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Onion headline from 1993: Roy The Forklift Driver addresses nation

Mark Frauenfelder at 2:00 pm Thu, Oct 30, 2008

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The May 29, 1993 edition of The Onion has a preposterous fake story about a character named Roy the Forklift driver becoming a media darling of the conservative movement.

"Nation Eagerly awaits Ohio Man's Profound Insights into Current Events."

As if!

Roy the Forklift Driver

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • Paul Coleman

    OK…That’s freaky. Not because of the content. Onion backdated stories are awesome.

    The picture of Joe looks exactly like my cousin David who is from Ohio, and who has probably driven a forklift in one of his many careers. He was once almost killed by a bowling pin setter…but that’s another story.

  • Mojave

    Wow…between this and the Batman/Penguin debate…I don’t know. It’s like there’s been a rip in the fabric of spacetime continuum or something.

    #18 you don’t know how right you are about Limbaugh and his trip’s to the LBFM’s in the Dominican Republic. Let’s just say I know someone who knows someone.

  • findlayboy

    No one cares what regular people think about politics!

    Unless Errol Morris films them talking about why they’re voting for Obama. That’s cool, obviously.

    But the rest of those regular people? Ignorant hicks.

  • pauldrye

    There was a parody commercial in the first years of Saturday Night Live for a three-blade shaving razor, after the two-blade razor was introduced. Then they did essentially the same sketch again about 20 years later, but found it necessary for some reason to up the number to 12 blades. Hmmm.

  • Shawn Wolfe

    Wow.

  • Cool Products

    That is really bizarre, Joe the plummer and Roy the forklift driver should hang out, haha. God I love the Onion.

  • dbarak

    What’s really surprising is that Flush Limbaugh is still alive.

  • Micah

    This may be a backdated piece and not a scan of an actual Onion issue from 1993, but the Wayback Machine shows that it was posted at least two years ago:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20060919170436/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48941

    So, yes. Life imitates art. Again.

  • macegr

    @DBARAK: Why is that amazing? Billions of other people are alive too. It’s rather common.

  • Teller

    The most consistently funny writing in writing. Bless the O.

  • freshyill

    @Micah… All of these those old pages are from the Onion book, “Our Dumb Century”

    I think the original paperback is out of print, but this looks like a hardcover reprint http://www.amazon.com/Our-Dumb-Century-Presents-Headlines/dp/0307393577/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225403496&sr=8-1

  • dbarak

    #6 posted by macegr

    His drug abuse and obesity.

  • Chas44

    “His drug abuse and obesity.”

    Great research there, slick.

  • dbarak

    #6 posted by macegr and #11 posted by Chas44, give it a rest.

  • Takuan

    what’s the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?

    • Antinous

      I can’t go to the Hindenburg to borrow a cup of vicodin?

  • Crunchbird

    But, I think the Joe Plumber wasn’t applauded for his “insights” as much as how Obama reacts to difficult questions from anyone who dares ask them: using State PCs to rummage in his financial background, Biden ridiculing him on Letterman, or banning small TV stations from future interviews. It don’t look very good.

    Did you actually watch the tape? Obama reacted to this “difficult” question by talking to Joe for a couple of minutes and trying to rationally explain his justification for progressive income tax rates, something supported by many politicians on both sides of the aisle. Joe, having already unleashed his one “gotcha,” didn’t actually seem very interested in Obama’s response to his question.

    None of the things you cite as “reactions” are things that Obama did. It was John McCain and the Republican party who started holding up Joe as some sort of paragon and pulled him into the public eye before the 3rd debate, and John McCain who mentioned him twenty times in that debate. It’s the Republicans who decided that Joe the Plumber was someone they could hang a huge portion of their campaign on, and for them to complain about the fact that the media decided to actually take a look at Joe to see what he was all about is utterly ridiculous.

  • elisd

    @13 Well… they are both huge explosive fascist gas bags. I don’t really see a difference.

  • dbarak

    I dunno’ Takuan, what’s the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?

  • seyo

    Wait, let me guess… The Hindenburg doesn’t go on vacation in the Dominican Republic for Viagra fueled sex tourism trips?

  • dbarak

    AHAH! I think I figured it out. The Hindenburg had a rigid spine, right?

  • Teller

    One elicited: “Oh, the humanity.”
    The other: “Blow Sean Hannity.”

  • dbarak

    #20 posted by Teller:

    BEST ONE YET!!!

  • Takuan

    #20 wins, but: “one’s a flaming nazi gas bag and the other is a zeppelin”

  • mdh

    “what’s the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?”

    My grandchildren will have heard of the Hindenburg.

  • Takuan

    oooh! new contender!

  • Anonymous

    I love the fact that the stock photo they used was the same one they used for this piece (NSFW), except that it’s mirrored left to right and the background’s been clipped out of the latter story.

  • ethancoop

    #22 “one’s a flaming nazi gas bag and the other is a zeppelin”

    I just peed myself.

  • oscar

    If you squint and read the article, it’s not exactly the uncanny prediction it’s being made out to be, since this guy’s “address” is of the call-in variety, like any other (stupid) listener of the show.

    It reminds me more of “Crazy Man Announces Plan to Stand in Doorway, Yell at Cars All Day” or “Local Idiot to Post Comment on Internet” they published recently:

    http://www.theonion.com/content/news/local_idiot_to_post_comment_on

  • Anonymous

    to #25

    I thought the same thing. “Why Do All These Homosexuals…” is the funniest thing I have ever read in the Onion.

  • bwcbwc

    Proving once again that there is no such thing as fiction. Anything that an observer can imagine happening, will happen somewhere in the multiverse.

  • Falcon_Seven

    Those of you who may still have remembrance of the 1980 Presidential election will remember this headline from the ‘Village Voice’:
    “Bozo Mania: Millions in Despair as Fools Vie for Office.”
    I wish that they had that front page in their archive.

  • Takuan

    good,I want to live in one where he meets the gallows for calling global warming a con game.

  • reginald

    “Well, you’re all Roy the Forklift Driver, so all of you stand up!”

  • hobomike

    So now we know that the Republicans are using old issues of the Onion to plan their campaign. I’d expect it to be funnier though.