That is really sad. Is it dedicated to (about) anyone in particular?

The Onion puts out stories like that now and then. Of note, I recall this one story about a kid with failed kidneys who with his whole family prayed to God for a cure. God was very very moved, practically brought to tears... Even though he decided to answer "no" to the prayers.

Wow, they really don't censor their pictures.

Wow. For that's freaking brilliant. Truly. Writing funny is hard. Writing touching is hard. Writing so you don't know which way to turn as a reader - that's impossible. It is what it is, but I admire the craft. It takes a fine hand.

I still believe that the Onion's articles on the September 11th tragedies are some of the best pieces of writing I have ever read. It's a shame that you have to be a paying customer to go back through their archives to read past material.

*Edit* ....and I am wrong about having to be a paying customer to view old material. I remember at one point having to have a subscription to browse the archives. I guess they changed that at some point. Here are two of my favorite articles they did on September 11th.

A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullsh*t Again

God Angrily Clarifies "Do Not Kill" Rule

That may be my favorite article.

My comment was going to be on exactly the same lines as this one. I was moved by this article too.

Powerful. And Satire in the truest sense. It's not always funny.

This is one of my fave onion articles:

Life In The Navy Rocks Even Harder Than The Commercial Implied

Definitely not a piece for everyone.

No need to apologize. I edited my post because it didn't come out the way I wanted it to sound, but it must have been too late. I don't think any of the reactions here were off base. It was more a comment on the different perspective people would have on the story. As I said, if the story was in a different context that involved a different kind of tragedy, I probably would have had the same reaction as everyone else.

I think I chortled (and possibly guffawed) for at least five minutes over my Horoscope this week from The Onion:

Embarrassment will be yours this week when you're caught peeking over someone's shoulder during an important test. The fact that it's a urine test also won't help.

I'm happy for you that you got that redeeming meaning from the piece, but I have to say that I can't see where you got your interpretation either. If the author had wanted to remind fathers to spend more time with their kids, wouldn't the Daddy in the story have been characterized as not having spent very much time with his kids?

My complaint against the story, though, is above all for its utter failure to provide exactly the kind of meaning you seem to have gotten from it, so I suppose I should just retract my statement and move on. It still doesn't seem to me, though, that the author made the slightest effort to contextualize the suffering, so as to make it tragic rather than merely painful. As I said, it's an extraordinarily effective piece at what it does, but I would hope that if I wrote such a piece I'd realize that I shouldn't seek to publish it, because we want less pain in the world, rather than more. Perhaps what really made me angry was the way that pain was infliicted in this story through such young children.

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that it shouldn't be discussed! I don't know where that impression originated. Nor was I looking for a "moral," but rather a context.

Nor, most importantly, would I ever challenge the author's right to publish such a story.

But I do believe that a writer, on approaching such a subject, has a moral responsiblity to do more than wound. From my perspective, the relentless focalization of the story through the eyes of two young children served only to wound.

In my own struggle--and it has been a true struggle--with the piece, I have had to resort to imagining that the author was as a child in the same position as the children in the story, and that he or she wrote the piece to work through his or her own memories. With that context, I do better with the piece. I just wish it hadn't been published in a humor magazine, devoid of any such context as I've imagined for it.

I think that is where we disagree. To me, the portrayal of suffering, which is the best word I have for this, is not something that has to wound. You may be aware of the 'memento mori'-motif in literature - the reminder of the universal existence of death and tragedy. It serves the important purpose of setting life into perspective and is as such the origin of another motif - 'carpe diem'. Beadframe gives us an example for such a connection: He reads this horribly sad storty, and decides upon thinking about it to spend more time with his child. We will all perish - so let us use the time we are given.

The lack of context enhances this message to me. The author does not create a story by which to identify the concerned people as indivuals. He (or she) simply presents a universal facet of human existence.

I don't see the Onion as a humor magazine. I see it as a sairical magazine. They have continuuously published extraordinarily bitter articles on the political landscape and more mundane parts of human life, which is something I value highly. Sure they do publish a lot of humor, but the inclusion of material that elicits other emotions keeps the magazine from becoming shallow.