“Being an employee of The New York Times was one of the most shameful, useless things I’ve ever done in my life,” said longtime columnist David Brooks, noting that while he had continually applied to work at The Onion over the years, he had been promptly rejected every time. “Compared to the editorial staff at The Onion, my intellectual faculties are that of a cockroach, and I wish I’d never tried to compete with what is so clearly a superior newsroom filled with brilliant, brave reporters who have a moral conviction I wholly lack.”

"My entire career has been a waste,” Brooks added. “I’ve spent decades of my life writing the most pathetic drivel here every day and never gotten a single story right.”