Judge Joe Brown overruled Judge Hatchett in The Onion 20 years ago

Plus, mid-2000s tropes like Camp Snoopy, "Napoleon Dynamite," stem cells, early "green" products and the "Van Helsing" franchise.

Welcome back to The Onion: 20 Years Later, where we review the print issue from 20 years ago, find out what’s still funny and examine the cultural impact. Today, we revisit June 1, 2005.

This week’s top story is set near Minneapolis, where I spent the summer of 2005. This is a nostalgic moment for me, but there are also a lot of funny jokes. Let’s dig in.

ICYMI:

• The Onion’s homepage has added a “newswire” with random one-liners — including long-lost print jokes we’ve covered in this newsletter. Examples include “Some Lady Weeping In Dairy Aisle” and “TV Muted While Neighbors Fight” from October 2003 and January 2001, respectively.

• I shared some of my favorite advertisements from the May 25, 2005, issue.

If you’re new here, welcome! I invite you to sign up below. We publish most Sundays. View the archives here.

What issue is this?

This was Vol. 41, Issue 22, the 244th new Onion issue of the 2000s. Here’s what the website looked like in 2005 and today. Today’s version is missing numerous links. The 2015 issue page has no archive, although it probably looked like this August 2014 version.

The front-page image is courtesy of former Onion Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers. Check out his Substack and his latest book.¹

The excellent front-page headlines “Realtor Beaten With Exposed Brick” and “Dog Ruins Bathtub Gin” are no longer online. I wish the dog headline had a photo.

As we saw last week, The Onion’s 2005 webpage included promos for the Onion Radio Network and an “Onion Lifestyle Guide” that links to a few old stories.

What was the top story, and other impressions?

Camp Snoopy, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (inset) confirmed is one of the domestic military bases slated for closure.

The 1st time I ever saw The Onion in print was June 2005, shortly after arriving in Minneapolis for a summer internship at the Star Tribune newspaper.²

I had an incredible summer in the Twin Cities, even if I didn’t visit Camp Snoopy, the “Peanuts”-themed park inside the Mall of America.

However, you don’t need a Minnesota connection to enjoy “Pentagon Announces Plans To Close Camp Snoopy.” This is The Onion at its best — combining 2 separate pieces of real-life news to create a more fun, more absurd alternate reality. Those events are:

• On Jan. 6, 2005, Camp Snoopy operator Cedar Fair³ announced that Mall of America was taking over park management, effective March 2005. The mall failed to strike a deal on licensing the “Peanuts” characters, so the park was rebranded in January 2006.

• On May 13, 2005, the Pentagon released a report recommending the closure of 22 bases.

The Onion adds Camp Snoopy to the list, quoting the real-life leader of the base-closing commission:

“We never enjoy having to close a base,” said Anthony Principi, chairman of the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission. “But Camp Snoopy is a relic of America’s Cold War past. Everything in the facility—from the Petting Zoo to the Extreme Trampoline to the Pepsi Ripsaw Roller Coaster—was conceived at a time when America’s primary military threat was the Soviet Union. After careful evaluation, we determined that the only thing Camp Snoopy was enabling our soldiers to fight was boredom.”

The article mocks the Pentagon for wasteful spending, with Cedar Fair allegedly “charging Camp Snoopy $479 per case of Thirsty Linus FunCups.”

Also, a fictional general notes that “not a single member of the forward-line units operating in Iraq and Afghanistan trained at Camp Snoopy.”

Camp Snoopy characters outfitted with signs protesting the closure.

I like how The Onion uses Camp Snoopy to illustrate the crisis through photos, while the text is mostly an Associated Press story about military budget cuts.

That said, we get quotes from Craig Freeman, real-life general manager of Camp Snoopy, and employees who face transfers:⁴

“I heard a rumor that I’m going to be shipped out to the Lego Imagination Center,” Coordinating Concessions Manager Steve Voorhies said. “I’m still in shock. I had a distinguished food-service record here—a record I could be proud of—and now some desk jockey at the Pentagon sends me to the mall’s South Avenue quadrant? It’s bullshit.”

I feel spoiled reading Onion pieces like this — they make complex satire look easy.

The Onion checks in on politics

Besides the Pentagon parody, there were 2 other political jokes:

• “U.S. Intensifies Empty-Threat Campaign Against North Korea” mocks the Bush administration but could also apply to most U.S. presidents over the past 30+ years.

• “The Stem-Cell Bill”: The Onion asks people about the House passing a bill to lift restrictions on stem-cell research.⁵ Some responses are cut off in today’s link, but you can view them on the 2005 archive. My favorite response:

"The Democrats want stem-cell research so they can cure multiple sclerosis. The GOP wants it so they can grow an army of zombies. So Bush is in a tough spot politically."

Wesley Wilkes • Fry Cook

The Onion highlights TV judges

Brown overturns an April decision made by Hatchett (right).

I love the idea of “Judge Hatchett Ruling Overturned By Judge Joe Brown.” After all, these TV court shows operated like the Supreme Court, answerable to no one while parading as weird morality plays.

I love how The Onion organizes the TV court system by Nielsen ratings:

• The bottom rung includes Hatchett’s show, “Divorce Court” and “Texas Justice.”

• Brown is part of the Syndicated-Television Courts of Appeals.

• “Judge Judy” is the highest TV court in the land and “will only hear cases that appellate TV judges have determined raise questions of importance to a network audience.”

Hatchett ordered a hair salon proprietor to pay $2,000 in damages to a client, as a simple dye job allegedly caused hair loss.

In overturning the verdict, Brown admits that he and Hatchett have different TV personalities:

“It is my feeling that Judge Hatchett failed to adequately explore the facts in the case of Hair Dye Gone Awry,” Brown said from his studio chambers. “I do not always agree with Hatchett’s common-sense approach to the law. She is a well-respected TV-court judge, but she always seems to side with the nicer person. That’s not how our televised legal system is supposed to work.”

Again, The Onion’s strength is the level of detail. They examine the case at length, interview legal experts and even invent fictional commentary (a TV show called “The Yale Law Review Round Table” and a legal column in Entertainment Weekly).

My only concern 20 years later is whether younger people would understand how big TV court shows were in American culture. Judge Judy is still around, so maybe they are familiar with her?

Area People doing Area Things

The museum's B wing.

“Local Self-Storage Facility A Museum Of Personal Failure” could have been a generic joke about hoarders. But The Onion takes the “museum” metaphor literally, as you can see in the caption above.

The article opens like a tourism bureau’s pitch:

CHICAGO—Located in the Bucktown neighborhood, American Mini-Storage is one of Chicago’s best-kept secrets, but don’t expect it to stay that way for long. The self-storage facility houses what is arguably the nation’s most impressive collection of personal items accumulated during periods of failure.

The Pete Tunney gallery features an impressive number of dust-covered musical instruments.

There’s a laundry list of random American-bought crap in these storage units, including:

• “The largest collection of NordicTracks in North America”

• “Unfinished model cars and airplanes, aquariums and Habitrails”

• “Half-restored antique chests of drawers”

• “A sixth-place intramural-tennis trophy”

This should be a sad tale, but it’s funny because we’re laughing at human nature, not merely these individuals.

“Oh, this is interesting,” added Garcia, gesturing to 14 small boxes. “This is one of our most recent acquisitions. The boxes contain 495 copies of the first CD by a musician called Moldy Dick. All but three CDs are still in their shrink-wrap, and the three unwrapped ones were actually signed by the artist. It’s heart-wrenching.”

The most cutting joke is at the very end, where storage-center employee Carlos Garcia proudly credits gentrification for propping up the business.

Zehme and Rafelson share a close moment.

The headline and photo for “Date Disastrously Bypasses Physical Intimacy, Goes Straight To Emotional Intimacy” are excellent in themselves.

The article is told in reverse: We start with Mike Rafelson saying goodbye to Jill Zehme on the morning after. The rest of the article is Rafelson telling his roommates — and, presumably, an Onion reporter — what happened.

Our lovebirds are introduced at the real-life Schoolkids Records in Raleigh, N.C.:⁶

Rafelson said he “finally made a move” and asked Zehme about the album she was holding, Talking Heads: 77. In the 20-minute discussion that followed, Zehme not only told Rafelson how important the album had been to her during a troubling time in her adolescence, but that she worked at a local coffeehouse.

The date goes well at first, as they go to a concert, get pizza, and open a bottle of wine back at his place. But somehow, that leads to Zehme discussing “my parents’ traumatic divorce, my brother’s drug problem, and my best friend’s attempted suicide.”

The Onion, per usual, asks an expert to diagnosis the problem:

Two and a half hours later, the couple was firmly in the area that couples therapist Gus French described as “that awful horse latitude of male-female relations, the Sargasso Sea⁷ of non-sexual pair-bonding known to unhappy males the world over as ’the friend zone.’”

Other Area People jokes include:

• “Atari Releases Updated Adventure Video Game”: I like the Photoshopping even though I was born 3 years after the game came out.

• “CEO Sad Nobody Noticed New Tie”: I love the look on this guy’s face.

• “Entire Napoleon Dynamite Plot Pieced Together Through Friends' Quotes”: I’m pretty sure I also knew the plot 20 years ago by osmosis. Haven’t seen it.

• “Description Of Hot-Dog Ingredients Fails To Ruin Picnic”: A scold fails to shame his friends!

• “Area Man Looking For Whatever The Hell Is Beeping”: This sounds maddening.

• “Local Pet Store Sells Living Things To Just Anyone Off The Street”: This is firmly in the genre of “Have you ever stopped to think about how …?” jokes.

Were the infographics good?

“Green Products” holds up today because eco-friendly products have become a massive retail category.

This infographic captures the newness of the trend, including skepticism about product efficacy, as seen in “Nature's Kiss, the earth-friendly, ineffective oven cleaner.”

I also like “Sheetwood, the environmentally friendly, renewable sheetrock substitute,” an unsurprising Onion critique of the money-grabbing elements of this green movement.

“Top Luxury-Resort Activities” feels redundant, as it published just 2 weeks after “Popular New Cruise-Ship Destinations.”

That said, I like the jokes, especially “Telling everyone you don't usually do this kind of thing.”

What columnists ran?

There are many ways to tell someone that their child has died. Then there’s “If It's Any Consolation, Your Daughter Probably Died Almost Immediately Of Sheer Terror,” in which Tulsa Detective Cosloy presents a badly damaged corpse to grief-stricken parents:

Yes, I’m terribly sorry. The facial structure was lost some due to repeated maceration with a hot iron, and the facial tissue has been… we’re interrogating a butterfly-pinner employed at the university. You’re certain this is Nan Frauenfelder? I’m so sorry for your loss. If it is any consolation, you should know that your daughter almost certainly died of excruciating terror well before this happened.

Like many Onion bits, this column repeats the initial joke over and over, and in increasingly horrifying detail. There’s a reference to “her remaining buttock,” for example. Be warned: It’s not the most pleasant read!

Our other column is “This Script Practically Writes, Directs, And Universally Pans Itself,” about “Van Helsing Reborn,” a fictional sequel to the 2004 film.

In short, this column satirizes Hollywood’s love of existing IP and sequels over telling new stories.

Our columnist wants Van Helsing to encounter all sorts of unrelated characters, including this version of Universal’s ill-fated 2010s “Dark Universe”:

In the first one, Van Helsing went up against who again? The Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula? Okay, so we have a perfect opportunity to exploit some old movie-monster properties! Slap in a couple, and the picture’s half done. Think about it: Van Helsing meets the Invisible Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Why come up with new monsters? People love the classics!

This column exists in an era where renowned directors or screenwriters rarely participated in what are essentially comic-book movies. The MCU has changed that, for sure. But the MCU’s success has also reinforced Hollywood’s penchant for following the pack — suddenly, every studio needed to mine its IP for a “universe.”⁸

The Onion also rips into Hollywood’s surface-thin approach to diversity, with our columnist excited to take the Black Lagoon and “black him up” — with the perk of upsetting the NAACP and The New Yorker, among others.

That said, the line that unexpectedly made me laugh in the most dated one:

A film so predictable, we could produce it with our Blackberries turned off.

What was the best horoscope?

My favorite horoscope this week is Gemini:

Gemini: (May 21—June 21)
You've already been subjected to scorn and derision. With hot summer weather coming, you can now add extreme physical discomfort to the things you will endure when sporting that long black velvet cape.

Once again, the horoscopes don’t display correctly on today’s website. The 2005 archive has a better view.

What holds up best?

I love this issue — the Camp Snoopy, Judge Joe Brown and “Napoleon Dynamite” jokes all feel timeless, but that’s probably because I was 21 years old at the time!

I guess the most relevant joke today is “Date Disastrously Bypasses Physical Intimacy, Goes Straight To Emotional Intimacy,” given that Americans increasingly hate dating but love therapy.

What holds up worst?

As I’ve discussed, The Onion had it out for Christopher Reeve, who could be a jerk but didn’t deserve his fate. The “What Do You Think?” includes this response:

"Hey, if it weren't for scientific research, Christopher Reeve would've died on that polo field and none of this would even be an issue in the first place."

Gary Schneider • Systems Analyst

What would be done differently today?

I’m sure The Onion could reconfigure “Entire Napoleon Dynamite Plot Pieced Together Through Friends' Quotes” for something modern. Probably a reality show like “Vanderpump Rules” or “Love Is Blind.”

Memes existed in 2005, but they weren’t mainstream. The internet itself was arguably not mainstream yet! The Onion couldn’t have imagined, 20 years later, a reporter asking the U.S. president about the “TACO” meme with a straight face.

Meanwhile, this week’s “Novelty Car Horn Playing ‘La Cucaracha’ Sends Stephen Miller Into Dissociative Fugue State” shows The Onion staff combining the old absurdism with today’s focus on topical and/or political minutia.

Thank you

Thank you for being here! Please keep liking and sharing the newsletter, leaving comments and emailing me — it’s a big help.

1. I may get commissions for purchases made through book links in this post, including this one.

2. The Onion expanded to Minneapolis in September 2004.

3. The park was known from 1992-2005 as Knott’s Camp Snoopy, as it was originally operated by Knott’s Berry Farm, which Cedar Fair bought. Today, Cedar Fair is owned by Six Flags.

4. The Onion also mentioned Camp Snoopy in 2002’s “Mall Of Central America Looted On Opening Day,” which I criticized, and in 2015’s “Follow Me If You Want To See The Real Knott’s Berry Farm.”

5. President George W. Bush eventually vetoed this bill.

6. The now-closed Athens, Ga., location was mentioned in 2002’s “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.”

7. I had to Google “Sargasso Sea.”

8. Hollywood has been a copycat culture for decades. My favorite example is 1940, which saw the release of “Too Many Husbands” and “My Favorite Wife.” Both movies feature a spouse believed dead for 7 years who reappears just as the survivor is about to remarry. More recent examples include “Volcano”/”Dante’s Peak” (1997), “Deep Impact”/" Armageddon” (1998), and “Friends with Benefits”/" No Strings Attached” (2011).