Sunday, December 18, 2005
The War on Christmas
Great Britain just legalized homosexual civil unions. South Africa declared that full marriage rights must be extended to homosexuals. This on the heels of Italy and Spain’s similar declarations. Still in spite of these powerful, world-wide, progressive breakthroughs in civil rights, you’d have to dig through quite a few pages to find the mentions of these cases. Instead, everywhere you look front pages of magazines and lead stories on broadcast news are flooded by stories about the war on Christmas. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who truly believes that anyone is waging a war on Christmas and no matter how PC we are getting, Christmas will be clearly apparent in the coming weeks. Furthermore, why are Bill O’Reilly and Conservative interest groups mad at the malls who have changed the words “Merry Christmas” into “Happy Holidays” rather than those who changed Christmas from a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ into an excuse to blow a ton of money on presents and wrap a bunch of flammable tinsel around a rapidly dehydrating pine tree? (two quick comments: 1. I think it odd that I am now defending being politically correct since it is one of my pet peeves. 2. I do understand the irony in the fact that I am about to continue to discuss the war on Christmas and conservative groups in general rather than talking about the worldwide breakthroughs for equal rights).
I will hand this to conservative interest groups: they know how to turn up the volume. When the ACLU or PFAW get ticked off, they are sometimes profiled for a day in the New York Times or earn a 30 second spot on national broadcast news. When the conservative Christian base feels the whim, they seem to be able to initiate a media feeding frenzy on command and merely by snapping of their fingers. The right-wing Christian base of this country is powerful enough to create an uproar over something as absurd as a war against Christmas in this country where Bush is president; the anti-abortion movement is alive, kicking and starting to get a majority on the Supreme Court; and our civil rights movement for homosexuals is so stagnated that we are now less progressive than Italy and South Africa. Somehow when you stop and look around, Christians aren’t doing so badly in this country.
I guess I just wish the ACLU or PFAW or MoveOn.org could learn to turn up their volume as effectively as the conservative interest groups. Either that or Democrats need to make a concerted effort to pick up some seats in the House and Senate. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America helped the GOP pick up 50 seats in Congress. That’s uncanny. Come on Democrats, lets see some initiative. Not only are you not fighting for liberal causes, you are losing wars you haven’t even started to fight.
I will hand this to conservative interest groups: they know how to turn up the volume. When the ACLU or PFAW get ticked off, they are sometimes profiled for a day in the New York Times or earn a 30 second spot on national broadcast news. When the conservative Christian base feels the whim, they seem to be able to initiate a media feeding frenzy on command and merely by snapping of their fingers. The right-wing Christian base of this country is powerful enough to create an uproar over something as absurd as a war against Christmas in this country where Bush is president; the anti-abortion movement is alive, kicking and starting to get a majority on the Supreme Court; and our civil rights movement for homosexuals is so stagnated that we are now less progressive than Italy and South Africa. Somehow when you stop and look around, Christians aren’t doing so badly in this country.
I guess I just wish the ACLU or PFAW or MoveOn.org could learn to turn up their volume as effectively as the conservative interest groups. Either that or Democrats need to make a concerted effort to pick up some seats in the House and Senate. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America helped the GOP pick up 50 seats in Congress. That’s uncanny. Come on Democrats, lets see some initiative. Not only are you not fighting for liberal causes, you are losing wars you haven’t even started to fight.
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but i don't understand, i thought that the American Media was the bastion of liberal-evilness? How does Christmas get on there? Perhaps it gets so much coverage because the evil liberals are trying to annoy Americans with TOO MUCH Christmas airtime, so that we'll ditch Christianity all together. That must be it.
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