It was announced last month that as a cost-saving measure, The Onion would be packing up its NYC offices, where all the funnies are written, and moved to Chicago, where ad sales and The AV Club live. Based on this new missive from “publisher emeritus†T. Herman Zweibel, the writers aren’t too pleased with the decision. Unless this isn’t the thinly veiled shot across the bow that it obviously appears to be:
Disturbing reports have been reaching my bronze ear-horn over the past few weeks concerning the goings-on at the many Eastern sea-board offices of The Onion news-paper. Evidently, if accounts from my disgustingly subservient dogsbodies in management are to be believed, the constant rustle of news-print and scratch of fountain-pen nibs has been punctuated by the murmur of pleasant conversation and, in many cases, outright laughter among staffers. It seems the foul cancer known to some pansy-sniffing modern types as High Morale has taken root at the very paper I killed six men to establish, despite my undertaking every effort to ensure the opposite!Of course, the very day I heard of this newfound†sense of well-being among my sniveling so-called staff, I summoned my solicitor, Beavers, to my bed-chamber and announced that, to cut costs, this mutinous news-paper—for as any successful business-man will tell you, happiness among the employees is no less than mutiny—will be moving all its operations to the Yukon. Naturally, it was required I reassure Beavers we actually have plenty of money—our coffers are swollen as ticks, making them too expensive to move; no, they shall stay here with me—and that I merely wished to restore the proper order of things. I instructed him to give Dec. 25, which I thought an easily remembered date, as the time by which everyone will be expected to report to the new offices. Other≠wise, of course, they will lose their jobs!
And it continues from there, filled with both anger and hilariously outdated words. Stay strong, Onion crew!