaper has
"instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures" to ensure it will never
happen again. Those responsible would be disciplined, he added.
"Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry."
A message sent to Quvenzhane's representative seeking comment wasn't immediately returned Monday.
The
Onion's original tweet brought some calls for the fake new organization
to publicly identify the writer of the tweet, vows to refuse to retweet
its material, and requests from outraged consumers to email The Onion
to complain.
Oscar host Seth MacFarlane also
joked about the young star during the ceremony. Some found the quip
offensive, albeit not to the degree of the outrage over The Onion's
tweet. MacFarlane joked that "it'll be 16 years before she's too old
for" George Clooney.
Despite the attack,
Quvenzhane had some reason to stay positive Sunday. By the time she'd
arrived at the Oscar telecast, she could boast that she had been cast to
play Annie in a contemporized adaptation of the Broadway musical and
the "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip to be directed by Will Gluck.
It
wasn't the first time The Onion has gotten into hot water for trying to
push its humor. Last year, the site attracting public ire for an image
that showed an airliner about to crash into Chicago's Willis Tower, the
tallest building in the country.
And the year
before, U.S. Capitol Police released a statement refuting tweets and an
article claiming members of Congress had taken a group of schoolchildren
hostage. It included a doctored picture of Republican House of
Representatives Speaker John Boehner holding a gun to a child's head.
The
Chicago-based publication was founded in 1988 by two students in
Madison from the University of Wisconsin. Starting as a local college
newspaper, it became a national comedy institution and went online in
1996, and has since developed a television news parody.
The
publication is distributed weekly in cities, but it has also embraced
Twitter and has an app for the iPad and other tablets. It says it
averages 40 million page views and roughly 7.5 million unique visitors
per month.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
