What Is This Thing Called Wonket? Is It Mean, Funny, Fake, Or Just 'Different'? A Guide For Brad

Remain calm. Everything is norbal.

Yr Editrix received a very important email yesterday from a gent named "Brad," and upon reading it knew it needed immediate attention. Not from her, of course; she is a very busy person. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here! First, theTranyaemail:

I do not know as I just found your site 15 minutes ago, is it supposed to be funny, mean or just what. Honestly I found some of it funny, some mean and some just different and I have enjoyed that. Sadly, I am not sure if this is a site I want to stay with, perhaps you could give me a good idea of where and what would be good in your archives to look at. I think you know there is enough worth looking at, fake or whatever, going to look around longer, thanks. Brad

Brad [Redacted]

Office Assistant

Brad, we would just like to thank you for your inquiry and let you know your eyeballs are very important to our ad revenue, but even more, that the efficient delivery of high-quality political and cultural humor product to our consumers is very important to us. We will do our best to answer your questions, and hope that you too will become a member of the Wonkette Community. We would also ask our regular readers to please stop chanting "Robble Robble, One Of Us!" while we talk to the new guy. Thanks, this should only take a moment.

Is It Supposed To Be Funny?

We'd like to think so! It's definitely what we aim for in most stories, where we take some item in the news and then subject it to the "Wonkette Treatment," which is to briefly relate the basics of the news item whilst simultaneously making amusing commentary about said news item. This is a popular method of Info-Tainment that you may have experienced in such news-comedy programs as "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," "Last Week Tonight,"   and any CNN program featuring Don Lemon. Your chuckles per pageview may vary. And sometimes, we write about things that are not very funny at all; in these cases, we may engage in what is known as "gallows" or "dark" humor, wherein one makes jokes as a means of dealing with the complete horror of the situation. Examples might include mass shootings, police shootings of unarmed people, and cabinet appointments by Donald Trump. 

Is It Supposed to be Mean?

Quite often it is! Sometimes it isn't! We actually have some loose rules about how mean comments can be, and we try to follow those in stories. You will probably decide for yourself if you think it's too mean or not. We are big fans of this guide to targets of satire by the irreplaceable Molly Ivins:  

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity — like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule — that’s what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/pork-chop-a-florida-gentleman"></a>[/wonkbar]We'll confess we don't only make jokes aimed at the very powerful, though. Sometimes we just mock everyday bullies, like this one Florida Man who tried to bury his boss with a front-end loader, and was pretty awful.

Is Wonkette One Of Those 'Fake News' Sites I've Been Hearing About?

We take real news and then make fun of it. All of the news we cover at Wonkette is real, as far as we can tell. Once in a while we get fooled by a hoax ourselves or we get a detail wrong, but we're very serious about correcting our mistakes, so we'll run a retraction, update, or clarification. We will occasionally add fake details to a story for laffs, but we try to make those so outrageous that they're obvious jokes, like when we refer to Mitt Romney's needing to have his empathy chip adjusted, or when we pretend Donald Trump said something intelligible in standard English. Unlike The Onion, which we love, we do not make up stories that are completely fictitious.

Do You Indulge In 'Inside Jokes?'

 All of them, Katie. 

(Did you know Sarah Palin didn't actually say "All of them, Katie"? It's like "Beam me up, Scotty" or Play it Again, Sam" that way.)

Is There Some Kind Of Guide To Those Inside Jokes?

We thought our intern, Dominic, was working on that. We should probably check. We think we explained a few of them here, also too. (Also too, we say "also too" a lot, which is A Inside Joke, as is saying "A" instead of "an"! Our inside jokes run DEEP, man.)

What Are Some Good Stories From Your Archives?

If you're interested in finding stories on a specific topic, you can try our search button: click the little magnifying glass icon up in the right-hand corner of the black bar under the site name:

You can also do a Google search for a topic like this: "topicsite: wonkette.com" -- for instance, Peggy Noonan site: wonkette.com 

As for some of our favorite stories, we bet the comments ( which are not allowed ) to this piece will suggest some. Yr Doktor Zoom is fond of these three:

1. That Time Sen. Chuck Grassley Tweeted About Dead Deer 

2. That time we imagined Fox News coverage of D-Day 

3. The one with the Exploding Foamy Pig Poops 

Evan Hurst is pretty big on these two -- the first one may actually have helped lead to the shame-filled resignation of an actual Congressman:

1:  Aaron Schock Spending Tax Moneys On Hot Male Personal Photographer. Totally Normal. 

2:  Harlot Kentucky Clerk To Be Sentenced By Pontius Pilate Thursday 

Rebecca Schoenkopf, Yr Editrix, isn't in this afternoon, so we will have to ask her to add hers later! We bet they might include her neat story about Oklahoma Democrats and possibly, for the sake of sheer notoriety, the one about her pregnancy hemorrhoids. But darned if we know. If we guessed wrong, she'll probably fire us, like she does three times a day.

What's the Deal With The My Little Pony Pictures?

It started ironically, we swear.

What Advice Do You Have For An Office Assistant?

Read Wonkette as much as you can. Your work is probably meaningless, unless you find it deeply enriching, in which case good for you! That, or you are living a lie (choose one). The commenters here, who are not allowed, are the best, a genuine community, albeit a rather loopy one that's prone to Catch-22 jokes and rampant political nerdery. Hang around long enough and you may learn why canned clams are an abomination.