Seth MacFarlane wasn’t the only one who said some really ugly things Oscar night. Satirical news site The Onion did too. They picked on a nine year old child with a despicable tweet calling her the c-word. They may not have thought the backlash would be so swift and so strong. They finally issued an apology on their Facebook page:

Feb. 25, 2013

Dear Readers,

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

Sincerely,

Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion

Here’s the offensive tweet cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette :