Putting the Scrooge back in Christmas (the pre-reformed Scrooge, that is)

Before the holiday season goes by, I wanted to take note of some of the more notable "Bah, humbug!" stories around Christmas of 2013.

After years of FOX News and the Republican echo-sphere pushing the anti-Semitic canard of a "War on Christmas," some Republicans are starting to see Christmas as a partisan Republican-fundamentalist event and "Merry Christmas!" as a battle cry. For instance:

Ryan Cummings, Woman hits Salvation Army kettle bell-ringer who said 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas' ABC 15 12/13/2013.

And nothing says, "Merry Christmas!" like firing a few rounds at your neighbor's house: Eric Miller, Suspect identified in armed standoff Tennessean 12/19/2013.

Or the Lieutenant-Governor proposing to have the state of Tennessee start systematically killing people again: Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, It's time for Tennessee to resume executions Tennessean 12/17/2013.

And, on the "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" front:
Jim Newell, Republican unveils worst school idea ever: Make poor kids clean floors Salon 12/19/2013; Amanda Terkel,

Rep. Jack Kingston Proposes That Poor Students Sweep Floors In Exchange For Lunch 12/18/2013.

But President Obama made it bipartisan. He launched a drone strike in Pakistan on Christmas Day that killed four people: Jim White, The Hellfires of Christmas Emptywheel 12/26/2013; Kevin Gosztola, Drone Strike in Pakistan Was First to Be Launched by Obama Administration on Christmas Day FDL 12/26/2013.

Tags: war on christmas

The state of American democracy

Fr. Charles Coughlin, the Rush Limbaugh of the 1930s

I watched and heard at least a couple of hours of the Congressional hearings Tuesday with Erik Prince, the Republican/Christian fundamentalist head of the Blackwater mercenary firm. Between Prince the Christianist acting surly and all but sneering his contempt for the Democrats on the Committee and several of the Committee Republicans bitching about MoveOn.org and whining that the Democrats support The Enemy and who criticizing Blackwater mercenaries was equivalent to blaspheming our Saviour-General Petraeus, we got a good glimpse at the thuggish side of today's authoritarian Republicans.

It gave extra resonance to some very recent blog posts, like Angry, hateful liberal bloggers by Glenn Greenwald Salon 10/02/07, Oprah the Nazi by Dave Neiwert Orcinus blog 10/02/07 and Stealing Fascism by Sara Robinson, Orcinus blog 10/01/07, all of which talk about manifestations of fanaticism that are becoming more and more "mainstream" in today's Republican Party. I'm surprised that none of the Democrats called out one or two of the Republicans on the Committee on their cracks, especially one of them who went on at some length about how the Democrats are supporting the Other Side.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attempt to put the Republicans on the spot over Rush Limbaugh's trashy comment about soldiers who are critical of the Cheney-Bush war policies being "phony soldiers" didn't work out so well, it seems. As of Tim Grieve's post MoveOn, Limbaugh and how the game is played this morning, "Not a single Republican has signed Harry Reid's letter condemning Rush Limbaugh."

This new fad of having Congress pronounce official judgment on the propriety of statements by partisans in the course of normal political debate highlights one of the problems of democratic parties confronting a part that is becoming increasingly authoritarian, as today's Republican Party is. As disciplined as the often are, especially on supporting Cheney's foreign policies, the Republicans aren't quite a totally Leader-driven Party yet. As Ezra Klein points out in Immigration Issues: After Failure The American Prospect 09/24/07, the recent immigration reform bill was defeated by Republicans despite the President's support of the bill: "The legislation activated a large anti-immigrant bloc, whose primal scream, amplified into a Senate-shaking roar by conservative talk radio, doomed the bill". The aspirants to head the Party are carefully aligning themselves with their white nativist base on the issue, however.

Congressional declarations of what should be considered acceptable political speech is disturbing on a couple of levels. For one thing, it's embarrassing that one of the oldest democratically-elected legislative bodies in the world is reduced to such silly gestures. It's also an implied threat of legislative action, even though the resolution against MoveOn had no legal force.

Here the goals of the two parties are not mirror images of each other. On some issues, that's the case. On the Cheney-Bush torture policy, for instance, the Republicans with rare exceptions support it, while the Democrats oppose it. That's a difficult issue to craft a compromise over. Are they going to agree to only carry out mock executions by simulated drowning on Tuesdays and Fridays?

But in terms of regulating political speech, the goal of Republican authoritarians is to suppress pro-Democratic speech. Not (so far) by explicit bans but by stigma and quasi-legal means such as "free speech zones". As the late Molly Ivins put it, I thought the whole United States was a free speech zone. Also, it looks like the word "provocateur" is now a current part of our political vocabulary again. Anyone familiar with the Nixon administration's measures to suppress dissent could have guessed that some of this was going on. Cheney, after all, has sought to recreate the police-state features of the Nixon administration and take them much further. But this is the first concrete reference I recall coming across about the actual use of provocateurs against legal, peaceful protesters (though I obviously haven't been paying close enough attention), from The Mean Streets of the Homeland Security State-let by Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com 09/30/07. Turse writes:

In 2005, the Times' Dwyer revealed that at public gatherings since the time of the RNC, police officers had not only "conducted covert surveillance… of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident," but had acted as agent provocateurs. At the RNC, there were multiple incidents in which undercover agents influenced events or riled up crowds. In one case, a "sham arrest" of "a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders."

The Democrats, on the other hand, stand (I hope!) for a genuinely "liberal" notion of free speech.

That's why I have a lot of sympathy for Jane Hamsher's comment when she writes:

Rush [Limbaugh] may be [a] drug gobbling bloviator with a giant 4-F pustule on his butt, but his comments were well in line with what is considered free speech in this country, and that actually isn't any of the Senate’s business.

On the other hand, she says in the same post:

I really don’t know which is more exasperating — that our Senators think it is their job to tell people at large how they should exercise their right to free speech, or that they fire back at Limbaugh in such a weak and meaningless way. I suppose they have to do something or we will be treated to and endless parade of Cornyn bills where the Village Elders tell us all how displeased they are at our “uncivilized” rhetoric via fiat, and the failure of Republicans to sign on after voting to condemn MoveOn will serve up some campaign fodder. Would that their gesture was something more effective than watching them stomp their feet and shout “I know you are, but what am I?”

As long as Democrats are willing to sit at a Congressional hearing and listen to Republican blowhards call them traitors and claim they hate American soldiers and not at least respond that they are a bunch of lying sleazebags to say something like that, they aren't going to be able to respond to any of these attacks in a fully adequate way.

There is an attitude problem on the Democrats' part. And a big part of that problem is that they still find it hard to accept that today's Republican Party is an increasingly authoritarian institution that doesn't intend to play by either the formal or informal rules of democracy any more than they have to.

Wesley Clark's campaign to Dump Rush off Armed Forces Radio does make a lot of sense. Limbaugh not only trashes on-duty soldiers who don't agree with him. He regularly promotes bigotry directed not only against minorities and immigrants but against The Liberals. Not to mention that his relationship to factual accuracy is inconsistent, to put it nicely. Having a hate preacher like Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio provides a kind of official endorsement he should not enjoy. Digby states the case for this move succinctly in Killing the King 10/02/07.

But this kind of dilemma will pop up more and more. And it is a real dilemma. When an authoritarian party dedicated to suppressing dissent against its policies is facing off against a party dedicated to a liberal democratic position on political speech, the pro-democracy party doesn't have the option of simply directing the same suppression tactics against the authoritarian party.

Complicating all this is the projection dynamic, in which affluent Republican white guys manage to define themselves as victims targeted by The Liberals to be suppressed. It seems bizarre for most people to imagine that Christians are being persecuted for their religion in the United States. But for white fundamentalists, that has been a standard assumption for years if not decades. Republican fundis are convinced that The Liberals and The Hollywood Crowd (i.e., "The Jews") are actively persecuting them in the United States. It's part of the craziness that comes with authoritarian fanaticism.

I've posted about this phenomenon several times in connection with the anti-Semitic "war on Christmas" nonsense that the FOXists have taken to promoting every year during the holiday season:

Whining by the "defenders" of Christmas 12/28/04
The (Christmas) war fraud 11/24/05
The fine old conflict over Christmas 12/08/05
Analyzing the phony "war on Christmas" 12/15/05
More on the bah-humbug war against the (nonexistent) "war on Christmas" 12/23/05

And as Digby points out, our Beltway press and pundits are heavily invested in not recognizing the evolution of the Republican Party and the American party system more generally (Village Parties 10/02/07):

... this fetish for bipartisanship is a [Washington Beltway] Village construct. They all live together. They want everyone to get along, like back in the good old days when Tip and Bob would fight it out on the floor and then head out and get shitfaced with Wilbur Mills and John Tower. In those days the parties were not aligned ideologically and there was great political utility in having an open line of communication.

We are in a different time, in which the parties have realigned along some old traditional lines. We are also dealing with the fact that one party was hijacked by a radical political movement that sought to take the country back to a 19th century economic system, an 18th century social system and a 1st century Imperial system. Many Americans disagree with that plan and are trying to bring the nation back to the present.

Tags: anti-semitism, authoritarianism, bipartisanship, establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press, republican party, rush limbaugh, war on christmas

Signs of the season

Some things occur in regular, predictable cycles.

As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, we'll start hearing soon from Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson and the rest of the FOXists about how Jews are waging a "war on Christmas" to stamp out the Christian religion in America. I don't know what it will take to shame them into shutting up about that particular kookoo conspiracy theory.

And the year end is coming, so we have the regular annual predictions about how next year, we're going to pull out several tens of thousands of troops from Iraq. The latter, at least, is already starting. From Shift coming in US policy on Iraq by Howard LaFranchi Christian Science Monitor 11/08/06:

The point of even a temporary increase in US troops, from the current number of about 144,000, would be to win decisively the battle for Baghdad security. Many in the military now consider this the key to keeping Iraq back from the precipice of outright civil war.

Still, many experts expect the contrary: a decision to gradually draw down US troops to the 40,000-60,000 level over the coming year. (my emphasis)

Music I'm Listening To: Louvin Brothers, "You're Learning"

Tags: iraq war, war on christmas

Gene Lyons on the PWOC (phony war on Christmas)

Have I mentioned in the last 10 minutes how much I like Gene Lyons' column? Well, anyway, I do.

And he really nails the "war on Christmas" nonsense for what it is: a bigoted, dishonest fantasy of rightwing fear- and hate-mongers meant to sucker those willing to be snookered.

In his column Politics of Fear Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 12/28/05, he summarizes the "war on Christmas" meme very well:

At year's end, here’s a question worth pondering. Self-styled conservative Republicans dominate Washington. They currently control the White House and both houses of Congress. With the Samuel Alito nomination pending, they've got a good chance of turning the U. S. Supreme Court into a veritable right-wing star chamber. So how come they and their media enablers are acting like such soreheads and crybabies lately ? Witness the so-called war on Christmas. This imaginary struggle was largely dreamed-up by FOX News personalities Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson. The subtitle of Gibson's book gives the game away : "How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." For "conservatives" of Gibson’s ilk, the word "liberal" now means approximately what "Jew Communist" once meant to the Ku Klux Klan. But hold that thought. I was too busy posing disobedient basset hounds for their Santa Claus photo shoot to actually read the fool thing. But as near as I could tell, the most insidious "liberal" weapon against Christmas consists of substituting godless slogans like "Happy holidays" for "Merry Christmas."

Never mind that "holiday" derives from "Holy Day," in the same way "Christmas" does "Christ’s Mass." (Or even that the White House Christmas card read "Happy Holidays.") It's no longer enough to wish these knuckleheads health and happiness. Failure to actively acknowledge the superiority of Christianity to rival faiths is deemed blasphemy.

Never mind, for that matter, that according to the Catholic liturgical calendar that O'Reilly, the chief FOX News theologian, professes to revere, what he calls "the Christmas season" is actually Advent. What we're witnessing is the mainstreaming of paranoid persecution fantasies that used to be the provenance of fringe outfits like the John Birch Society and the Klan. (my emphasis)

I couldn't have put it better. Lyons has a habit of putting things better than most people would. Especially our collection of Big Pundits. Because he really understands what today's Christian Republican White Peoples' Party is all about. And says so.

Another review of THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

I did a mini-review here back in November of John Gibson's rightwing tract The War on Christmas (2005. I've just come across another review that looks at the book in more detail and slices it up pretty well: Defending Christmas: Are liberals stealing our sacred holiday, or do John Gibson and conservative Christians need to lay off the eggnog? A review of "The War on Christmas." by Kathryn Joyce SOMA Review 12/23/05.

Joyce rips Gibson for his sloppy reporting and his scam approach:

We all know that publishing is, first and foremost, an industry, many of its books - and the arguments contained therein - assembled like cheap plastic toys on conveyer belts from materials of questionable integrity. John Gibson's ponderously-titled clip-job, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Think," is one more example of this shoddy 99-cent store literature: a dubious hash of rumor, sketchy news reports, sentimental memoir, and the fake populism and persecution complexes that color most conservative missives in today's culture wars.

This Gibson-type of propaganda is all too often the kind intellectual nourishment on which the Christian Right feeds.

Joyce picks up on the psychological projection phenomenon we often see with political extremists. Gibson, she observes, harshes on liberals and secularists for their alleged hypersenstivity to particular words and phrases, while praising and encouraging such hypersensitivity on the part of the "culture war" fundis:

Beyond this dubious cast of characters, who shift roles as needed, but essentially retell the same story from town to town, Gibson is not dedicated to consistency. What he derides in one chapter as the "eggshell sensitivity" of "PC-types" who want to limit public expression of Christmas and don't want to "have to explain someone else's faith to their children," he defends in cases of Christian parents upset that their kids weren't instructed to draw Christmas trees in class (thus allegedly depriving one New York parent of the opportunity to teach his son how to spell "Christmas"), or those who feel that the school's restriction of overt religiosity in the classroom led to a "conflict of conscience" for the parent and child. For these parents, Gibson implies such a "conflict of conscience," or the necessity to explain one's own religion to one's own child, are unacceptable burdens, while secular, or non-evangelical, parents are expected to suck it up and relax, already: a double standard that amounts to majority rule, plain and simple.

She gives a good idea of the kind of whiny victim posturing that Gibson's book conveys and which is a specialty of the Christian Right, drawing heavily on the whiney-white-folks style of Southern segregationists. She doesn't use the phrase that James Wolcott seems to have adopted form Atrios - "whiny-ass titty-baby" - to describe Gibson's posturing in that book. But it would fit.

Joyce also whacks Gibson for one of his kookier assertions, that Christmas is somehow uniquely American (say what?!?):

One of Gibson's victims, the widow of a Georgia school board member named Richard Tiede, gives voice to this belief system in describing her late husband's motivation for getting involved in a Christmas Wars skirmish: "'Rich felt that Christmas had become more than just a religious holidayÂ…Something that was uniquely American, but had spread to other countries.'" Gibson also summarizes, "Tiede simply thought of Christmas as a uniquely American holiday that was essentially an observance of family, not religious, ties."

The notion that Christmas, the holiday which Gibson defines as "the sacred Christian holiday," is an American invention is not only an example of American arrogance and ignorance at their most absurd - it is also a telling description of the state of the culture wars themselves: too broad to be contained within any conventional religion, and so widespread that theyÂ’ve become close to a religion themselves. In redefining the sacred, and Christianity itself, to mean misty-eyed Americanism, the only truth The Christmas Wars touches upon is the current state of religious and political division in our country, and the inanity of so many evangelical Christians that parades as piety. But of course, this is an industry book: intended to perpetuate division, not examine it. (my emphasis)

I'm normally hesitant to criticize an article like this for what it doesn't say. Because that's often a cheap-shot way to cover up the fact that you yourself don't have enough to say about the article.

But in this case, it is disappointing to see no mention of the anti-Semitism that sticks out a thumb with a festering sore in this book, as I discussed in my post in November. Because this particular brand of religious bigotry is an important element of this phony rightwing hoopla about the "war on Christmas".

But otherwise, her review is a good look at the kind of radicalism that the Christian Right often promotes. Her observation of how Christian values and an militant patriotism are merged in Gibson's tract is an especially good observation.

More on the bah-humbug war against the (nonexistent) "war on Christmas"

I just saw a stage version of A Christmas Carol in San Francisco last night. It's a new production and it works very well.

I was thinking afterward that it's ironic in a way that "Scrooge" has come to be synonymous with "stingy person". Because the story of Scrooge in the end is that he becomes a benevolent, generous, happy guy.

But anyone who tries too hard to apply rational explanations to language runs the risk of stripping their mental gears.

How could you rationally explain rightwingers for the last 15 years or so using the phrase "politically correct" to mean things they think are politically incorrect? Or the fact that Bush fans are more obsessed with using the correct Party-line words than anyone, even when they change week-to-week or day-to-day?

Which brings me to their latest burst of ideological madness, which is to try to turn "Merry Christmas" into a partisan slogan meaning "Merry Christmas and if you don't celebrate Christmas then go [Cheney] yourself."

Here's another take on the disgusting scam that Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson and other FOXists have been running the last couple of years, reaching into the anti-Semitic bag of bunkum: 'War' on Christmas an excess of rhetoric in a time of real war by Thomas Raleigh San Francisco Chronicle 12/23/05. Raleigh writes:

Count me among those who find nothing troubling about having a Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza or at the White House; who believe that such displays are not unconstitutional; who feel that mayors and city councils can best make decisions regarding holiday displays in their communities; who are dismayed by the frivolous lawsuits filed by the ACLU on behalf of atheists who object to such displays; and who are not offended should they be greeted this time of year with "Happy Holidays." Heck, I'd be happy with "Hi."

What is nevertheless troubling is the increasingly gratuitous politicization of Christmas by those who maintain that ominous forces seek to secularize this nation. It has become a holiday tradition for the punditry-political complex to perpetuate this semi-contrived controversy, along with the circular debating it engenders, to boost both ratings and political fundraising. They tell us that the war on Christmas is yet another critical battle in the "culture wars."

But the thrust of Raleigh's piece is also a reflection on the power of language, a more serious one than anything one is likely to encounter in typical Republican comma-dancing. He's specifically looking at the overuse of the word "war".

Raleigh, himself a retired infantry lieutenant colonel, reminds us of something the FOXists and various and sundry armchair warriors and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders often forget, if it ever enters their fevered consciousness at all. Calling the Christian Right's beloved "culture wars" the "mother of all rhetorical wars", he writes:

But to suggest a war on Christmas is to scale the Himalayas of hyperbole. To put the words "war" and "Christmas" together for rhetorical effect, for the sake of a sound bite, is more than just trite, it is at once absurd and inappropriate. To do so - particularly during a time of war - demeans the gravity of war itself. War is nothing less than a scourge, best undertaken only as a last and unavoidable resort; and regardless how necessary or noble, war is death and destruction, maiming and suffering; and it leaves physical, mental and emotional scars, even among those who emerge victorious. Because of this, war as an endeavor - or as a word - should never be taken lightly. (my emphasis)

This brings to mind Helen Cobban's observation that the phrase "humanitarian war" is a truly Orwellian notion, even applied to situations like Bosnia or Kosovo where genuine human-rights crises are occurring. Because even when undertaken for the highest and most just of motives, there's nothing humanitarian about war.

Everyone but outright pacifists agrees that war is sometimes a necessary evil. It's also critical to remember than even when it is necessary, it is still an evil thing in the life of humanity.

To paraphrase the reformed Scrooge: what Bill O'Reilly and Joe Gibson and their like say about the "war on Christmas", now that is a humbug!

Tags: anti-semitism, thomas raleigh, war on christmas

Analyzing the phony "war on Christmas"

Joe Conason has a good summary of various points about why the "war against Christmas" is a rancid figment of the FOXists' imagination: Merry Christmas to all WorkingforChange.com 12/15/05. He notes among other things:

Unfortunately, what seems to bother the more rabid Christmas crusaders is akin to what inflamed Henry Ford, the industrialist and amateur Nazi, back when he first publicized the plot against Christmas during the 1920's: They still seethe with resentment of those who differ from them. (Ford forthrightly blamed the problem on the Jews, while today's crusaders denounce liberals, many of whom happen to be Jewish.) While Christianity is, as ever, the dominant religion in America, this isn't a "Christian nation" in the sense that it was a hundred years ago. The faith of the majority is no longer imposed so carelessly on the many minorities who believe otherwise.

Steve Gilliard has been both ridiculing and analyzing the phony "war on Christmas" story at The News Blog. And he has also focused on the sleazy anti-Semitism of this particular meme. See Jew baiting in America 12/03/05 and Let me tell you a story about Christmas 12/11/05

Tags: anti-semitism, war on christmas

The fine old conflict over Christmas

This ridiculous rightwing brouhaha about the alleged "war on Christmas" in the US reminds me that there have been times when Christmas was under fire - from other Christians.

Ernest Jones, who was Sigmund Freud's friend and biographer, and himself the long-time head of the International Psychoanalytic Association, did a piece called "The Significance of Christmas" which appears in his Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis Vol. 2 (1951).

He talked about how the Christians in the Roman Empire had used the celebration of Christmas to promote the image of Mary as the Mother of God, thus bringing some of the appeal of goddess-worship into the religion. He thought it was an effective marketing tool that allowed Christianity to beat out Mithraism to be the official religion of the Empire.

But, he also recalled that some Christians were long suspicious of the holiday (my emphasis):

The feeling, however, that Christmas is in some deep sense a pagan festival has evinced itself with a strange persistence throughout the ages. The Western Church was responsible for its incorporation in the Christian religion, and the Eastern Church for long protested against what they regarded as a pagan innovation. Behind this word "pagan" surely lies the idea of Mother-Goddess worship, the attraction of which so often seduced the patriarchal monotheistic Hebrews and indeed the Christian Church itself. It is perhaps fundamentally what Protestantism protested against, following the Hebrew prophets. Our own Puritans have felt very strongly on the matter, and an Act of Parliament in 1644 forbade the celebration of Christmas as being a heathen festival, until the Merry Monarch once more sanctioned it. To this day many Protestant sects, notably in Scotland, look distinctly askance at Christmas as being something alien to the pure faith. Ever since the Reformation this attitude of suspicion has connected Christmas with what has often been called the "paganism" of the Roman Catholic Church. An amusing example is recorded of a fanatical member of Parliament moving that, in order to eliminate any association with the [Catholic] Mass, the word itself be purified by being changed to Christ-tide; by way of answer, however, he was exhorted to initiate the change by altering his own name from Thomas Massey Massey to Thotide Tidey Tidey!

Tags: anti-semitism, ernest jones, war on christmas

The (Christmas) war fraud

It's become an annual holiday ritual for the OxyContin crowd to wring their hands over the alleged "war on Christmas" that no one but them seems to be able to detect. Last year, post-Yuletide, I posted about Whining by the "defenders" of Christmas.

But, being an annual event, this fringy meme from the wingnut right keeps popping up like the elephant gift that gets passed around from year to year. Michelle Goldberg gives us a good analysis of the phenomenon, a good example of analyzing a piece of rightwing crackpottery without giving it more dignity than it deserves: How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas: The right-wing crusade against the liberal "war on Christmas" is great for rallying the troops. Too bad the war doesn't exist Salon 11/21/05.

She sensibly points out its roots in Old Right anti-Semitic drivel:

In 1959, the recently formed John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack. In a JBS pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas - to denude the event of its religious meaning." The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores, where the "Godless UN" was scheming to replace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

"The UN fanatics launched their assault on Christmas in 1958, but too late to get very far before the holy day was at hand," the pamphlet explained. "They are already busy, however, at this very moment, on efforts to poison the 1959 Christmas season with their high-pressure propaganda. What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations."

According to the JBS, this assault on yuletide iconography was "part of a much broader plan, not only to promote the UN, but to destroy all religious beliefs and customs." The pamphlet called on all Americans to fight back by informing department stores that those with improper ornamentation wouldn't be getting their business.

She gives a good survey of this year's manifestations that are already appearing. No doubt the good Christians at FOX News will be trotting this out again this year.

She writes:

The myth of the war on Christmas has two parts. The first, echoing the John Birch Society, charges that department stores are trying to replace the celebration of Jesus' birthday with some secularized, universal winter holiday season, a switch encompassed by the godless greeting "Happy Holidays." The second asserts that the ACLU and other groups like the Anti-Defamation League and People for the American Way are trying to ban public Christmas displays. Like all conspiracy theories, there are a few grains of truth at the center of it - some schools, in an overzealous attempt to promote inclusiveness, have taken silly steps like renaming their Christmas trees "friendship trees." Some have indeed infringed on religious students' First Amendment rights. Weaving these stories together, the myth of the war on Christmas claims that the ACLU has forced Christmas into hiding, and that Christians must therefore battle to reclaim their rightful place in the culture.

But this rending of clothing over the so-called war on Christmas is even older than the John Birch Society:

As the Web site News Hounds pointed out last year, Henry Ford was sounding the alarm about the war on Christmas in his notorious 1921 tract "The International Jew." "The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and other Christian festivals, and their opposition to certain patriotic songs, shows the venom and directness of [their] attack," Ford wrote. He listed local outrages: "Christmas celebrations or carols in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Paul and New York met with strong Jewish opposition ... Local Council of Jewish Women of Baltimore petitions school board to prohibit Christmas exercises ... The Council of the University Settlement, at the request of the New York Kehillah [Jewish leadership], adopts this resolution: 'That in the holiday celebrations held annually by the Kindergarten Association at the University Settlement every feature of any sectarian character, including Christmas trees, Christmas programs and Christmas songs, shall be eliminated.'"

For those not familiar with the seamy political side of Henry Ford, he was a dedicated Jew-hater. He published the archetypal anti-Semitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in America. Adolf Hitler praised him by name in Mein Kampf, making him as I recall the only American to earn Hitler's praise in that notorious volume.

But then, in an unwarrented burst of generosity to the loonies, she writes:

To compare today's "war on Christmas" demagogues to Henry Ford is not to call them anti-Semites. Rather, they are purveyors of a conspiracy theory that repeatedly crops up in America. The malefactors change - Jews, the U.N., the ACLU - but the outlines stay the same. The scheme is always massive, reaching up to the highest levels of power.

Why she was hesitant to call this nonsense anti-Semitic, given the material she includes in her article, I'm not sure. She mentions a current book written by FOX News' John Gibson, The War on Christmas (2005). So I checked it out.

Here are a few key quotations. I'll give the quote, followed by the nudge-nudge wink-wink translation of what most of his readers will take from them. Then I'll mention an obvious way to look at it which is unlikely to occur to those fanatical enough to believe in the "war on Christmas" anyway - much less persuade them otherwise.

The war on Christmas is worse than I thought - and perhaps than you thought, because it's really a war on Christianity. In all the dramas described [in this book] that have played out over bans on the public celebration of Christmas, the plaintiff's reason is always that Christmas is Christian, and symbols of Christianity can't be permitted in public places.

In today's America, one is hard-pressed to find instances of Judaism suppressed in the schools, or in the workplace. Even in a post-9/11 world, Islam is treated so tenderly that the traditional Polish Catholic enclave of Hamtramck, Michigan, altered its noise ordinance to allow local mosquest to blast the Muslim call to prayer from loudspeakers.(my emphasis)

What the Freepers hear: Yeah, the liberals are against Christmas because it's Christian, you know, did you ever think about that? Who do you think is behind all of this? Because you don't hear of any Jews getting treated the way Christians are, now do you? [Nudge-nudge, wink-wink]

What a normal person might think: Maybe some people object to government-sponsored celebrations of religious holidays.And since Christmas is very much a religious holiday, maybe it's not the fact that it's specifically Christian that causes concern. No, Judaism isn't "suppressed", but neither is Christianity. In fact, if Jews were to apply the Christian Right standards, they would say the fact that public schools don't require religious celebration of Jewish holidays - or may not mention them at all - actually constitutes religious persecution. And presumably, the good folks of Hamtramck haven't simultaneously outlawed the ringing of Christian church bells when their noise ordinance accomodated Muslim calls to prayer.

Gibson quotes an Anne Cutting of Eugene, Oregon saying that she didn't really like a popular yard sign that said, "Easter - Jesus, He Is Risen". She said that it seemed a bit "confrontational" and "messianic" for her own taste.

Then he writes:

Ms. Cutting needs to be educated (to use the parlance of liberals) and taught that free speech also means the obligation of others, such as herself, to tolerate speech they do not like.

Freeper version: Yeah, those liberals, they claim to be tolerant but they want to prevent anyone who differs from them from even saying anything. (And you don't hear them doing that to Jews, now do you?)

Normal person version: Well, I didn't see a word in Cutting's statement about banning such yard signs. She just said she didn't like them and why. Also, it's news to me that "educated" is a word particularly associated with liberals. Is that considered a politically incorrect word among the FOXists? Or maybe I should ask, do they consider it "politically correct" and therefore bad? I get confused in OxyContinLand, where "correct" mean "incorrect" and such things.

These two quotes provide good examples of a practice often seen in far-right literature, of confounding two different meanings of a common word or phrase like "tolerant" or "public places". Gibson says the alleged enemies of Christmas think that "symbols of Christianity can't be permitted in public places". What civil libertarians are concerned about is the promotion of religion on public property and in government programs. In ordinary speech, a city street is a "public place". I've been around downtown San Francisco - not known as a hotbed of Christian Right zealotry - during every Christmas season for a number of years. On many streets, every store has come kind of Christmas display. If there are people who want to ban such displays from any "public place" I've never heard of them.

His use of "tolerance" about Anne Cutting is another example. Tolerance in the political-science sense means that you don't want a certain action or kind of speech prohibited; that you don't want people put in jail for it. "Tolerance" in daily speech means that one accepts something as permissable or acceptable. Someone can be personally intolerant of bigoted jokes or foul language (meaning you don't respond positively to them, or avoid people who use them, or tell them to shut the [Cheney] up) and still "tolerate" them in the sense of not putting them in jail or beating the beejesus out of them.

Gibson also plays with the notion that America is a "Christian country". Again, in political-theory terms that most people who make it through high-school civics can grasp, the fact that a country is "Christian" in the sense of Christianity being the dominant religion is something very different than the government of the country being a religious government. Turkey is a Muslim country with a secular government, as was Iraq until the current war. America is a Christian country with a secular government, although the latter is being increasingly challenged.

I don't like the term "Christian country" or the old Pat Robertson favorite "Christian nation" as applied to the US even as a description. But it should be easy for anyone to tell the difference between "Christian country" as a factual description and "Christian country" as the nature of the government.

Gibson rants on about Cutting for several paragraphs. He says that in her hometown of Eugene there is a popular bumpersticker reading, "So Many Christians, So Few Lions". And he concludes that "it's open season on the constitutional rights of Christians".

I don't know what things may be like in the decadent heathen town of Eugene. But I live a few miles from Berkeley, and I don't ever recall seeing that bumper sticker around there. "So Many Men, So Little Time", that one I've seen. "Peace is Patriotic", that one, too. And maybe I'm callous and cynical. But Eugene bumpersticker he cites strikes me as bad-taste humors for something I would choose to display on my car. Yet it hardly sounds to me like "open season on the constitutional rights of Christians". (Although with the recent report of Iraqi prisoners being threatened with lions from the Baghdad Zoo, maybe it sounds more current and literal than it might have a couple of years ago.)

Let's look at a final Gibson quote:

When Jews practice their religion in public, does an Anne Cutting complain? Do we see objections to the yarmulke as "confrontational" or messianic" because we see Jews wearing it in public?

No. The complaints about religion being practiced in pubic are almost exclusively about Christianity. Occasionally, a Jewish organization like the Anti-Defamation League will object to a Jewish religious practice that is carried on under public auspices, but in my opinion the objection is lodged only to maintain the rhetorical standing to object to Christian practices. Thus,the ADL opposed school holidays for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur a few years ago in a predominantly Jewish school district. (my emphasis)

Freeper version: See how sneaky those Jews are? They protest about Jewish religious practices being sponsored by the government. But when they complain about Jewish practices, they are really doing it to stamp out Christianity. Got that? Those Jews, you just can't trust them.

Normal-person version: What the [Cheney]?

Now, I would say the technical description for this kind of thing would be "anti-Semitic crap". If that sounds too clinical or highfalutin, we could just call it "Jew-hating bull****".

But I suppose if the Republicans and the Christian Right can have a shooting war in Iraq based on lies, exaggerations and forged documents, they can imagine up a "war on Christmas" or Christianity or whatever and pretend to defend the holy holiday against the Jews that they fantasize are attacking it.

Tags: anti-semitism, henry ford, john birch society, john gibson, michele goldberg, war on christmas

Whining by the "defenders" of Christmas

The annual whine about how the liberals and atheists and Jews are out to sabotage Christmas has become as predictable an event as the anti-fur protesters showing up in the main shopping district of San Francisco the day after Thanksgiving.

Now, I appreciate seasonal traditions, up to a point. My problems with this one are (1) it's silly and (2) it's dishonest.

The caustic and funny James Wolcott (Christmas Kvetchers 12/18/04) points out both:

This "fear of Christmas" is a phantom menace conjured every year so that certain crybaby Christians can adopt victim status and model a pained expression over the sad fact that not everyone around them isn't carrying on like the Cratchits. This thin-skinned grievance-collecting gives birth to all sorts of urban legends and rumors about big institutions being hostile to Christ's birthday, such as the one that swirled on WOR radio last week about how Macy's employees had been instructed not to say "Merry Christmas!" to shoppers. A fiction that was put to rest when the host hit Macy's website and saw its "Merry Christmas" greeting, and Macy's employees chimed in over the phones to say there was no such policy. To read conservative pundits, you'd think everybody was wishing each other Happy Kwanzaa! and averting their eyes from oh so gauche Nativity scenes. I've got news: Even here on the godless, liberal Upper West Side [of New York City], people wish each other Merry Christmas without staggering three steps backward, thunderstruck and covered with chagrin.

As does CJR Campaign Desk: It's Christmas, and the Echo Chamber Is in Full Chorus by Paul McLeary 12/22/04:

Stories about banned Christmas carols and employers forbidding the use of "Merry Christmas" in favor of "Happy Holidays" seem to pop up each December. Over the past few days, however, the issue has been moved front and center by a hungry press, with stories popping up in the national media almost daily, and conservative television host Bill O'Reilly running a daily segment titled "Christmas Under Siege."

But wade through the wall-to-wall coverage of the story, and it becomes apparent that there are only a handful of examples -- three, to be exact -- being recycled in article after article. Many ofthese pieces use the same incidents in almost the same way. Some even hit for the cycle, as USA Today did today, referencing all three stories in one shot.

That was via Kevin Drum (Siege Warfare 12/23/04), who also comments on the "silly" part:

I'm accustomed to the annual fights over nativity scenes and giant menorahs on public property, but can we please knock off the "Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays" foolishness? Does absolutely everything have to be a political statement these days? In the past, I used these phrases pretty much interchangeably, but this year I suddenly feel self conscious about it. Don't we have bigger and better things to worry about?

Tags: anti-semitism, bill o'reilly, war on christmas