The world is a serious place full of serious people doing serious things. Seriously.

To understand just how serious the world and all its occupants are one just need to ask Bernie Columbus of Freesport,Ohio.

“This is a pretty serious place,” Bernie commented through a deadpan expression and horn rimmed glasses. “I’ve been alive all my life and I’ve seen some pretty serious times, but I don’t think it can get much more serious than this.”

You need news to fully appreciate the world and all its seriousness. Not just any news from any ol’ news source will do. No. You need a serious news agency that has consistently been the finest news source in America in quite a while. You need The Onion.

There have been comments about just how serious The Onion was about delivering its fine news to Americans, because, for a long time, The Onion was only available on its fine website, podcasts, print, and mobile devices, with the notable and noticeable exception of the iPad. After all, every other serious or semi-serious news organization, from The New York Times, to USA Today have produced versions of their news on the iPad and other tablet devices.

“I have no idea what’s going on there,” said Lawrence Davenport of Wheelspeck, Kansas, when asked what he thought about The Onion’s lack of iPad support. “I mean, even my grandmother has an iPad app. I don’t know what took them so long. I mean, seriously!”

Well, now, if you own an iPad, you can finally get serious about the news you read, because The Onion has finally made an app exclusively for the iPad: The Onion Tablet.

Bette Lebrowski, of Wallawalla, WA, has this to say about The Onion Tablet, “I think this is wonderful news! It means I can now get my fine, serious news from my iPad instead of the podcasts, websites, print, or my iPhone. At least, I would if I owned an iPad.”

What makes The Onion Tablet so special?

First and foremost, The Onion Tablet is The Onion, but for tablets, presumably for the iPad and other tablet devices (otherwise they would have called it The Onion iPad or The Onion HD, or Bill). All of the seriously fine news you’d expect from The Onion is there on your iPad without all that superfluous ads and the company sustaining revenue that goes with them. Instead, The Onion Tablet is supported by a single sponsor, whose ads remain the focus of your attention while the application loads up the latest news. The ads also sneak up on you when there’s a bit of free space in an article, but it’s not obnoxious.

Once loaded, The Onion Tablet presents you with page after page of the latest news, including world class reports on topics and events you just won’t find in any other serious news publication. You’ll also get commentary, editorial cartoons, polls, and public opinion on a wide variety of topics.

Actually, what you get is four news sections: The Latest, Images, Videos, and Sports. I’m not sure why Sports has its own sections since it’s really just all of the sports related articles pulled together on one page. But I guess the same could be said for the Images and Video sections too.

In fact, The Latest News section of The Onion Tablet is just the articles from the other sections all scattered about to make it look like there’s a lot of news, but really, there isn’t. But that’s OK, because it really shouldn’t take a long time to read serious news, and view serious videos or images. And it definitely doesn’t take any time to get through the sports section. (They use big words for the jocks who frequent that section.)

The Onion Tablet gets updated daily with more news, images, and so on, but it keeps around the older stuff for awhile, which also makes it look like there’s more news in it than there really is.

You don’t need an Internet connection to read articles in The Onion Tablet, but you do need it to view images and videos. That’s OK because most of the really serious news has to be read, and The Onion Tablet let’s you read it any time, anywhere, once you’ve download the articles first.

While other serious and semi-serious news organizations are looking for ways to milk as much money from you as possible in the guise of delivering fresh, serious news, The Onion Tablet takes a different approach. You could pay US$0.99 for serious news of this caliber, or even US$0.59, but you won’t.

The Onion Tablet is free! Well, free inasmuch as the application free. The tablet that will run the app will cost people in Africa, India, China, and some areas of the Appalachians a small fortune, but that’s a minor oversight.

If you are serious about serious news then you need to get The Onion Tablet. If you’re are not serious then…well, …, never mind.

OK, that’s a wrap. Seriously!

If you’d rather have your serious news delivered in a podcast then check the direct links below.