Although Christmas is supposed to be a time of wishing for “Peace on Earth,” like clockwork, the culture warriors at Fox News attack those who prefer the term “Happy Holidays.” Never mind that it’s a nice way of including other religions, such as Judaism, which have their own holidays around the same time. No, those good Christians at Fox News not only demand that everyone use the word “Christmas” in their holiday celebrations, they use the season to proclaim war against those who prefer not to. And yet, somehow the Foxies never seem to see the irony. Thursday night (11/5/09), Bill O’Reilly kicked off the season of good will toward men hostilities with Fox host Gretchen Carlson, who tied the resurgence of the word “Christmas” to the tea partiers. Fox News regular Margaret Hoover refused to join the fracas. With video.
As Priscilla noted during last year’s skirmish, the war on Christmas can be traced to white nationalism and anti-Semitism. It’s not a big leap. After all, it takes a special person to use a holiday season, not to celebrate its intended purpose, but to mount an offensive against other people for being too inclusive.
O’Reilly’s opening salvo was to gripe about the Governor of Kentucky proclaiming that the State Christmas tree had “morphed into the holiday tree.” “We were hoping this stuff wouldn’t happen this year but it has,” O’Reilly said. Oh, come on. It has become a tradition at Fox. It’s their special version of mistletoe – viewers can rev up their hatred for liberals every time they hear the word “holiday.”
Carlson, on the other hand, was overtly happy as a clam, or maybe that should be a lump of coal, to see the war begin. And she was already counting her first victory. She told O’Reilly, “Apparently calls like yours… changed (the governor’s) mind.”
Carlson continued by equating Christmas culture warriors with Tea Partiers: “I think that this is emblematic of what was going on this summer at the tea parties. I think that now Americans have the fight within them and they’re gonna stand up and they’re gonna be heard… I think it’s a new wave of democracy happening right before us.”
Hoover, however, was not joining the war party. Proclaiming herself a federalist, she said, “Leave it to the states… The bottom line, America is a pluralistic country We are multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-theistic. In order to all live together and get along, we’ve got to just get along.”
What a Scrooge!
Orignally posted on News Hounds.
