Thursday, November 16, 2006

Thoughts on The "War On Christmas"

Being able to write a long, complex narrative in your head in the shower has its advantages and disadvantages.

Usually, it means I can sit down at my computer, and bang out a post with little more than a proof-read, then sit back and watch the hit counter climb.

When I'm sick with a chest cold, however, the downside is I can cough that entire post right out of my memory with one good loogie.

Which is what happened here today. Nevertheless, the essence of a marvelously witty and ribald post remained firmly attached to my brainstem, despite the whiplash-paroxysms of coughing I've endured for your entertainment.

Ah, the muse! Ah, the suffering of the artist.

But I digress: Overmedicated on dextromethorphan and green tea, I soldier on. Time to get snarky...

This week saw the unveiling of the annual Lord & Taylor holiday...pardon me, Christmas windows on Fifth Avenue. Arguably the most beautiful display in the city, it hearkens back every year to a time when things were simpler: late 19th Century New York, usually. Horse drawn carriages dumping steaming piles of bacteria-laden manure in the streets, rosy cheeked children playing in the snow or under the tree before dropping dead from tuberculosis, mater and pater dressed in their holiday finest, starched collars and laced corsets before retiring to the bed chamber where they smoke opium...Christmas. The way it ought to be!

Or so some would have you think.

The first shot in the "war on Christmas" was fired Monday also, by Bill O'Reilly, when he praised Walmart for dropping "Happy Holidays" from its greetings in favor of "Merry Christmas".

Mind you, their reasons were purely commercial. And isn't the commercialization (read: secularization) of Christmas what "moron Christmas" numbnuts like O'Reilly and John Gibson were railing about in the first place?

One can only hope that, with the midterm elections behind us and the country poised to be safely back in the hands of Democrats, the "war" will fizzle out like a bad menorah, but my suspicion is Fox is desperate now, having beaten the tar out of the rented mule that is Iraq, and left it bleeding by the roadside. They want to re-energize their viewership base, and reanimate such dormant marionettes as Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity (who remarkably DOESN'T have a book out to flog this year), and the token closet case, Shepard Smith.

The animatronics department over at Fox must be sleeping.

Well, we here at Simply Left Behind are firm believers in Christmas, to the extent that we receive presents, and occasionally give them. And once in a while throw a prayer skyward, particularly when we have a bit of money riding on a ball game (yea, thanks a LOT, Billy Wagner...).

Since I would not want to be engaged in the "war on Christmas" by the "moron Christmas" contingent, I want to state publicly that I have drawn up a Christmas wish list for some of my favorite commentators on the right, based on my analysis of what they really need, rather than what they want.

See, I've always operated on the theory that, if you're worried about something, it means you've had some disappointment with it in the past.
Dear Santa,

Hi! How are you this year? I hope the Atkins diet worked a little, and that Dancer won't be hobbled when you land on my roof, like last year. I felt bad that he had to go on the DL for the spring training season with a sprained fetlock, but the damn contractor forgot to staple down that piece of cap moulding on the shingles.

Anyway, I'm pretty well taken care of this year. Aside from these nagging health issues, which I don't think you can really help, about all I really want is an underwater housing for my videocamera. The new one. Not the old one. But that's almost three thousand dollars and I would never even consider asking you for that.

You granted two of my wishes last year, the House and the Senate, and I thank you for that. I know God had a bit more to do with that than you did, but I know He talked to you about it after the near-miss over Sadr City.

So I don't want to be greedy and ask for anything for me. But I do have a list for a few folks that I'd like you to consider. I know you don't visit them often...you know that whole "making a list, checking it twice" business probably has you skipping the bad kids...but maybe these presents will help them become "good" again:

1) Bill O'Reilly -- A life-size G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu grip. I know that, around this time each year, Bill gets kind of randy, and is in real need of some lovin'. Since no woman would dare touch his splotchy body, and since he's square dead set against same-sex unions, I figure a, um, marital aid...or more correctly, martial aid...would help ease his loneliness, created by a mother who made him feel ashamed of who he really was, and turned him into an chest-puffing, wannabe-from-Westbury-but-calls-it-Levittown-because-its-not-as-Jewish blowhard. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.

2) Ann Coulter -- A pony. Ann, I know you were highly disappointed back up there in Connecticut with your daddy, and all. He felt that since he had provided the best for you that money could buy, he could stop being a father to you. It must have come as quite a shock when he missed your fourteenth birthday party-- you know, the one where you and little Susie played post office by yourselves?-- in order to pork the Gunderson's maid in the guest house, so I figure a pretty little white pony, with pink bows in its mane, ought to make up for lost time. Oh, and for your dad, a lifetime pass to any AA meeting. I can't imagine why he felt the need to self-medicate so often when you got older...oh, before I forget...Santa, if you're going to give her a pony, could you also include Catherine the Great's, um, harness? She might need like that...

3) Sean Hannity -- Sean, for you, I'd like to wish that we could go back in time, and you could confront that Latino biker gang that, um, you know....the bar on Northern Boulevard? I bet you were pretty scared, but I think if you had a man next to you, they would have left you alone. Too, you calling them "spicks" probably didn't help matters much. Maybe you could have finished college and done something with your life?

4) John Gibson -- What do you give the man who has nothing? A penis. Maybe this way you'll stop envying the rest of the world.

5) Pam Atlas -- It's no wonder you took on the mantle of "objectivism", dear, seeing as your major assets are your tits. Maybe your mouth. Sure is purty. Ms. Geller, knowing that you're Jewish and therefore at the forefront of the "war on Christmas," according to Gibson (The War on Christmas argues that "a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists and liberal, guilt-racked Christians, not just Jewish people..."), I have to give you something special.

A date with John Gibson. Before Santa grants him his wish.

6) Rush Limbaugh -- Now here's a challenge: how to give a thoroughly corrupt, whiny, jiggly tub of goo a Christmas present. I mean, when the truth of his private behavior comes out (and you wonder how much hush money he's had to pay out), Mark Foley will be able to run for Speaker of the House. He makes Jabba the Hutt look like Suzanne Somers! Rusty, like Hannity, I'm going to grant you a chance to travel back in time. Remember when your hamster died, and you got really upset? Well, I wish for you a mother's hug, rather than what really happened: your dad smacking you across the face, yelling, "You want something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about! David, get me my belt!"

7) Finally, to the crew of Orcs that did not make the list by name, I wish for you a high colonic followed by a blow job from the gender and/or species of your choice. I figure as badly as you suck, you ought to take lessons.

Thanks, Santa! Have a very Merry Happy Christmahannukwanzaakah!









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