20 years ago, The Onion introduced a 9/11 conspiracy theory

Welcome back to The Onion: 20 Years Later, where we review the print issue from 20 years ago, find out what’s still funny and examine the cultural impact. Today, we revisit Aug. 9, 2006.

I am traveling and forgot to schedule this, so apologies for the later delivery! Either way, lots of great jokes to share with you.

This was Vol. 42, Issue 32, the 300th new Onion issue of the 2000s. Here’s what the website version looked like in 2006 and today.

The front-page image above is courtesy of former Onion Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers, who wrote a book about The Onion in 2025.1

The following front-page jokes never made it online.

• The weather report: “Noah’s Ark Water Park Forecast: Chance of Fun 100%”; 60°/82°2

• “Area Man Experimenting With Your Sexuality”

• “Twin Mysteries Of Missing Hamster, Clogged Sink Solved Simultaneously”

• “World-Renowned Holistic Doctor Stares Helplessly At Four-Car Accident”

I don’t remember Unsung Heroes! Not sure if it was a regular feature. Either way, this is the 1st occurrence.

• “Single Man Consults Giant Yellow Book”

• “Orphanage Fire Leaves None Childless”

That orphanage joke is so dark, but also very good.

These one-liners appeared in the top-right corner of the “National” page next to an all-caps “EXTRA” label.

This Stan Kelly cartoon never appeared online. It’s the 4th(!) Onion response to Mel Gibson’s July 28, 2006, arrest and hate-filled rant, following the Weekly Presidential Address (Aug. 7), American Voices and Onion Radio News (both Aug. 4).

I covered those other jokes in Wednesday’s newsletter.

The Onion was not the fastest in responding to real-life news, even as late as 2006, but this is a good example of how fast they could move across joke formats — text, audio and illustration.

Generally, the Onion Sports items appeared online before they went in the newspaper. But “Dan Marino Holds Press Conference To Discuss Tan” is an exception.

TV Highlights didn’t appear online. The “Paid Programming” joke is sharp, highlighting the ills of product placement while naming brands that regularly sponsored TV shows (Procter & Gamble was a pioneer in what became called soap operas).

Also, note the photo caption:

• “Cast Of Desperate Housewives: (R–L) Eva Longoria, Academy Award nominee Mrs. William H. Macy, woman from Melrose Place, Eva Longoria.”

I wrote a few months ago about The Onion’s evolving treatment of Hamas and Israel, including the types of articles they’d write. One genre was “a pox of both your houses” — dismissing the two sides (and the broader Middle East) as a den of unstoppable violence and chaos.

“Prohibitively High Rocket-Fuel Prices Bring Mideast Crisis To Standstill” takes this view and juxtaposes it with record-high oil prices and the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

You’ve probably seen news clips of Americans talking about how gas prices are too high, leaving them short on cash and having to defer other purchases. Well, they finally have something in common with Islamic militants:

“The way things are going, I won’t have any money left over for other necessities, such as anti-aircraft missiles, land mines, and machine guns,” said Hezbollah guerrilla Mahmoud Hamoui, who is just one of hundreds of Islamic militants compelled to scale back their killing until rocket-fuel prices return to their pre-2006 levels.

In 2026, the price of oil and a military force running low on key munitions are also in the news, albeit for different reasons. Either way, it’s tough to quit oil:

Experts have warned for months that factors including Hezbollah’s insatiable demand for larger rockets, the increased dependence on gas-guzzling car bombs, and the war in the Middle East would all drive up demand for rocket fuel while putting a severe strain on its supply. However, most ignored the threat, finding it difficult to change their way of life.

I also like the allusion to gas-pump lines, perhaps most famously seen stateside in the 1970s. Here, the lines are for rocket fuel:

“I waited for two hours to fill up my Qassam-2 rocket yesterday, and I could only afford half a tank,” said Hezbollah militant Amin Hammoud, who admitted to siphoning fuel from other rockets in his neighborhood.

I feel like Oliver Stone is a 20th-century celebrity. For sure, he has a tremendous track record of films he’s written and/or directed. But when was the last time that an Oliver Stone movie was a cultural event? “Any Given Sunday” in 1999?

That said, in 2006, he made “World Trade Center.” And many readers would have been familiar with much of Stone’s work, including the film “JFK,” which posits multiple assassins and a broader conspiracy, not the “single gunman” theory.

The Onion flips that dynamic for “New Oliver Stone 9/11 Film Introduces ‘Single Plane’ Theory.” Yes, Stone’s film is still about government conspiracies, but there’s only 1 airplane, not 4.

See the map below:

Also, there are clones:

After its collision with the center of American military operations, the so-called “magic plane”—which variously and ingeniously identified itself to air-traffic controllers as “American Airlines Flight 11,” “United Airlines Flight 175,” “American Airlines Flight 77” and “United Airlines Flight 93″—took to the skies once again, landing at a top-secret “black-ops” Air Force base in West Virginia, where it was reloaded with a group of clones from another shadowy government program that Stone described as “shocking.”

Stone, who said he did not have time to explore the clone angle in the three-and-a-half-hour film, plans to do so in the sequel, September 12.

The true fact that sounds most unbelievable to me, 20 years later, is Nicolas Cage playing a semi-normal character (I love Cage, but c’mon), and not like, a Ghost Rider firefighter on 9/11.

There were, of course, many 9/11 truthers. The Onion gives them a moment of additional anger:

Early public reaction to the film has been skeptical. Many 9/11 conspiracy theorists claim Stone is presenting an exploitative, far-fetched, and manipulative Hollywood version of the pain and suffering—including eye strain and carpal tunnel syndrome—they have undergone during their countless hours on the Internet in the tragedy’s aftermath.

Also noteworthy: The Onion separately published this horoscope, which feels like the writer had 9/11 in the back of their mind:

Scorpio; October 24 - November 21

A calm and orderly evacuation from a burning building will reduce you and hundreds of others to a pile of smoldering ash next week.

“Condoleezza Rice Holds Bathtime Talks With Undersea Representatives” is a rare Onion joke about the secretary of state. This was probably because the men in the Bush administration were both easier and safer to lampoon.

But this week, much like March 2004’s “Rumsfeld Hosts No-Holds-Barred Martial Arts Tournament At Remote Island Fortress,” The Onion chooses to mock Rice indirectly by undercutting the seriousness of her job title and public demeanor. For sure, this joke also mocks her lack of influence with the Bush administration.

In classic Onion format, the article is written like a serious news story — the jokes are in the Mad Libs-style word replacements:

In addition, Rice was able to negotiate a unilateral cease-splash from The Democratic Republic Of Condiknee, a protectorate with connections to Rice’s right leg and a longtime aggressor of Rubba Dubdub. Although Rice stopped short of blaming the leg for the March 2006 tsunami that left much of the country and the outlying floor and bathmat areas flooded, she agreed to deploy cleaning forces to the greater Rubba Dubdub region, which includes the Great Porcelain Basin and the Tile Highlands.

A real newspaper would assume readers don’t know all the foreign diplomats. Here, The Onion does the same, except with bathtub objects.

“Abusive Husband Has Sense Of Humor About It” is one of those jokes that’s uncomfortable to read but absolutely describes a true situation for many people.

This is written like a feature article about a great man overcoming adversity with humor. But Glenn Osteen isn’t a cancer survivor or a small-business owner recovering from a natural disaster. He’s a violent abuser who hasn’t been brought to justice:

“I used to spend days feeling sorry for myself, wondering how things might’ve turned out if I’d married a woman who actually listened for a change,” says Osteen, who admits he used to take domestic abuse too seriously. “Then one night—I don’t know whether it was the sight of Samantha desperately trying to crawl toward the phone or the way the blood running out her nose formed that ridiculous-looking mustache—I suddenly burst out laughing.”

While many of these disturbing facts could, unfortunately, happen today, there’s one detail that’s absurdly out of date: Osteen’s habit of watching “hour upon hour of silent pornography on his antique film projector.”

This is a tough read, however well-written!

Other Area People jokes in this issue include:

• “Raving Maniac Just Saying What Everyone Wants To Hear”

• “Hasbro Concedes World Not Ready For Rubik’s Chicken”: An excellent but disturbing image.

• “Wounded Marine: Friendly-Fire Bullets Hurt That Much More”: This joke references Baquba, Iraq, which became an insurgent stronghold in late 2006 and into 2007.

• “Loud Fake Laugh Misinterpreted As Loud Real Laugh In Critical Sarcasm Miscalculation”: A funny headline, but long enough that I could imagine some Onion writers disliking it.

• “Area Man To Attend Grad School To Find A Girlfriend”: I went to college with someone who attended grad school in a foreign country in large part to find a spouse. And they did!

• “No Leads Sought In Asshole’s Murder”: Using the NYPD’s crime hotline will actually result in a fine, not a reward.

“Plan B Pill Objections” ended up somewhat anticlimatic, as the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter use by adult women on Aug. 24, 2006.

This is a solid set of jokes. My favorites:

• “Presence of pill on convenience-store shelves will take up valuable Twix space”

• “Slippery slope to Plan C pill, which kills pregnant women’s most overbearing family members.”

The latter joke reminds me of May 2006’s “New ‘Anti-Abortion Pill’ Kills Mother, Leaves Fetus Alive.”

“What Are We Hiding Behind Our Backs?” is a little confusing to read, at least for me. I almost missed the “All the yellow Gummi Worms” on his right arm.

“Where The Red Fern Grows” is a 1961 novel.

“Subpoena” is an obvious but good joke.

The only problem with “My Use Of Simile Sucks As Bad As The River Tide” in 2026 is that I’m worried schools aren’t teaching about similes, metaphors and other forms of figurative language.

For what it’s worth, Merriam-Webster defines it as “a figure of speech comparing two unlike things and often using like or as (as in cheeks like roses).”

Someone had a lot of fun writing this:

Now, I may be as pessimistic as a cucumber, but my similes are sorely lacking. But believe you me, it’s not from lack of trying! I spout off more similes than a one-legged dog in a haystack, but as sure as China, they always seem to fall flat. To tell it plain, my similes are confusing as the day is wrong, as disappointing as two peas in a pigsty, and more obscure than Kenneth from marketing (the guy who’s as big as a thing that’s six-feet-tall and 200 pounds). All in all, they’re not good.

Mark Ganz3 also struggles with aphorisms, but he claims to be good at allusions, innuendos and hyperbole. In fact, the allusion difficulties are a vicious slander:

While I’m clearing the air, I might as well address some nasty rumors about my alleged “allusion problem.” I have lately discovered that these hateful lies were started by a close friend who turned out to be a backstabbing lout trying to poison my colleagues against me. To him I say only, “Et tu, King Lear?”

“Having A Gardener Is A Wonderful Hobby” is a smart satire of the person who claims to have a hobby when what they really have is disposable income.

Susan Tager’s daily life hasn’t changed over the past three years, except she now has a gardener. Even still, this was an adjustment:

I recommend starting out slowly. At the beginning, I only had the gardener come once a week. It was difficult at first—gardeners, as it happens, speak an entirely different language than we do, so you have to communicate through pointing and short commands, somewhat like a dog—but once I got out there in the sun and fresh air, I really started to enjoy myself. In less than a month I found myself looking forward to little Paulo’s arrival more and more. Now it’s a rare day that I don’t have him come out to do some gardening every day, even if only for a couple of hours on account of the pouring rain.

She talks about gaining perspective (by watching the gardener do the work), of making her garden Zen-like (by having the gardener do it), and eating food grown in her garden (by having someone else pick it and deliver it). She even has, according to her husband, “a green index finger” from pointing all day.

The Aug. 9, 2006, print edition featured a birthday horoscope (above) that appeared online in 2006 but isn’t online today.

My favorite horoscope this week is the birthday joke, honestly. But after that, my favorite is Cancer:

Cancer: June 22 - July 22

Remember: While volunteering to remove your shoes before entering a friend’s apartment is indeed polite, volunteering to remove your shirt, pants, and undergarments is anything but.

As usual, today’s website doesn’t properly display the horoscopes. Check out the archived version instead.

The Oliver Stone joke itself is ancient, but it fits perfectly in today’s age where no one trusts facts or authority (justified or not).

As an editor, I love “My Use Of Simile Sucks As Bad As The River Tide.”

Again, “Abusive Husband Has Sense Of Humor About It” is a smartly done article, but it’s a tough one to share with people unless y’all have a deeply shared understanding.

Even more politics! But overall, the vibe feels reasonably similar to what today’s Onion would comment on.

Grateful for all of you joining me in these deep dives. This was a fun issue, especially because I didn’t remember most of it.

As always, please like, comment and share. Let me know what you liked or didn’t like — or what I missed.

See you next time!