Reagan’s gone, in case you’ve been under a rock or something. Like him or not, he certainly did leave his mark on America.

I’ve been trying to find that humorous Onion article about Reagan getting a pyramid built in his honor. Instead, I find that the Onion has locked its archive behind a premium-only shield. Bummer. I thought the Onion was cooler than that. In an age where no one but the New York Times makes money on subscription content, the Onion takes a step backward. (Porn makes money, of course, but I’ll ignore that for now.)

I’m all for companies trying to make a buck, but I don’t feel like the Onion has done much to earn my money lately. It just hasn’t had the spark it used to. Perhaps they realized that archive actually has the best stuff, so people will pony up to relive old laughs.

The Onion’s recent commercial slant made me wonder if the < a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-02-13-theonion.htm">move from Madison, Wisconsin to New York was the shark-jump itself. Lots of the comedy ideas came from things the staff grew up with in Middle America. While funny stuff happens in the Big Apple every day, I imagine its just not the same.

Maria Schneider writes the Herbert Kornfeld columns, one of my favorite Onion features. She admitted in an interview last year that “the Onion has peaked.” Hard to tell if she’s being facetious or not. Sadly, from my point of view, she’s correct.