Op Ed: Before The Onion

Before The Onion. Before The Borowitz Report. Before The Babylon Bee. Before The Daily Show. Before The Simpsons. Before South Park … there was the East Side Monthly April Fool’s Issue.

While most people celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah in December, for over a decade, our favorite holiday was April Fool’s Day. It was satire at its best, replete with exaggeration, irony, and humor, but close enough to the truth to consistently fool a lot of people. While we focused on Providence, politicians from all around the state would regularly pitch us stories for the April Fool’s issue. And the best part was that people loved it – even getting surprised when they knew it was coming.

When our April issue featured a photo of John F. Kennedy, Jr. announcing that he was going to be named the next president of Brown, the story went international, much to the chagrin of the Brown communications office, who were inundated with calls, including one from The London Times asking for confirmation of the story. Exasperated, the spokesman sarcastically responded, “Do you think that we would announce this in a local newspaper?” The British reporter, not missing a beat, responded, “So you are confirming the story?”

Several years earlier, Brown President Vartan Gregorian was thrilled when we asked him to pose for a photo for our cover, “breaking” the news that Brown and Johnson & Wales were going to merge. Gregorian was featured wearing a chef’s hat and kept telling people about the quote that we gave him, explaining the merger. “They cook, we eat,” followed by his wonderful laugh.

Mayor “Buddy” Cianci was a frequent April Fools target, and with his sharp mind and out-of-the-box thinking, it added another dimension to each story. One year, we announced that Cianci was fed up with all of the non-taxpayers (AKA voters) who weren’t financially supporting the city, so he was putting in toll booths at every street and highway leading into the city. The toll was only 25 cents, but the revenue was huge.

Another year, we had Cianci selling the North Burial Ground, with its large voting constituency, to a company planning a winery after “discovering” the soil’s unique attributes for wine grapes. It came just after Cianci had introduced his Mayor’s Marinara Sauce. So, the vineyard was planning on introducing line extensions: Mayor’s Own Muscatel (MOM) and the Mayor’s Own Burgundy (MOB). The stewards of Swan Point cemetery, however, were not amused when it was suggested that the existing bodies might be exhumed and moved there to reduce expenses.

There were no sacred cows, and everything was ‘fair game!’ We had the state selling ‘luxury suites’ at the General Assembly so citizens could receive some benefit, as lobbyists were spending so much on the legislature. We had “Barrington Seeks Controlling Interest in East Side.” Their offer was set at $44,000 per resident in cash, stock and school aid… a win, win, win for Providence.

There was the City Dog Tax to raise additional city money. It was a ruff one. The major stumbling block was not whether to do it, but rather how to determine the actual tax. Type of dog? Annoyance of bark? Size of poop? The Narragansett Indians’ bid to reclaim Providence and build a casino got a lot of play as the revenue would have made the city flush.

We had Michael Dukakis choosing Cianci as his vice presidential candidate. We had Hillary Clinton, looking to run for the US Senate, needing a “place to call home.” RI had a lot to offer – small population, good food, and if it had Taylor Swift back then, it would have been a lock! When there was talk of dredging the Providence River, we moved WaterFire to Blackstone Boulevard with “LandFire.”

There was the Providence Preservation Society’s “Implementing a New Historic Demolition Plan.” When there was the massive fight over the plan to put the Newbay power plant across the Seekonk River, we changed the dynamic, announcing that they had switched and the plant would be nuclear! And we even announced that Lifespan was declaring RI healthy and it would “Stop Seeing Patients.”

Happy April Fools!