Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

I could not believe what i read on the Coachella Valley's hiking blog.
Someone wants to make a movie out of the plight of missing hikers
http://www.deserthiker.typepad.com/ Scroll down to April 7
You can google Plight of missing hikers or see a video
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/p ... ikers_will

It may be significant that The Onion is a satirical newspaper and everything in it is a joke. The challenge for them is to keep ahead of the real world, which often behaves in ways that are stranger than any satirist's creations.

I appreciate The Onion's irreverent humor and read its fictional headlines every day looking for something to make me laugh. I giggle at about 20% of stories, but I put the story about missing hikers in the disgusting (or too close to home) category. Setting aside my revulsion for this morbid story, in my own family, whenever we face tragedy, we do the same as The Onion newscasters did in this story: we break the tension by pretending that our situation will be made into a movie, and we cast the movie. Most often my part is played by Tom Hanks. In The Onion's fictional story, the newscasters used words such as young, attractive, handsome, and fit to describe the lost hikers as they cast a possible made-for-TV movie. The newscasters hoped also for action scenes with wild animals and romantic subplots (although the mentioned "kissing under a waterfall" scene did not fit with the snowy mountain SAR image in the video, unless it were to be a flashback). Overall, IMHO, this story was in bad taste, and if I were king, I would have spiked it.

I think it's a parody that is making a point: that the media appeals to viewers' desire to see pain and suffering, emphasis on looks and romantic drama, and that those types of stories make money. So I think it's pointing out the lack of respect for people in unfortunate situations and how news is sensational rather than informational. The comment at the end was completely ridiculous. The reporter hoped at least one person would die, so the storyline wouldn't be too predictable. My interpretation is that the Onion video was really pointing out the callous nature of the media business.

You mean ... this wasn't real? Rats. I was hoping they would cast Scarlett Johanson in the waterfall kissing scene ... oops! I can't say that anymore; I'm married.

OMG Cy, thank you for posting this. I love the Onion and often find them very funny, but their videos are gettng so close to the edge of very, very bad taste that they're too uncomfortable to laugh at anymore. On the other hand, this makes them even more powerful as a critique of our corporate, commercially driven media, which will take any tragedy and use it for cold hard cash. Sadly, this Onion video is only too close to the truth of real news coverage, as Perry points out.