'The Onion' Can Predict The Future

Just after the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down in 2013, The Onion weighed in with snark, as it is wont to do. But little did you know that not only does the paper employ a lot of amazing humorists, but they also have some fortune tellers on staff. The Onion accurately predicted the future of the four Supreme Court justices who dissented on same-sex marriage (or at least what I hope is their future, anyway).

The paper imagined the fallout from four justices' dissents on striking down DOMA in the piece "Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito Suddenly Realize They Will Be Villains In Oscar-Winning Movie One Day":

Shortly after turning in dissenting opinions in landmark federal rulings today that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and conferred full federal benefits to married same-sex couples, Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John G. Roberts, and Samuel Alito reportedly realized today that they would someday be portrayed as villains in an Oscar-winning film about the fight for marriage equality.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, who outside of the land of humor did write against the opinion on the DOMA, also dissented in Friday's same-sex marriage argument. And if there was any time for an Oscar-winning film about grumpy ol' justices (working title: Grumpiest Old Men), then it is absolutely, positively right now.

Well!

In the 2013 piece, The Onion dreamed up how Scalia would respond to his role in the fictitious upcoming film Defense of Marriage (written by Tony Kushner):

“I’m going to be portrayed as a closed-minded Neanderthal and the very symbol of backward thinking. And at the end of the movie, when my character realizes he’s on the wrong side of history, the audience will feel emotionally fulfilled because the hero attorney, probably played by George fucking Clooney, will have won. Great.”

That seems particularly apropos today, considering the fiery dissents from the Fabulous Foursome in same-sex marriage. So does The Onion have special magical powers that come from a side-splitting command of comedy? Should we start looking to them to predict major events? Should we abandon CNN, MSNBC, The New York Timesand, dare I say it, Bustle (no, absolutely not) and look to a humor site for our news that will stand the test of time?

No, probably not. Unfortunately, it just proves that some justices never change.

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