Okay, that's just a little too convincing.

Dubya impersonator on Dennis Leary. The routine's just okay, but the guy...kinda skeers me.

And now for something completely different: fluffy kittens and bunnies.

In the spirit of Santa and little elves everywhere, or something, let's take a break from all these awful people doing and saying awful things.
Yes! It's time for a Cute Overload.



See? Already, that feels so much better.

In which John Gibson proves that he can be just as big a douchebag as Bill O'Reilly, so there, too

"Rob-Rob-Rob, stop right there-Rob-ROB-STOP-RIGHT-THERE!"





Yeah, Rob. What do you mean, Rob, by coming on MY show and criticizing MY book, Rob, which, Rob, not only has played a huge role in saving Christmas, Rob, but is absolutely A-100% Totally True, Rob, and not at all made up, Rob, how DARE you call me a liar, Rob!! ROB!! Wanna step outside, ROB?? Want me to sue you, ROB? HUH, ROB? HUH??? --okay, Rob, we're done. Gary. ROB.

actual transcript here, but, honestly, it's not that far off.

The Carpetbagger has an amusing postcript on that piece, with a cameo appearance by Rob Boston himself in the comments section. He used the occasion to plug his own book, "Close Encounters With the Religious Right." It looks like a rollicking read; I think I may get it.

"Chinese food and a movie."

Nu? Nu. Merry Jewmas.

Merry....um, fetus. Yeah.

Three women in Lawrence, Kansas quit their friendly local gym on account of they didn't like the Christmas decorations.

I can't imagine why.

Here's my question: if it were a holiday tree full of plastic fetuses, (which are Not Morbid! they're not at all graphic! they're cute, tasteful, women-and-children-affirming, apolitical fetuseses!) would the people currently supporting the gym still be so quick to defend? Hmm?

Overheard at the corner grocery

An older man, talking and gesturing animatedly to the bemused clerks:

"Tomorrow, there will be estrike. I will..."

(bends head down to the counter, makes deep sniffing noises; straightens up, whistles WHEE-whoo, flaps his arms)

"...I will estay home, snort cocaina, and that's how I get to work! Eh? No bicycle, I will"

(flaps arms and whistles again)

"...I will fly! Ha, ha!"

Saw "Brokeback Mountain" last night

It really did live up to the hype. It's devastating. It's also done without the word "gay" or "homosexual" being uttered once. I think "queer" comes up, once, early ("I ain't queer.") But then a lot of the movie is about just how much is said without words. In some ways I think it's about subverting the myth of the "strong, silent man" archetype as anything else. By the end you're aware of just how much soul crushing goes into the energy it takes to clench that jaw.



"You can't fix it, so you've got to stand it."

And there's nothing romantic about that stoicism, either. It's just awful.

It's possibly the first mainstream movie I've seen which lays out the profound damage that goes along with repressing such a fundamental part of your personhood--and not just to oneself, either. You can tamp down or even kill off your love and your longing, but you can't cherry-pick which parts of your heart will die in the process.

Also, brilliantly acted, stunningly shot--it was smart, and soulful. And sexy, very, even amid the starkness--in an adult, character-revealing way, too, I thought, het and homo scenes alike, which is very rare indeed. More of that, please, Hollywood.

DO THE CLAM!!

Cruise exchanges the secret exorcise-Xenu signal with his mentor/commander David Miscavige.

The accompanying LA Times article and photo essay reveal tidbits like the fact that the composer of the wuss-muzak classic "On the Wings of Love" is now scoring Scientology productions, which just makes sense in so many ways. Mostly it's about how Cruise spent major time at a 500-acre compound which includes a multi-million dollar mansion for the eventual return of L. Ron Hubbard (hey, even resurrected messiahs need their bling), among other amenities:

" Maureen Bolstad, who was at the base for 17 years and left after a falling-out with the church, recalled a rainy night 15 years ago when a couple of dozen Scientologists scrambled to deal with 'an all-hands situation' that kept them working through dawn. The emergency, she said: planting a meadow of wildflowers for Cruise to romp through with his new love, Kidman.

"We were told that we needed to plant a field and that it was to help Tom impress Nicole," said Bolstad, who said she spent the night pulling up sod so the ground could be seeded in the morning.

The flowers eventually bloomed, Bolstad said, 'but for some mysterious reason it wasn't considered acceptable by Mr. Miscavige. So the project was rejected and they redid it.'"

Sadly, no word on what happened to the little flowers after the break-up.

Oh, yeah, there are some other headlines you might want to check out while you're there, like how the Senate actually grew a spine and blocked legislation to renew the Patriot Act (for now), or how our Fearless Leader allowed as how he may have authorized wiretaps of the likes of you 'n' me, yeah, without court clearance (but, it was for our own good, terror9/11terror9/11, gollum, gollum).

Still, I think the story about Tom Cruise's guest stays at nanoo-nanoo Neverland takes precedence. After all, if the Scientologists are right, we're all at the mercy of 75-million-year-old alien ghost parasites clinging to us, and frankly that's a lot more dire than any trifling concerns we might have about our piddly not-even-three-hundred-year-old government, or the particular incarnations we're in now.

Also, if we join, we might all get to wear those matching green shirts, and that would be kick-ass.

"The Grinch Factor," or I Must Marry Rosa Brooks Immediately

Nail, hammer, THWACK.

"... 'The Who Christians will think that they fight the good fight,

They won't know that they're puppets of the Fox-ville Far Right.

They'll forget all that DRIVEL about faith, hope and LOVE

And say 'Merry Christmas' with a sneer and a shove.

"But I? I will prosper! My ratings will soar,

And maybe at last they'll forget I'm a BOOR.

Then for every Who Christmas tree

A most fitting adornament:

My O'Reilly MUG on the tackiest ornament!'"

***

read the rest at the LA Times.

No, this is not an Onion article.

But then, one finds oneself doing that particular double-take so often these days, does one not.

Still, I thought this one was especially special:

"President Says DeLay Is Not Guilty of Money Laundering."

"President Bush said yesterday he is confident that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is innocent of money-laundering charges, as he offered strong support for several top Republicans who have been battered by investigations or by rumors of fading clout inside the White House.

***

And he believes this because...?

"'I hope that he will [be cleared of the charges], 'cause I like him, and plus, when he's over there, we get our votes through the House,' Bush told Fox News's Brit Hume...

[Heh, heh, heh]

...

It is highly unusual for a president to express an opinion on a pending legal case."

***
No shit.

You know, I'm starting to believe that Bush's appeal, such that it is, is precisely because he comes off as such a hapless schmuck (when he's not being all Fearless Leader, of course). His fanbase likes it that he's gormless and pathetic; it makes them feel all tender and protective, the way you would about a falling-down drunk (oh, wait) who also happened to be your father. More to the point, it's comforting to know that no matter how pig-ignorant you are, the guy at the top of the food chain is just as clueless as you are, if not more so, and damn proud of it, too.

Just in case it wasn't abundantly clear by now:

"A Religious Protest Largely From the Left"

"Conservative Christians Say Fighting Cuts in Poverty Programs Is Not a Priority"


--Washington Post

"When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them.

That is a great relief to Republican leaders, who have dismissed the burgeoning protests as the work of liberals. But it raises the question: Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?


Conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family say it is a matter of priorities, and their priorities are abortion, same-sex marriage and seating judges who will back their position against those practices.



***

Later that night (tonight), 115 protestors of the screw-the-poor budget plan were indeed arrested.

***

The real news is of course not the uber-fuckheadedness of Falwell, Dobson, and their cohorts, but that the religious left--here represented by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, one of the most visible faces of the Christian left these days, heading up a joint effort of five mainstream Protestant and evangelical denominations--is making the news more often these days.

I'm currently wading through "Moral Politics," maybe a third of the way through. I'm sure that Lakoff would have a good, succinct explanation for the psychological and philosophical basis of the right-wing leaders' position here, who explain variously that poverty is not the government's business because "the government is not capable of love;" whereas "pro-family tax cuts" are a good thing (I guess there's at least some warm affection there, anyway). For now I'm sticking with my standby of "they are evil motherfuckers."

Although I do think that what Wallis had proposed the arrested chant while being led away (cited in the previous article) is more elegant:

"Woe to you legislators of infamous laws . . . who refuse justice to the unfortunate, who cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan."

Isaiah 10:1-4

Proposal: A truce in the Christmas wars, for to fight a common Enemy.

Speaking on behalf of the secular humanist Left (for we speak as one, and often in tongues), I've decided: the fierce defenders of Christmas may have a point. At least, I think there is one point where we may see eye to eye.
I speak, of course, of the abominations known as Christmas Carols.

Now, I'm not talking about the old-fashioned ones, the ones that actually mention Our Lord and are not, generally speaking, nauseatingly peppy. No, I'm talking about the unspeakable travesties that are contributing to the moral and aural decay of our culture every December (and a fair chunk of November and even January, for that matter). "Jingle Bell Rock." "Here Comes Santa Claus." "Frosty the Snowman." "Santa Baby." "It's the Most Wonderful Time Of the Year (Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong!)"
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Renegade Who's Been Crying and Drinking All Month Because His Family Refuses To Have His Boyfriend Over For Christmas And They Won't Make Rent This Month Because His Partner Got Laid Off And His Crappy Job At Walmart Isn't Paying Enough And Also He Has A Really Dorky Name." These songs are certainly not in the proper spirit of Christmas, in that they actually have nothing to do with Christ. More to the point, they're incredibly fucking annoying. And, they're EVERYWHERE.

I know I've been snarky about the self-declared Christmas Warriors in the past. I want to bury the hatchet--ha! whoops! bad choice of phrase, there.

...I want to make amends. I can see this your way, sure. And I'm not even asking you to, oh, say, focus your "put the Christ back in Christmas" efforts on helping the poor and the downtrodden instead of worrying about which platitude is mechanically muttered at the retreating backs of shoppers. Hey, I understand! Jesus was all about the consumer culture.

And so I think you'll follow me when I say that the single biggest threat to the True Spirit of Christmas is not the mall's call to Mammon or even the anti-Christian shops, but rather that damnable habit of playing secular "carols" over the intercom. After all, when you're at the mall, you only get the insulting "Happy Holidays" flung at you when you enter or leave certain stores. The carols are playing continuously. After a while, you might--almost--forget the music is even there, you've become so inured to its saccharine seduction. But the music creeps into your unconscious. It's insidious that way. The Enemy always is. Soon, you, too, will be singing to the dark side's loathsome tune, because it will be stuck in your head. For all eternity.

And, have you really listened to the lyrics of some of these songs? Take, just for an example, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year:"

...There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for roasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago...

Scary ghost stories! That's right: smack in the middle in what you thought was an innocent, fun song about the Christmas season, they're singing about the OCCULT.

And there's more, of course. Most of those songs from the forties and fifties weren't even written by Christians; they were written by Jew--ah, smart secular humanists from Hollywood, cynically out to make a buck on your beloved holy day. The more recent ditties, of course, are even worse. I'll tell you a thing: that Mariah Carey is no better than she should be. Anyone sporting that much cleavage is up to no good, and besides, I think that those super-high notes she hits are pitched to appeal to dark forces. Certainly they appeal to bats, which are close enough.

So, are you outraged yet? I would totally be outraged. These so-called "Christmas Carols" are a smack in the face to all true Christians. Smack back! Launch the letter-writing campaigns! Bring on the boycotts! If I were you, I wouldn't rest until every last sugary note and syllable is purged from the public airwaves.

I can see it now: the Crusades Against the False Carols. Eternal glory will be yours! Go! In the name of Jesus and all that's holy! Sound the trumpets of the LORD and CRUSH THOSE CAROLS!



...My God. What have I done?

What the hell am I doing here, part 1

Okay. So it's really frigging cold outside. I get that. Believe me, I do. All the same: it does not have to be this hot inside, does it? I swear to god, I had all the windows open, I finally turned on the A.C. because turning off the heat (much less adjusting the temp) is not an option in this place, unless I'm profoundly dim and just haven't found the magic switch these past two and a half years, which is always possible. But so anyway: in the few moments before I turned the A.C. back off (partly out of guilt for wasting energy, partly because the kickback that's no doubt from the pigeon shit that got into the vents as well as the dust damn near killed me), the temp reads at nearly 90, okay. 21 degrees outside. 90 in here. And I know people who aren't getting their heat turned on at all, so it sucks to complain about having too much, I guess, but: jesus, is there such a thing as a happy medium?

Mainly: NYC is just getting to me. I hate the crowds. More specifically, I hate crowds jammed into teeny tiny spaces, and thus against me, brushing up against my personal bubble or aura or whatever the fuck it is (not to mention my precious bodily fluids), it BUGS me. I hate the weather extremes. I hate that I feel like I'm coated in a thin layer of grime more or less constantly during the summer, and a good chunk of the winter too for that matter. I hate the dirt and the dust and the noise, I hate that I have headaches and can't breathe properly for at least 3/4 of the year. And mass transit is getting damn old, too, these days. Or maybe it's me ("it is I," fine, whatever) who's getting old. I don't know. All I know is, today, and for a while now: NOT. HAPPY.

And frankly, I never really gave that much of a damn about deli food.

Splutter! Splutter! Choke! Gurgle!

Those strangled cries of outrage and dyspepsia, Dear Reader, are the predictable reactions from the ranks of the freepers et al (no, I'm not providing a link. even I have some standards. find them yourself, if you insist. and Al, too, whoever he is) over--what else?--Brokeback Mountain.

I haven't seen it yet. I'm excited about it, but not quite as much so, I suspect, as my friend fastlad, bless him. Anyway, I haven't seen it yet, will probably go later this week. Meanwhile, though, I'm just enjoying the squawking about how awful it all is, where o where have our standards gone. Men touching! Men kissing! Men playing grab-ass without even a manly football to provide an excuse! Where will it all end?

And of course the part that's most upsetting is that they're not just any homos, they're COWBOYS. GAY COWBOYS. "Sodomite cowboys," I saw that one somewhere amid the foaming class boards, that was one of my favorites. "Hard to believe." It is, isn't it. Personally I make a point of believing six impossible things before breakfast each morning. Makes life a lot smoother nowadays. Poor little freepers; they didn't stretch and now their craniums are all hurty.

But so my theory is that what's really upsetting these people is, now they don't know what to do with all these stickers:



Yes, that was a real talking point/slogan/loogie last election. No, they weren't being ironic.

Well, we already know that Bush is manly and real. Real manly. Real real.

("Oh manly...you came and you gave without takin'..."

...sorry. wandered off for a second there. havin' a thing. okay, back now).


Anyway, if you have any of these freepers* (*used here as the generic term for a Type, Dear Reader) in your life, please...be gentle with them. They're feeling kind of fragile right now. Just nod and smile patiently, the way you would when your four-year-old is having a wee meltdown because some heartless seven-year-old told him about the Easter Bunny. (Or, you know, holler, smack them, or throw them out the window, or whatever it is you do--look, I'm not the parenting expert here, OKAY?)

Also? You may want to wait a bit before you break it to them about the Village People. That "YMCA" is such a fun, peppy tune for sporting events and parties, after all...



Swoon. My hero.

Street smarts

Over at the wonderfully to-the-point "What the hell is wrong with you?" there is a discussion in progress over the equally fine "Holla Back New York City," a website all about street harassment and how heartily sick of it most of us are. I'm just going to repost my comment there, here, because it's something I've been thinking about lately. Specifically, responding to the common whine "Jeeeeez, can't you take a compliment?"

Others observed, correctly, that making rude smacking sounds, saying "Yo, bitch! Suck on this!," grabbing a handful of body parts that do not belong to oneself, following a woman (or a man for that matter; it does happen) home, and similar are not behaviors that any sane person would tolerate, let alone feel "complimented" by, if she didn't feel intimidated--which is, of course, the whole point in these instances, to intimidate.

In the rare instance when the intention is probably not to make oneself feel more powerful at the expense of some stranger, but simply to, indeed, offer a compliment, well, okay:

Yes, it does happen. But. Whether it's a compliment or not is to be entirely decided by the person on the receiving end. If you're respectful and/or charming about it, you might get a polite or a warm smile; you might even get a number. At least as likely, though, you're going to get a frosty or hostile response. Even if your manner was friendly and your intentions were good, oh lord, you're just a soul who's been misunderstood.

Rejection. Never fun. And, you deal with it. Especially when you've made your move on the street. In this culture, you don't just go up and say personal things to strangers. You just don't. And I heartily recommend that anyone who's still going "but, but why? That seems so wrong. I just want luurrrrve" go check out the hollaback website right now.

Example of something I took as an actual compliment, the other day:

Man passing, holding grocery bags, clearly had places to go and things to do. Made a remark about the weather, as one does on this street, which is at least somewhat neighborly. I rejoined. He adds, as we turn to go on our merry ways, "You have beautiful hair."

I said, "Thank you." And that was it.

Personally, I'm not particularly in the market for compliments from men, especially random strangers, but no harm, no foul.

Note that not only was the response not "Oh God that makes me so hot please come ravish me right now," but it did not seem to me that the complimenter had that expectation, or indeed any expectation. That right there made the difference.

And still, it could well have been that I might have responded with silence or a stiff jerk of the head or even something ruder, and you know what? It would've been well within my rights to do so. It's New York. He still could've followed up with something creepy/threatening. Odds are that that would be the case, when such a remark is made. It was a judgment call based on subtle cues, the circumstances, my own mood. Mine to make.

It would be swell if we all lived in an atmosphere where casual compliments could be given and taken at face value, and where flirtation didn't have to be anything more serious or ominous than just that. If you want that atmosphere to be a reality, then I suggest you go out of your way to make it happen by setting an example. Learn about this shit. Learn some empathy. Learn some social skills. And if you do get rejected anyway: smile bravely and suck it up. Move on. It's life. No one owes you anything. Not even a pretty woman passing you on the street.

Speaking of people whose 15 minutes are SO over: Ann Coulter, ladies and germs.

"I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am."

Well, considering that she's the one getting paid five figures to insult people for under an hour and then garner even more attention through the martyred act (imagine that, a professional troll got heckled), she may have a point, about the "stupider." UConn must be feeling so proud right now.

Oh yeah, and also liberals want to rape her.


I am now wondering if Ann is in fact the undead skeletal remains of Andy Kaufman in aging coked-up debutante drag. If so: good show, Andy, but you can give it a rest, now. And yourself, and us, too.

Cthulhu carols!

Tidings of horror and woe!
"The Great Old Ones Are Coming to Town!"
I particularly like the peppy jazzy gospel-y sound.


I for one welcome the Great Old Ones, and merely request, humbly, that they eat Bill O'Reilly and Jerry Falwell first. Well, okay, and the entire Bush administration, and Mariah Carey, and--hold on, I've got a list...

Oh, faboo, Camille's back,

critiquing the played-outness of Madonna. Which, well, yes; but, also, um, hello, Ms. Pot, Ms. Kettle is on line 2 for you.

No, really, I like Paglia better in "laughably overblown pop culture critique" mode than in "repellant proto-Ann Coulter mode;" but still, honEY:

"My blood boiled at this insulting reduction of dance music to gymnastics -- mere recreational aerobics. I for one do not dance to dance music; disco for me is a lofty metaphysical mode that induces contemplation."

Fuck, me too.

She does at least aside that "(Of course, this may partly descend from my Agnes Gooch marginalization in the old bar scene, where I was -- as Nora Ephron would say -- a wallflower at the orgy)", so I suppose one could be generous and give her credit for some humorous self-awareness there. Personally, I still contend that she's a pretentious poop with an ego the size of the Crab Nebula, no matter how 90's style so-self-referential-I-may-disappear-up-my-own-asshole ironic she's supposedly being about it. I mean:

"Some journalists from newspapers and magazines that planned for reviews to appear, as is customary, at the release date were forced to make pilgrimages to designated offices for "listening sessions" (sounds like something out of a Hillary campaign), where they heard the album under controlled and presumably optimal conditions. This authoritarian strategy (which I rejected outright when Salon told me about it)"

Oh, go you. Paglia: perpetual fiery crusader against auTHORitah, from Hillary to the music industry's P.R. tactics. We can all rest easy now.

And, AND

"When I wrote in my polemical 1990 New York Times op-ed that "Madonna is the future of feminism," there were squawks of disbelief on all sides -- but that is exactly what came to pass over the next decade."

Uh huh. Because nobody--nobody!--else, certainly not in feminism, was "pro-sex" in the early 90's. Except Paglia and her fantasy snog Madonna.

Susie Bright had a fun little take on her, too, back in the day:

"Then, in 'Esquire,' Paglia flatly declared lesbians to be sexually and intellectually 'inert.' Well, you haven't gotten any in a long time, I thought."

--"Undressing Camille"

Later, Bright interviews Paglia, who'd first introduced herself by making a spectacle of herself in a bookstore: leaped out of her seat and interrupted Bright in the middle of a reading, thrusting her own reviews in Bright's face and shouting about how she was her "only friend in academia." The interview itself is telling. Bright keeps trying to pin her down, and Paglia keeps shifting from subject to subject; the main theme in her responses seems to be that while she luurrves Bright, just about everything else is grievously disappointing, (from S/M to "diesel dykes" to of course the entire feminist movement), and the reason she can't get any, one is drawn to conclude, is that she's just too damn rebellious, and, in her own words, "a new thinker, and I have the most comprehensive vision of sexuality in the world right now..."


This, she says to Susie Bright (who's a lot more diplomatic about her in the essay than it comes off from this snippet, p.s.)


My very favorite take on Paglia remains Molly Ivins' piece, "I am the Cosmos:"

"...Paglia's view of sex--that it is irrational, violent, immoral, and wounding--is so glum that one hesitates to suggest that it might be instead, well, a lot of fun, and maybe even affectionate and loving.

Far less forgivable is Paglia's consistent confusion of feminism with yuppies. What does she think she's doing? Paglia holds feminists responsible for the blizarre blight created by John T. Malloy, author of "Dress for Success," which caused a blessedly brief crop of young women, all apparently aspiring to be executive vice presidents, to appear in the corporate halls wearing those awful sand-colored baggy suits with little floppy bow ties around their necks.

Why Paglia lays the blame for this at the feet of feminism is beyond me. Whatever our other aims may have been, no one in the feminist movement ever thought you are what you wear. The only coherent fashion statement I cn recall from the entire movement was the suggestion that Mrs. Cleaver, Beaver's mom, would have been a happier woman had she not persisted in vacuuming while wearing high heels. This, I still believe.

...What we have here, folks, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit.

...One of [Paglia's] latest efforts at playing enfant terrible in intellectual cricles was a peppy essay for Newsday, claiming that either there is no such thing as date rape or, if there is, it's women's fault because we dress so provocatively. Thanks, Camille, I've got some Texas fraternity boys I want you to meet.

There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, she probably has PMS." Whereas if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, "Sheesh, what an asshole."'

--Mother Jones, October 1991

Progressive Christianity on the march

I have to say, this is really exciting me. It sounds like finally someone is picking up where MLK left off (or was made to leave off).

"Crosswalk America"

"CrossWalk America is part of an emerging Christian movement - one that joyously embraces the love of God, neighbor and self (Jesus' core values). We stand for:
• openness to other faiths
• care for the earth and its ecosystems
• valuing artistic expression in all its forms
• radical inclusiveness of all people - including God's lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (lgbt) community
• opposing the commingling of Church and State
• promoting the values of rest and recreation, prayer and reflection
• embracing both faith and science in the pursuit of truth

If you share in the spirit of these beliefs - Welcome Home! We invite you to learn more about CrossWalk America and our upcoming "Walk Across America 2006" by exploring further our web site."

***

Obviously I agree with what they stand for; but I'm especially interested in the idea of walking across the entire country. That's a move that's needed to happen, I've been thinking for a while. If you're going to march, then MARCH. I think I'd like to sign up, at least for part of it.

Thought for the day

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches* pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

--Thomas Jefferson

*personally i'd prefer a reign of actual witches, at least considering the ones I know; but, you get the general idea

All I want for Christmas is for you to STOP. WHINING.

It must be rough, being a right-wing Christian Republican right now. I mean: if you think about it, there's really no representation for you and yours in the public discourse. Look at all these left-wing troublemakers, with their criticism and their...criticism, trying to oppress the Republicans, just because they're in charge of all three branches of the federal government. It's hard work.

And, to add insult to injury, the secular humanists and atheists are trying to "take Christ out of Christmas." AGAIN.

Well, I for one am outraged at this harshing of majoritarian self-esteem. Hey, the standard-bearers of the One True Way are people, too! At least as much so as everyone else, and quite possibly more so! Stop hatin'. As Jerry Falwell points out, "Merry Christmas. It's okay to say it." And if you don't say it, he'll sue.

"What's my name? MERRY CHRISTMAS, that's my name!"

But, you cry, I'm not one of those valueless pagan atheists. I've got a perfectly good religion! It's monotheistic and patriarchal and everything! It's even based on the Bible! We have holy holidays around now, too! What about us, huh?

Well, Bill O'Reilly thinks you should just suck it up.

I'm going to go along with Salon's Michelle Goldberg in speculating that all this may be a sign that the Jewish/right-wing Christian honeymoon is over. Personally, it'd be fine and dandy with me. "Judeo-Christian," there's a bit of "p.c." for you. The actual translation of that phrase is:

"Okay, you people can tag along with the Big Daddy God 'N' Country/Kiddies Kitsch & Kitchens revival for a bit I guess, seeing as how we have enough other scapegoats for now and there was that whole embarassing genocide episode the last time the Jews were tag-you're-it, plus also we have a special place in our whacked-out prophecies for Israel. As for that part about the vast majority of actual Jews either converting or dying when Christ stages his big comeback (Jesus: He's Back and He's BAAAAD), wellll...we'll just cross that bridge when we get to it."

Addendum: Then again, of course, 50 Cent is a played-out schmeggege.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.