Ho, Ho, Ho! 9/11 Was An Inside Job! … Seasons greeting from your old friend Santa! My, my, Christmas is just two short weeks away, and everyone here at the North Pole can't wait to deliver presents to all you nice boys and girls this year. Yes, Jolly ol' St. Nicholas hopes you're all being as good as can be! But today, Santa would like to tell you all about something very naughty, something very, very naughty indeed. Dear children, have you not heard? Why, 9/11 was an inside job! Oh, ho, ho, my, yes it was! – The Onion

Dominant Social Theme: Let's forget about 9/11. It's been resolved.

Free-Market Analysis: Holy Batman! The satirical Onion website has just posted an editorial entitled, "Ho, Ho, Ho! 9/11 Was An Inside Job!"

We are very surprised to see this sort of article at the Onion, as we long ago gave up on this website as a site that was as predictable as it was unfunny.

Maybe it was a mistake? But, no … the editorial is featured on the top righthand side, the most important place.

Weird, eh? Is this the advent of a new Onion? Will this version actually aspire to be Lenny Bruce rather than Gomer Pyle?

Humor, especially in increasingly authoritarian times, often needs to be edgy to be truly good. Often we have found the Onion to be dull rather than innovative.

Hey, a lot of people like the site. And since we haven't read it regularly, perhaps we're being too harsh. Certainly, this editorial by "Santa" is one for the records. It's biting, subversive and strangely concise. Here's some more:

I mean, look at the facts, boys and girls! We already know the Bush administration was itching to go to war in Iraq, now, don't we? Yes, indeed we do, my darling ones! The Downing Street memo proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Then you look at the Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, the one headlined "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Ignored! Why, children, they threw that briefing aside like used wrapping paper on Christmas morning, didn't they?

And remember, sweet little ones, Bin Laden never claimed responsibility for the attacks until 2004. Do you know how many years that is, boys and girls? Something was up the government's sleeve, and I'll let you in on a little secret: It wasn't sugar plums, oh, no! No, it was the ties between the bin Laden and Bush families. They've been under the mistletoe for decades, if you catch your old pal Kris Kringle's meaning! I've checked my list twice, and it seems Arbusto Energy, a Bush business, had financial connections to Salem bin Laden, half-brother of Osama. The CIA actually helped create and fund al-Qaeda right around the time Bush Senior was the agency's director—ho, ho, ho, ol' H.W. stuffed their pockets as fat as a Christmas goose!

Now, as for the towers themselves: The type of steel they used melts at a temperature of about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and as I'm sure all you smart little boys and girls know, jet fuel burns at 1,500 degrees, tops. My darlings, you'd need quite a Yule log to create that extra 1,200 degrees, wouldn't you? Oh, what a glorious sight it would be!

Of course, you do know what they found in the Ground Zero debris, don't you? Would you like St. Nicholas to tell you? Well, then, hop up on his lap and I'll whisper it in your ear: traces of nano-thermite. Does that jingle any bells upstairs? Nano-thermite is an explosive compound, children, capable of making the biggest Christmas cracker you ever saw! So what in the name of Donner and Blitzen was it doing in the world's largest banking complex?

We had to read this several times just to make sure we were interpreting it correctly. The Onion, which has been in bed with various major media conglomerates for years (certainly on a distribution basis for its print version), was actually publishing a punishing satire of the official story of 9/11.

The 9/11 meme is not one to be easily tampered with. It is the foundational theme of the current war on terror that is allowing the West, and especially the governments of Europe and the US, to strip rights away from citizens virtually at will.

The subdominant theme might be that 9/11 is a settled business. No reason to dig it up again even if it should be unearthed and reexamined.

But The Onion sure has done that. Maybe times are changing. The Onion recently severed most if not all of its mainstream media relationships for its print edition. Perhaps this has freed up the editors to be a bit more daring.

Maybe it presages a different Onion with a more adversarial stance. But when we read other articles on the website they were the usual predictable stuff. One was slamming Chris Brown for being a woman-beater. Another was parodying "preppers." Some of it was funny, or even clever. A lot of it was kind of sophomoric.

But, gee, this Santa piece about 9/11!

We have no idea why it ended up where it did. When we reviewed Google, it became clear that The Onion comments on 9/11 a lot. Perhaps in this one area, The Onion is bold and even confrontational. Maybe someone who reads The Onion more regularly can fill us in.

In the spirit of the Season, we recommend this parody. It's raised points that we've raised in the past. There's just too much that is unexplained about 9/11 to believe the official story: the impossible cell phone calls, the inexplicable lack of air defense and much more.

Maybe, as we've suggested, the best thing would be to convene a new commission, public or private and let it reexamine the "evidence."

But we won't hold our collective breath. Won't happen. No how. No way. The 9/11 attack/tragedy will continue to fester at the heart of the American psyche.

After Thoughts

The US will never be healed until the truth about 9/11 is plainly stated. But unexpected articles like this one in The Onion – whether you agree with it or not – are a start.