I only just found out Stan Kelly made those cartoons for the onion. I'd assumed he was some chud that started off doing normal less explicitly satirical strips but really leaned into it after realizing people found it funny, but otherwise blissfully unaware who his audience had become.

Half of the humor was looking at one of his panels and debating whether it was actually satire or if :kelly: was just like that.

Rip to my childlike innocence

  • Asia_Set [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It goes deeper. "Stan Kelly" is a pen name, and the :kelly: image is just that name personified by the actual cartoonist named Ward Sutton, pictured in the header photo. I've heard that Sutton is a lib.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’ve heard that Sutton is a lib.

      :walter-breakdown:

    • macabrett
      ·
      2 years ago

      as much as the Onion hits, are you really surprised it's just a bunch of libs?

      • Asia_Set [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Also fair. Any media corp owner would probably just shutter their business if their unionized employees (afaik The Onion staff indeed is) started publishing non-recuperated promotion/praise of socialism

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            My take is that they had to take it down because they're supposed to be a satire site and there are many thousands of people that completely and totally agree with this.

          • Asia_Set [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I remember seeing this, but I definitely did not remember them saying that Chuck Schumer and Mike Bloomberg "must be eliminated" lmao

            Edit: on the other side of the coin with this, tonally they use a similar framing to Disney a al Killmonger in Black Panther when the weather presenter goes Kubrick Stare with a demon voice and a black background

    • WIIHAPPYFEW [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah but he’s lib in the way your uncle who used to drive you to the cool arcade ten miles away is, so it’s fine

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Ben Garrison's eventual decline into pandering for the chanlord nazis that called him "Zyklon Ben" can understandably make it hard to see :kelly: as satire.

  • MaxOS [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I had the same realization not long ago. It's not really apparent that it's tongue-in-cheek when you see it posted in the wild.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Don't worry, I fell for it too, for most of the time r/cth was a thing.