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Joking About Shaken Babies: Too Much?
I’ll admit that when I saw the Onoin News Network video for the “BabySafe Ball” (“New BabySafe Ball Makes Shaking Your Infant Guilt and Injury Free!”) I wasn’t sure it was funny. I’m still not.
It felt like it wanted to be, in good old outrageous, offensive Onion style, but I think the problem was it didn’t have a good target to make fun of. Caregivers who get to the point of wanting to shake their babies? That’s all of us at some point. Not much of a point to make. People who actually do? Not so funny. Over-the-top baby safety devices? It’s an area ripe for satire, but this doesn’t quite hit home—usually those are protecting kids from something not all that likely or dangerous, not encouraging you to do something awful by making it supposedly safe.
And, I’ll say it, even the couple-second clip of actual crying baby being put into the ball, even though it was just like a car seat, felt like a hit below the belt to my parent brain.
Now, does that mean I’m outraged and wanting to stop reading the Onion? Of course not. If they’re not off base sometimes they’re not trying hard enough.
What do you think? Relief for parents who feel bad about the thought crossing their brains? Tacky? Ought to be taken down?
New BabySafe Ball Makes Shaking Your Infant Guilt And Injury Free
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7 Comments
[...] son), Dougherty isn’t real. She’s a fictional creation of The Onion. Their satire often goes too far, but this time they got it just right. Dougherty discusses possible schemes for her son’s [...]
Mom Takes School Shopping to a Whole New Level | Strollerderby commented on Aug 20 09 at 1:06 pm[...] About Shaken Babies: Too Much? | Strollerderby Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | Author: A nice web master placed an interesting blog post on Joking About Shaken Babies: Too Much? | [...]
Joking About Shaken Babies: Too Much? | Strollerderby | Baby Stork Central commented on Oct 06 09 at 12:28 pmMelissa commented on Jun 24 09 at 11:20 amno i think it was funny. they are obviously not advocating child abuse.
GP commented on Jun 24 09 at 12:26 pmI stopped reading The Onion around the time I turned 30…bah.
Not funny.
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Jun 24 09 at 2:55 pmThe Onion is pretty hilarious most of the time, but this one wasn’t funny. I guess there are just too many cases of actual infant abuse for me to find it amusing.
Emma VT commented on Jun 24 09 at 3:49 pmIt was not their best bit, but not the worst, either. It would cause great pain to someone who had actually experienced a shaken baby situation, but I am not sure that is reason enough to avoid a topic on a satire site. In a backhanded way, it enforces the idea that shaking a baby is NOT OK, and maybe gets to certain segments of the population that don’t get the message otherwise, or opens the topic up for discussion.
Knitty commented on Jun 25 09 at 9:37 amI agree GP, I stopped reading it years ago. I don’t find their stuff funny, or offensive… just annoying.
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