Our Dumb Century

Our Dumb Century is a mock 20th-century retrospective by the writers of The Onion. It consists of fake front pages whose look and feel parodies that of each era of the century, with headlines and articles making fun of news stories throughout the century.

Tropes used in Our Dumb Century include:

• Antiquated Linguistics: Utilized quite profusely in the earlier parts of the book.
• Cluster F-Bomb: "Holy Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon"
• Complete Monster: "Horrible Asshole Richer Than Ever"
• Conspiracy Kitchen Sink / Who Shot JFK?: "Kennedy Slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons"
  • President shot 127 times from 43 different angles!
    • Then all 70+ suspects were shot outside the courtroom by Jack Ruby, leaving the whole thing a mystery.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Aristotle Onassis Killed by Lone Gunman in Athens Motorcade"
  • The entire Watergate scandal, which instead plays out like the Gary Tison prison break, up to and including Nixon being gunned down by police outside of a Motel (Spiro Agnew still at large).
• For the Evulz: Why Nagasaki was nuked, according to the article.
• Have a Gay Old Time: "Earth-Quake Marks Least Gay Day in San Francisco History"
• Real Dreams Are Weirder: "Martin Luther King: 'I Had a Really Weird Dream Last Night'"
• Running Gag: A number of major trials are referred to at the "Trial of the Century."
• Situational Sexuality: "Let's Work Together to Pretend Our War-Time Homosexual Experiences Never Happened"
• Worst News Judgment Ever: "Death of 500,000 Somalis Momentarily Distracts Nation From Dream Team Excitement"