‘The Onion’ Issues Apology To Quvenzhané Wallis For Calling Her The ‘C-Word’

There’s objective journalism, and then there’s stating the obvious truth. When The Onion, a satirical news site called 9-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis in a tweet that has since been deleted, it sparked mass outrage.

Now, seemingly unable to take the heat for tweeting such a disgraceful statement to a little girl, The Onion, namely the CEO Steve Hannah, has issued an apology to Wallis in the form of a letter via the site’s Facebook.

In part of the letter Hannah noted that calling Wallis the C word was, “crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.”

While the apology to little Quvenzhané Wallis is a welcomed one, the tweet, whether it’s deleted or not won’t be erased from the internet any time soon. Although The Onion is known for having biting comments and to cause some controversy, the site pushed it too far for some journalists, who might have took the publication with a grain of salt until now.

As a whole calling Quvenzhané the C-word seemed to rub that grain of salt in a huge open wound opened by Oscar host Seth MacFarlane. The host made a few jokes at Wallis’ expense throughout the ceremony, though Wallis seemed to be a good sport, with fists pumped, if it didn’t completely go over her head.

Keith Olbermann wrote about the incident, begging for a retractment:

“Half-heard story of @TheOnion tweet; assumed I heard wrong. No; they DID wrong. Retract, apologize, dismiss.”

While The Wire’s star Wendell Pierce wrote:

“It doesn’t matter what the intent was, it was offensive and they should apologize to Quvenzhane.”

And what about those people who also base their news of satirical humor? Well, it didn’t look like The Onion would be backed up by anyone from that corner. The Daily Show’s co-create Lizz Winstead tweeted this:

9-year olds are always so into irony.#AndAlwaysAppreciateIt #Edgy #Fail @theonion

— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) February 25, 2013

Do you think it’s a little too late for The Onion to apologize? Do you think it will be accepted?