Real news met satire on Wednesday when the Boston Globe playfully needled The Onion.
The light-hearted quarrel began when The Onion, which jokingly bills itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” ran a story under the headline “Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game Of ‘Big City.'” As always, the satirical newspaper’s story parodied hard news prose:
Boston residents once again hustled and bustled their way into the nation’s hearts this week as they continued playing their adorable little game of “Big City,” a live-action role-playing adventure in which Bostonians buzz about their daily routines in a delightful hubbub of excitement as if they lived in a major American metropolis,” the story read. “Inhabitants of real cities across the nation smiled in affectionate amusement as Bostonians put on their big-city clothes, swiped their Charlie cards for a ride on one of the MBTA’s trolley-like subway cars—charmingly called the “T”—and rushed downtown for ‘important’ business meetings at the John Hancock Building, the South Boston Innovation District, and other pretend centers of global industry and commerce.
Boston’s paper of record couldn’t resist a retort, as the Globe argued that The Onion’s characterization of the city’s transportation system proved that it was a fake publication:
In a big-city newspaper exclusive, The Boston Globe today uncovered evidence that The Onion, a website that claims to be “America’s Finest News Source,” is in fact not a legitimate news source, but a website full of satire and fake news.
The newspaper discovered the shocking truth after scouring a recent Onion article. The article is headlined “Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game of Big City.” The giveaway that the article was satire was the use of the word “charming” in the same sentence with the “T,” the city’s trolley and subway system. Bostonians use many words to describe the “T” and it’s fair to say, the Globe has learned, that “charming” is not one of them.
