RE: A MESSAGE FROM THE ONION’S EDITORIAL BOARD TO THE BETOOTA ADVOCATE
On behalf of The Betoota Advocate, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the team from The Onion.
As one of the last, great, American news media organizations, we thank you for your kind words and wish you safe passage through our vast and beautiful home. Make yourself at home and, under the conventions of the ANZUS Treaty, you are entitled to anything we have so please take whatever you like as you so gracefully have in the past.
That being said, there are some matters of housekeeping that need to be addressed.
As we understand the offices of The Onion are based in Chicago, which was made popular by Home Alone – and Chief Keef.
One of the cultural differences between our home in the Queensland desert and the Windy City is that it’s considered rude and/or socially unacceptable to wound or murder your fellow man with an unregistered firearm in our country. Even in a hot-blooded act of passion, it is simply frowned upon here – which apparently is not the case in ‘Chiraq’.
Should you feel the need to perform a gangland-style execution while you’re here, we ask you to shoot another member of your team — as the last time an American shot an Australian to death it almost sparked an international incident and reflected quite poorly on your decaying society as a whole.
Local police and ambulance crews will be on standby for your visit as, statistically, your very presence puts ordinary Australian lives in far more danger than automobiles or religious extremism.
Another quick issue to address is the problem many tourists such as yourselves may face and that’s the topic of travel insurance and health care. Please don’t fret if you manage to arrive here without organising any as our universal healthcare system automatically covers you should an accident happen.
We can assure you that if you’re hurt or injured while in Australia, you will not be left to die in the corridor while a family member weeps over a seizing corpse that once housed your soul and being because, for some reason, it was your employers’ duty to provide you with health insurance. And they didn’t.
Australia is a proud nation of migrants built on the back of the peoples of our dispossessed firsts nations – in a manner very similar to the United States. And while we are not free from the news cycle and hostile political climate created by your US media culture, we still hold our heads high when we talk about gun control and Medicare. It’s also comforting to know that Australian men can see why it is not okay to wear swastikas in the street.
But enough about that, let us tell you more about The Advocate.
As a small and independent regional newspaper from far-west Queensland, we pride ourselves on reporting fair and just news with the authenticity that rivals only the salt on the sunburnt earth that surrounds us here in the Queensland Channel Country.
Having been established in the mid-1800’s, we are arguably Australia’s oldest newspaper and have always taken pride in our ability to walk in both worlds: regional and metropolitan news. In recent times, our popularity has grown immensely as result of a bold move to create an online revival for our publication at the advice of a youth intern from one of the sandstone universities down south.
Without fear or favour, our publication strives to go places others won’t go. We broke some of the biggest stories of 2017 reporting that can only be maintained through fierce independence. We are yet to bow to any of the media families currently acquiring the remaining publishers around the world like low-tier European powers carving lines through the new world of North Africa in the 1800s.
When the Packer Family [not Green Bay] came knocking, they were treated to a whirlwind evening of coin toss gambling and Angus steak – but left with nothing more than the soap and towels they stole from The Betoota Hotel.
Rupert ‘Buck’ Murdoch tried his luck in mid-2014, but negotiations failed to regain momentum after Wendy Deng was ejected from the Dolphins Club for being intoxicated – to which Buck responded by thrusting a pen into the throat of the bouncer ushering his then-wife out.
It is through luck and dignity that we have managed to avoid acquisition, which is why our editors, founders and readers were disgusted to hear the claims coming out of Chicago earlier this week.
The Onion newspaper is a deeply tragic insight into the failings of ‘old media’, a direct mouthpiece for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and, in hindsight, the magnifying sound board for modern fascism and political populism.
A news organ that, despite your positivity, has simply not kept up. It is one that will ultimately follow the route of other business powers from their glory age such as Kodak, Blockbuster and the White House. It goes without saying that when this happens, and you experience the pain felt by the once proud auto workers of the neighbouring 313, the blame will not rest on your poor management but teenage children who are apparently creating fake news in Macedonia and Albania.
That being said, it would be unwise for you to not make hay while the sun shines. Your visit to Australia is a good example of this – and what better place than the Sydney Opera House. We can think of no better place for comfortable white social commentators to stand upon a soap box in front of other white social commentators. The acoustics are magnificent – it’s almost like an echo chamber.
