First-tier wingnuts have to stay ahead of the curve, and I regret there was no room at the inn for David French's piece at National Review, in which he beseeched the brethren join him in taking Christmas purism a step further:
This Christmas Season, Consider Becoming a ‘Santa Truther’
In her weekly column at Rare, my wife outed our family as “Santa Truthers,” those killjoys who don’t teach their kids that Santa is real, leaving Christmas to the story of Christ’s birth and the gift-giving to Mom, Dad, and legions of over-generous family members...
The story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?As French rises in the organization I expect National Review will offer a Roundhead Christmas Cruise on which passengers will swab the deck and eat gruel on December 25th. Then conservatism can be truly said to have triumphed.
Oh, c'mon, you know they'd be totally in with the monarchists.
ReplyDeleteThe War On Christmas started with THIS heathen atheist, aided and abetted by that notorious Christ killer Irvin Berlin!!!
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=3k_q_UMI3tQ
I said Merry Christmas just yesterday, and it took a whole thirty minutes for the drones to show up and transport me away for brainwashing. YOU'RE SLIPPING, OBAMA!
ReplyDeleteI think I'm losing the plot. I thought Santa Truthers were angry blonde women on Fox news who explain to black kids that whatever their hopes and dreams they will never grow up to be Santa. Now you tell me that Santa Truthers deny the existence of Santa entirely for fear that Santa and his evil "magical works based theology" will overcome Calvinism and sola scriptura? So Santa is Satan, and not a jolly white guy? I'm totally confused.
ReplyDeleteWhy muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?
ReplyDeleteAssuming this is the ol' works/faith dichotomy, French's version of Santa would give you presents or not irrespective of how you behaved. You just have to have a certain inborn quality to deserve it, and if you have it, it means you already deserve it. Trying to change that is just messing with the natural order, and likely stealing from people who deserve their riches...
Holy shit, Ayn Rand is Santa?
I was envisioning something about reindeer fragments found in the basement of WTC7...
ReplyDelete"The story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?"
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those self-annihilating switcheroo paradoxes, like the old showbiz lament, "I don't have an agent. I'm with William Morris." I'm, like, what if "God's grace" is itself a story of "magical works-based theology"? Or is that the hidden point? Damn, French, NOW who's playing eleven-dimensional chess?
Daddy, what did YOU do in the War on Christmas?
ReplyDeleteI assure you French is not playing eleven-dimensional chess. He can't even handle one-dimensional tic-tac-toe ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?
ReplyDeleteSo, wait, does he not believe in miracles or the resurrection?
I think a bare minimum of three are required, actually.
ReplyDeleteHanging out with your relatives, eating gross food, and listening to insipid music. Oh yeah, and the bars are closed. How can anyone hate the December 25th holiday?
ReplyDeleteThe "works based" refers to the war between Calvinists and Catholics. If you believe that faith alone (whichPaul declared was dead) will get you into heaven.
ReplyDeleteHis problem with Santa is that he is works based, that is, you have to be good to be rewarded.
Well, at the very least one can presume that the "inborn quality" that people have to have if santa is to give them presents is: money.French's Santa only comes to people whose parents and friends have money to give. Ergo: if you don't get presents on christmas its your own damned fault for being born into the wrong social circle. I think French may have found the real "reason for the season"--apparently its conspicuous consumption, right in front of Tiny Tim, of all the good things in life.
ReplyDeleteThe story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?
ReplyDeleteThank goodness there is NOTHNG magical about a story in which an angel appears to a virgin to tell her that the god of her people has impregnated her with himself, her husband believes the story, and astrologer-priests follow a star to bring gifts to the god-baby who is born in a feed stall while the birth announcement is given to nearby shepherds by angels in the sky...
...or she might have an inconsistent argument on her hands.
The story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?
ReplyDeleteOh go choke on loaves and fishes, you freak.
"Oh look, Hon-- the Frenches gave us myrrh. Again. (knowing glance)"
ReplyDeleteSanta, jolly old cold, merciless, ArchDuke of the North Pole, always in the midst of a worldwide game of Xanatos speedchess, conqueror and enslaver of the European Litllepeople's Front, buying the support of the next generation while doing high-level intelligence gathering in the domiciles and places of trade of the unwashed masses.
ReplyDeleteThe TRUTH WILL be EXPOSED, SHEEPLESS.
God rest ye angry, gentlemen,
ReplyDeletePrepare for the attack;
The liberals are coming soon
To paint your Santas black;
I saw it on Fox News today
So it must be a fact,
O tidings of screaming and spittle
Screaming and spittle
O tidings of screaming and spittle
To be briefly serious, I think that the Santa Truthers would parse that statement as 'magical, works-based theology'.
ReplyDeleteThese are the types of people who believe that no matter what you do, how many people you help, what type of cancer you cure, you will not get into heaven unless you pledge allegiance to the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.
And, downstream, Spaghetti Lee said the same damn thing a couple hours ago.
ReplyDeleteFudge.
When the Frenches go Caroling and come to the line about "Jesus Christ, our Savior", they stop, glare at the family indoors and shake their heads before continuing.
ReplyDeletethe god-baby who is born in a feed stall
ReplyDeleteIn December...
And is nailed (tied, more likely, but then you don't get a nice bloody cross) to a tree, dies, and comes back as a crazy mixed up zombie.
Although I admit I might be confusing religions, or movies, or both...
I can totally understand Christianists rejecting a theology that requires them to be good to claim the Big Reward. To paraphrase the old saw, it's not what you do, it's who you know.
ReplyDeleteI'd call the Christians the original Old Boy Network, except there was undoubtedly one before them. It's just too sweet a racket...
I believe only 2 are required for Tic Tac Toe, unless you play with real ticks, tacks, and toes. Which doesn't sound like a fun game at all...
ReplyDeleteFrench's version of Santa would give you presents or not irrespective of how you behaved.
ReplyDeleteBut would his Easter Bunny tell you where he buried Zombie Jeezis?
When Bezos low-bids that service, you won't last 15 seconds. And the White House will get Free Shipping!
ReplyDeleteI'm not even asserting the story isn't true. It's possible that it's literally true in part or full, and it certainly seems to contain important esoteric truths if one looks deeply enough, but regardless, as a STORY it is filled with magical elements and symbology, and to gloss over that while writing off other myths as fake or worthless because "magic" is ignorant.
ReplyDeleteShorter David French: Why not be a smarmy self-righteous sanctimonious fuck? Look at everything it's done for me!
ReplyDeleteUh...yeah. Yeah, that's a hell of an argument there, Dave....
Have you read any of Mr. French's writing? Trust me, he's not going to go out there and produce art for a bunch of looters and moochers without being properly compensated for it.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure French is one of those clods utterly lacking in imagination who can happily traipse around in a piece of circular logic for hours, repeating that every word in the Bible is the literal word of God and absolutely true, until you give up and hammer nails into your own ears. Which was the whole point to begin with: frustrating you until he gets his way. Dollar-store theocracy is just his method; he outgrew shitting his pants and holding his breath until he turned blue.
ReplyDeleteWe're staying home this year. Thick steaks, seared brussel sprouts, and expensive gin are all on the menu so far.
ReplyDeleteI had a hard time understanding why Gretchen Carlson got so bent out of shape about the Festivus pole at the Florida state capitol, because Festivus, with its airing of grievances, would seem to be SO up Fox News' alley. Perhaps they don't see a need for a holiday celebrating what they already do 24/7, 365.
ReplyDeleteAlso, too, as noted at my shitty little blog, while these brain dead tools have been whinging about an imaginary "war on Christmas," Christmas has been doing quite fine, thank you very much. To the extent that it murdered Thanksgiving, and somehow none of the folks at Fox seemed to notice the crime at all.
"I'm sharing the frickin Gospel with these frickin moochers just as Jesus frickin told me to and the approval of the Lord is all the frickin compensation I need," would be his reply, I think.
ReplyDeleteNo, Virginia...
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing a new war. David French's 2000-year-old superstition, vs. Megyn Kelly's 200-year-old superstition. The rest of us can sit back and watch, eating non-GMO gourmet popcorn.
ReplyDeleteIs this the beginning of a brussels sprouts subthread?
ReplyDeleteWell, shit. Based on the mdslet's obvious skepticism and probing questions last year, we were really uncomfortable dealing with his questioning this year. I mean, if you've been doing all the stereotypical Santa-based program activities, and your almost-five-year-old asks flat out, "Is Santa real?" Do you hem-and-haw, or just answer honestly? (mdspartner hemmed-and-hawed; I haven't faced the question yet.) One of the reasons I offered to the mdspartner for why honesty might be best? Her faith tradition, and desire to initially raise the mdslet in same. The stories of Santa, Jehovah, and Jesus have a way of sounding similar at times. Basically, I told the mdspartner, he's being set up to doubt the whole shebang if we try too hard to keep the Santa thing going.
ReplyDeleteOf course, since then, he's backed off on the questions ... ominously. I suspect he's already worked out his own ideas, and will be putting them into practice come the 25th.
TL; DR: I have found myself living in the progressive Christian mirror-world version of what French describes, only with some sort of hyper-rational, mercilessly intelligent alien little person.
Man, even Orwell never got to "Capitalism is communism."
ReplyDeleteAccording to my sources at Fox, Christmas was standing its ground when Thanksgiving threatened it with all those sharp knives which it claimed it was just using for dinner. Christmas really had no choice but to unload its red and green AR-15 and Thanksgiving had it coming anyway.
ReplyDeleteTsk. I can remember when you could be in liberal lock up in less than half that time for praising the acting of Mary Crosby.
ReplyDeleteAnd ground on with this.
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, it's easy for you to just blow it off; unlike a different brad, you weren't raped by brussels sprouts while broccoli pointed and laughed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he's backed off the questions because he's already figured it out, but doesn't want to mess up a good racket.
ReplyDeleteWhy muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?
ReplyDeleteLOL you can tell the difference? :)
Brussel Sprouts - pure manna - try searing the in foie gras or duck fat with just a hint of truffle oil at the end ;) - or not
ReplyDeletePeople freak out too much about the Santa thing. The kids will find out eventually, from friends or older siblings or stumbling across a newspaper article taking the piss out of 'Santa' in solidarity with all the shopping-harried parents out there (that may or may not have been how I found out.) Circle of life and all that.
ReplyDeleteYou could say that French is striking a blow for rationalism and skepticism. Or you could say he's an asshole urging parents to make their children cry for some bullshit religious thing. Based on his past behavior, I know which one I'm going with.
"Well, sweetie, I made it a point to deliberately and loudly say 'Merry CHRISTmas' at every store, and then I'd complain on the internet about any cashier who didn't say it right back."
ReplyDelete"What else?"
"What else? What else is there?"
What other kind of grinch is there?
ReplyDeleteI did `em for Thanksgiving, but differently than I've done before. Boiled `em for five or six minutes, just so they begin to soften, then sliced them in half and sauteed them in a little olive oil and pepper with about three ounces of finely diced shallot.
ReplyDeleteIt's a winner.
Dog-whistles tweet, are you listening,
ReplyDeleteIn the lane, snow is glistening --
An ominous sight, We're jumpy tonight,
Walking in a wingnut wonderland.
In the me'dia we can build a strawman,
Then pretend that he's a mortal threat....
He'll say: "Are you harried?" We'll say: "Yo, man,"
And every year we'll double down the bet.
Sounds nice, but I think I'll stick with nachos and beer.
ReplyDeleteAs somebody who was raised with no pretense that Santa was real, I have to say I've never understood the point of lying to your kids about Santa.
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's very nice to know that your family cares enough about you to buy fun gifts, and as for the Hogfather thing, isn't that a reason not to lie? I mean, if the story is the thing and the question of whether it's real or not is irrelevant, why not be upfront?
Nobody ever tried to convince me that the Power Rangers were real, but I still would've been excited if they'd showed up at my school. I always wanted to go to the mall and sit on Santa's lap because it seemed so Christmasy, and kids are good at and enjoy pretending. I still liked getting change for a loose tooth under my pillow even though I knew the tooth fairy didn't exist.
I guess I don't understand what people think the benefit of the lie is; it's fun for kids to dress up and watch scary movies on halloween even when they know there's not really such a thing as monsters, so I don't see why Christmas would be any different.
"one of the best ways to combat the Gramscian war on Christmas is to wish everyone you meet a a Merry Christmas! And if someone is 'offended' by this? TOUGH."
ReplyDelete"Offended" needs to be in quotes here? What exactly are these guys taught at Wingnut University concerning the rules for scare quote use? It certainly doesn't signify irony (ask a wingnut what irony is, he'll tell you it's those bastards who are going to blow Israel to the moon unless we act quickly). Based on use, I'm guessing it's mere shorthand for inarticulate growling.
Also, "Gramscian war"? Yes, please. I love it. I hope it becomes a thing. It makes me envious that conservatives don't have an intellectual history for me to riff on.
Like trex, I am relieved to learn that there is such a thing as non-magical theology.
ReplyDeletehammer nails into your own ears
ReplyDeleteImitation of Christ --ur doin it rong.
One-dimensional Go features in Dewdney's "Planiverse".
ReplyDeletethe brains of a drowned badger
ReplyDeleteAh, the cuisine of my homeland.
If you're a cashier and you get one of those customers, don't say anything; just look in their eyes and give a long, long, smile, showing lots of teeth. Take a long look at their credit card, and smile again. Then when they're finished paying, take out a notebook and start conspicuously scribbling.
ReplyDelete(EDIT: pls change "Yo, man" to "Yeah, man." Got tripped up by too much rhyming fealty to the original.)
ReplyDeleteJust say "Yes" I still do,and my kids are in their twenties. Now,they just shake their heads and go and get me a blanket and another eggnog.
ReplyDeletea ‘Santa Truther’
ReplyDeleteUnskewed North Poles!
"I was on the front lines, fighting my way through the Black Friday crowds to get my copy of Sarah Palin's Good Tidings of Great Joy, Motherfuckers."
ReplyDeleteSo there, now. There it is. Originally I thought the early Protestant thing against works was all those RC kings and big shots who tried to buy their way into heaven by large donations to the Church, and also out of disgust with the business of selling indulgences to the poor. That is, you were not to believe that works could get you into heaven.
ReplyDeleteFor French "works- based" apparently means something altogether different. Good works are to be eschewed because they interfere with God's will and God's justice which dictate that some people must suffer and.
This is the marriage of sanctimoniousness and stinginess. It's like the missing link. And it makes me think that Randian libertarianism is only this same old thing all over again, but simply failing or refusing to acknowledge its parentage.
conspicuous consumption, right in front of Tiny Tim
ReplyDeleteYou probably think you're kidding, but you're really not. One of my younger brothers, a card-carrying, Limbaugh-listening conservative, (although he recast himself as a "libertarian" in the wake of the Junior Bush disaster) sent me a link to this odious piece of commentary a few years back. On Christmas Eve, yet. He just can't understand why it seems to have further degraded our already existing not-closeness.
It'll be such fun when wingnuts start walking up to liberals and shouting: "You just hate Christmas because you're influenced by Antonio Gramsci, don't you?"
ReplyDeleteI want to put this comment away in a manger after wrapping it in swaddling clothes.
ReplyDeleteTurns out, those weren't knives: It was aluminum foil covering the leftovers. Both Thanksgiving was wearing a hoodie, so . . .
ReplyDeleteAnother deliberate omission of Benghazi? Think not we see not what we see not, sir.
ReplyDeleteThe acronym GMTA was invented for just these occasions.
ReplyDeleteWell, I didn't think I was kidding but the link you put in your comment put an end to any joking I might do today. I made the mistake of reading it over breakfast and I am going to have indigestion all day. What a horror show! I am truly, truly, sorry for you if this is the mental state to which your brother has been reduced.
ReplyDeleteHere's a representative quote showing how rapidly the writer dives from asserting that its Dickens who has a magical view of capitalism to demonstrating that he has one himself. He argues both that capitalists are philanthropists devant la lettre, whose greed and natural disregard for their fellow man ultimately lifts the starving masses above the water's edge and also that in any event if a man won't even do a little prostrate begging for charity he and his family deserve to starve:
Unaccustomed as Commissar Dickens is to the informal processes of the marketplace, we would not expect him to tell us anything about competitive alternatives for Cratchett’s services. Perhaps there are employers out there prepared to pay him a higher wage than he is receiving from my client. If this is so, then we must ask ourselves: did Bob Cratchett simply lack the ambition to seek higher-paying employment? It would appear so. At no time do we see this man exhibiting any interest in trying to better his and his family’s lot. Not even when the aforementioned businessmen arrive for their annual shakedown of my client, does Cratchett so much as suggest to them: "gentlemen, I have a son who is afflicted with a life-threatening condition, and if you would be so inclined to look upon him as one of the objects of your charitable purposes, I would be greatly appreciative." He can’t rise from his self-pitying position long enough to even speak up for Tiny Tim at a time when any responsible and loving parent would have jumped at the opportunity to plead his son’s case.
he's being set up to doubt the whole shebang if we try too hard to keep the Santa thing going
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much how it happened with me. Despite fulfilling all the criteria that cleared both Jesus and Santa to my four-year-old mind - that is, being read about in a book, seen on TV, and talked about by adults - I could not accept a reality where the former two were "real" and Spider-Man was not. "Hmm," thought Young Matt. "There's something awfully screwy going on here." Twenty years later, I become an atheist and a liberal and a stoner. See your child's future.
I know, I was referring to his disdain for magic, as if adding magic to the Jesus story would ruin it.
ReplyDeleteJust Netflix "Bad Santa" and get it over with.
ReplyDeleteOr, alt., pull your lapel close to your mouth and mutter something in incomprehensible code, starting with "Register C reporting."
ReplyDeleteWow. Their shameless ability to Make Shit Up when it comes to aggrandizing their victimhood is no longer amazing. But you have to admire the power of propaganda to make people deny even their own reality. I have a business acquaintance who lives in a neighborhood filled with Christmas decorations, buys his own decorations and cards in stores with big Christmas sections, goes into stores with banners announcing how many shopping days until Christmas while Christmas carols play endlessly on the in-store Muzak*, and so on. His kids make wreaths and ornaments in school that even use the colors red and green, etc. etc. Yet he believes everything he hears in Foxland about the War on Christmas. All of it. It really is awesome, but not in a good way.
ReplyDelete*Note to retailers: I don't care if you have a creche at every cash register, but if I hear that fucking McCartney christmastime song one more time I'm gonna start breaking things.
You seem surprised at this, Aimai. You must know by now that this is all part of a worldview that blames Cratchett for his family's misery, while at the same time providing a rock-solid justification for refusing Cratchett's request for charity for Tiny Tim (i.e., Cratchett is a moocher, helping Tiny Tim would simply encourage dependency, removing child-labor laws would allow Tiny Tim to perform piece-work at home, etc.).
ReplyDeleteRe: Megyn Kelly's absurd comment about the whiteness of mythical Santa or mythical Jesus, here's what I heard: "You liberals have forced us to give up our music, our sports, our TV shows, and even the Presidency to THOSE people, but they're not going to take our Santa or our Jesus!" Right-wingers have never outgrown the playground, so this was just one more juvenile possessive skree of "it's MIIIIIIINE!"
ReplyDeleteLater on, we'll conspire
ReplyDeleteAs we drink around the fire
To face unafraid
The gay-pride parade
Walking in a wingnut wonderland.
I want to express my esteem and gratitude for this comment by adding this final verse in tribute:
ReplyDeleteLater on, we’ll conspire
(Paranoids never tire)
It’s Glocks all around
We’re standin’ our ground
Walkin’ in a Wingnut Wonderland.
This.
ReplyDeleteHere's how I imagine French's inner dialogue of Randian discovery:
Let's see, I'm such a true Christian I despise Santa Claus.
I hate taxes.
I'm a prick.
Now, is there some ideology where I can believe that not helping poor people is actually compassionate, that universal healthcare is one more destructive hand-out, that disability benefits are theft, and that I'm still a righteous Christian even if I reject everything Christ ever said?
Wait! Here's one!
No, I'm not surprised. I'm pretty well aware of this strand in their thought since it is straight up Dickens' own representation of what Scrooge and his contemporaries thought. I'm just always amazed at their chameleon like ability to cloak their selfishness in a theory of what you might call collective charity while pointing a trembling finger at the evil, marxist, collectivism implied by, say, taxes funding public roads, schools and hospitals.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty horrified by the christmas music, even as I'm christmas shopping. Up until now I've always thought a given store could make a killing promising to let you shop in peace without the horrible theme music, but your post makes me think that they are avoiding being pilloried on Fox news or attacked by armed lunatics for not properly celebrating the birth of the prince of peace.
ReplyDeleteGramsci is the new Alinsky.
ReplyDeleteThe Marriage of Sanctimoniousness and Stinginess? Worst. Opera. Ever.
ReplyDeleteI was reading this thread out loud to Mr. Aimai while he does his kips in the morning (don't ask) and at this point he laughed so hard he collapsed on the floor and said that the comment thread at Alicublog must be what its like to work with a set of truly great comic writers writing for a sit com--all sitting around a long table and just spinning up jokes until some of them fit the plot.
ReplyDeleteMy brother built a "santa trap" by using our set if blocks, right outside the ring of light cast by our open bedroom door, so that if it were our parents coming in to fill our stockings they would trip over the blocks and wake us up. There's always a scientific kill joy at work in our house.
ReplyDeleteNew this year--this is the brussle sprouts thread, isn't it? Roast them with salt, pepper, and olive oil or butter in an iron pan and then sprinkle them with hot peppers and fresh orange zest. Its quite amazingly good. Had it that way at a local italian restaurant and it blew my mind after years of roasted with bacon and garlic, roasted and dressed with maple and mustard, roasted and and and.
ReplyDeleteThere there, brave wingnuts... in just four short months the Easter Bunny will be rolling away the stone and proclaiming the Good News!
ReplyDeleteI looked at the size of the chimney on our house and the 8" diameter stovepipe that fed into it. Even at five my head wouldn't fit through it; no way was a fat guy going to. How would a sleigh stay balanced on a roof whose pitch was too steep to walk on, anyway? And the schedule didn't work at all.
ReplyDeleteOf course, my family's German habit of opening presents on Christmas Eve and sleeping in on the 25th (a far more sensible tradition, I believe) hadn't exactly predisposed me to believing in a mysterious elf.
So... does all this mean the community bake sale to help Tiny Tim get his club foot fixed is still on? I just can't keep it straight anymore whether the poors should be denied ALL help in order to foster self reliance, or just the tax-supported kind.
ReplyDeleteWhat shocked me was the news that liberal PC thugs of the Anti-Christmas Gestapo have managed to infiltrate our noble homeowners associations! If HOAs -- in my experience the most bourgie, reactionary, status-obsessed defenders of the Great God Property imaginable -- are no longer safe, what hope is there for the true sons of liberty?
ReplyDeleteAnd most Libs really don't care about either one-a them guys...
ReplyDeleteKids are naturals at make-believe, as I'm sure you know. Adults have had to give up pretending they're going to be an astronaut or a superhero or a princess or a wizard. They've probably had to give up the idea of being a fireman or a ballet dancer or a movie star or a racecar driver or a painter or owning a dozen horses.
ReplyDeleteSanta Claus is one of the last refuges where an adult can play make-believe. How precious is that?
Tell your little alien the truth. Santa is totally pretend, but he's so much fun to pretend in that grownups will go along for the ride.
it's fun for kids to dress up and watch scary movies on halloween even when they know there's not really such a thing as monsters
ReplyDeleteWait. You've told your kids that monsters aren't real?
Even at five my head wouldn't fit through it
ReplyDeletePlease tell us the end of this story involved a call to 911 on Christmas Eve.
People with more children than me (that is, >0) tell me a good answer is "What do you think?" which can then lead into the discussion about how stories are fun or how just because it's pretend doesn't mean it isn't real, or how life is all about having your illusions brutally shattered so better get used to it early. Your choice.
ReplyDeleteIf you buy the frozen ones you don't need to boil them, since the freezing process will tenderize them for you. The fresh ones actually don't have a good shelf life, and the frozen ones are typically processed within a couple hours of harvest. Let 'em thaw, split them, and go to town. I will endorse the duck fat, though. That stuff should be a controlled substance. I used a couple ounces in some mashed potatos this past weekend. Fabulous.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those interesting twists in modern American Christianity once it was crossed, in a test-tube, with Ayn Randian selfishness and Calvinist pre-destination. The reason given by (some) modern Evangelists that taxes are bad is that they put government in the place of god and they take the merit out of giving as believers are denied the chance to choose (free will) to be charitable and instead are forced to be charitable. The community bake sale is still on, but must not be done in an organized and efficient manner and the resulting money must not be doled out in an abstract or equitable way. The giver must choose to give---and not till it hurts, either--and the recipient must be carefully chosen so that others might not be encouraged to depend on the kindness of strangers. Honestly, reading this stuff, which they find so self evidently true, is like diving down a combo rabbit hole and lower intestine. Its dark and twisted and you end up in a reverse wonderland.
ReplyDeleteRandian libertarianism is chop-shop Calvinism: the serial numbers have been filed off, God has been pulled out and substituted with A=A pseudorationality, and a studly male lead gets the Jesus role. Howard Roark even sacrifices his freedom and career and is resurrected, for crying out loud!
ReplyDeleteBoth ideologies are frontal-lobe justifications for a primitive mammalian impulse: shitting all over lower-status members of the tribe/pack.
My favorite new wrinkle is the argument that Scrooge wasn't really a capitalist at all, because he wanted government to pay for workhouses and prisons. Aside from the obvious fantasy of Randian fantasy capitalists who never stoop to accepting government money, it's not even accurate (Scrooge never says government should do it, only observed that it does).
ReplyDeleteSadly, I had to make the test using a spare piece of stovepipe, as the woodstove was usually lit...which was in itself a pretty good argument against Santa (and any presents) venturing through it.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the focus on economics (I've seen other columns like this) allows them to avoid Dickens' point that the capitalist system works better if the people in charge aren't enormous, selfish tools. Because that's virtually the same as calling for the Commies to take over.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, how are you going to explain politics and capitalists to them?
ReplyDelete"Thank goodness there is NOTHING magical about a story in which an angel
ReplyDeleteappears to a virgin to tell her that the god of her people has
impregnated her with himself..."
Best alibi EVAR!!11!
Oh, dear God: this guy was one of my wife's professors in law school 20+ years ago.
ReplyDeleteI think that I may fire my own salvo in the WoC and celebrate the life of one of the true mad bastards of film by watching The Ruling Class on 12/25.
ReplyDeleteOur method is to get fresh ones, cut in half, mix with fresh cranberries and cubed sweet potato, a generous bit of melted coconut oil, then roast. Gets rid of the need for a disgustingly sweetened sweet potato dish, and tasty!
ReplyDeleteFrench had an earlier column where he shook his head sadly about how government programs to help the poor are reflections of the liberal refusal to acknowledge the universal depravity of human nature, which will obviously find some way to game the system to get away with sinning at taxpayer expense.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, he pointed out, when a private citizen like himself took it upon himself to help some poor person, he made sure they toed the line right smart before getting their handout, and so learned the most important lesson that would allow them to succeed in life: the golden rule, that who has the gold makes the rules (he didn't put it quite that way, obviously).
At no point did this pious Bible-believer, for all his eagerness to apply the most literal lesson about original sin, come within a light-year of considering the remote possibility that if human nature is universally depraved, that applies just as much to himself as to the object of his charity; and that if government programs must inevitably fail because the moochers will sinfully exploit them, private charity projects like his will inevitably fail because King Me, the source of all benefits, will turn into an insufferable, flattery-demanding tyrant.
There's such an enormous gap between Jesus's preaching and behavior towards the poor and Paul's. The poor and sick in the Gospels are not lazy bums who need to be exhorted to work harder--they are blind, or lepers, or tax collectors, or whores who need to be touched, fed, and communed with. To become wealthy and self supporting is obviously not Jesus's end goal for his people since he tells the richest to give everything away and concentrate on fellowship not on things.
ReplyDeleteBut once you get to the setting up of little proto christian communities you get Paul and the others wrestling with how to keep the sex fiends, widows, and moochers out.
Uh..oh.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't it be "stalking in a wingnut wonderland?" At any rate: kudos and hommage to all.
ReplyDeleteMy older brother was never convinced by the Santa myth, so my parents never tried to foist it upon us. When she was in kindergarten, my sister was asked by her teacher what Santa would be bringing. Her response was, "Santa doesn't exist." Not content with that, she turned around and addressed the rest of the class, "You're all a bunch of stupid babies, and your parents are lying to you!" The teacher had to hustle her to the principal's office just to get her out of the classroom (I imagine she had to pacify the other kids with snacks and juice, followed by early naptime afterward). There were parents who didn't talk to my mother for years after the incident.
ReplyDeleteGood times!
"Simply making, mortimer go insane."
ReplyDeleteI'm just always amazed at their chameleon like ability to cloak their selfishness in a theory of what you might call collective charity while pointing a trembling finger at the evil, marxist, collectivism implied by, say, taxes funding public roads, schools and hospitals.
ReplyDeleteAfter paying handsomely to have it repeated to them as objective scientific economic research of course they intend to use it.
This is why I love this line so much: "Finally, Christianity supports the traditional, nuclear family."
ReplyDeleteYeah, the one with two dads, a holy spirit sperm donor, and a virgin. Loads of tradition in that one.
Loads of tradition in that one.
ReplyDeleteFTFY
"Charles
ReplyDeleteDickens – writing at the peak of the industrial revolution – missed
this essential feature of the period. To those who view wealth in
such a limited way, the only question becomes "how is this
fixed body of wealth to be most ‘fairly’ redistributed?" The
question of "how can more wealth be created?" – and what
conditions would be necessary for accomplishing such ends – never
enters their minds, for the pursuit of such conditions would utterly
destroy all socialist systems."
Jesus... they just can't let this one go, can they? At any particular time in the life of an economy, there actually IS a "fixed body of wealth", unless you want to start printing money. If Scrooge's business was shipbuilding, or railroads, or widget production, any competition seeking to establish itself in any of those areas would succeed only at the expense of Scrooge Industries market share, or profit. Similarly, you can't increase the customer base while maintaining each individual's buying power without inflating the money supply or redistributing some of Scrooge Industries profits out into society. This whole avalanche of words by Shaffer sounds like another one of those Libertarian thought experiments where if everyone could just work hard enough and innovate, then by God we ALL could have a rainbow unicorn that farts glitter.
It's funny how the wingnut concept of Santa is a guy who can travel tens of thousands of miles in one night, and fit down tiny chimneys, but can't change his skin color. YOUR MAGIC IS WEAK, WINGNUTS!!!
ReplyDeleteWe usually drink on Christmas Eve and sleep in on Christmas. One year, we didn't even get around to opening our presents until Boxing Day.
This is why great literature is lost on wingnuts, and it's also why mediocre literature grabs them.
ReplyDeleteDude writes a fucking thesis on the various ways that Scrooge has been abused and maltreated by Dickens because all he can see is that people want to get their hands on Scrooge's money, and of course this was not Dickens' point at all. At no point in the story is Scrooge compelled by law or violence to part with any of his hoard. Dickens merely accurately ascribes to Scrooge his own actions and thoughts.
No, what the story is about is what the love of that money to the exclusion of all else has done to Scrooge, and according to Dickens, it's not done him any favors. He's disconnected and isolated from the rest of humanity, and he's full of miserable feelings as a result. He has no real moments of joy because he's always on the alert to protect his precious hoard of wealth. He is, in short, living a cramped, miserable existence as the result of shunning humanity so that no fellow-feeling will get in the way of accumulating more.
All of that not-really-all-that-sub-subtext has flown right over their pointy little heads; all they can see is that Scrooge is a rich guy so if he's being nice rather than insisting that everyone line up to literally kiss his ass, socialism. Meanwhile, they're big fans of Rand because she was about as subtle as a sledgehammer, which is also part of what made her a really shitty and ponderous writer.
Wingnut Jesus produced those loaves and fishes using the Free Market, and made the assembled crowd pay five shekels a portion.
ReplyDeleteI'll never forget the feature in the late, great Spy where they calculated out the speed Santa would have to travel to get it all done; it was illustrated with a drawing of what he and the reindeer would have looked like as the heat from the friction of such speed of travel melted the flesh off their bones.
ReplyDeleteNow, now, if you'd read Clarke, you'd know that it was sufficiently advanced science! Now, for your War on Christmas reading pleasure, here's The Star.
ReplyDeleteNow that Shaffer is through defending Scrooge, it'd be interesting to see what he can do for Smaug...
ReplyDeleteYeah baby! You gotta enlist those soldiers in the war on Christmas early. I'm with you, it's not cool to lie to kids, even if it's cute.
ReplyDeleteSmaug embodies the wingnut mantra "Nuke their ass and take their gas".
ReplyDeleteFlame their hold and take their gold?
Of course, he ignores the fact that, when Scrooge hoards his money, he makes exactly one low-paying job, while at the end of the story, when he has (SPOILER ALERT) had his change of heart, he engages in a flurry of economic activity.
ReplyDeleteIt's a perfect illustration of Keynesian economics.
Tax-supported safety nets weaken the power of the churches, and reduce discrimination against "unworthy" recipients of help (blacks, sluts, non-believers, queers, and slutty black non-believing queers).
ReplyDeleteGame of Sleighs?
ReplyDeleteSanta Isreal!
ReplyDeleteIs David French related to Nancy French, Sarah Palin's ghostwriter? If so, he's preaching something radically different than the blather his wife wrote for Princess Dumbass, who seems to think that shopping at Wal-Mart keeps the Christ in Christmas.
ReplyDeleteGramsci? Wait until they discover Gracchus Babeuf!
ReplyDeleteVery provocative story, thanks. You have to admire how much world-building and pathos he's able to achieve in four pages.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago our son's plane was grounded in London for Christmas, and he didn't get in until 12/26, so we just changed the date of Christmas.
ReplyDeleteThanksgiving gave a shout-out to its homie, Hannukah, and Christmas was outnumbered.
ReplyDeleteBenghazi is in the second verse.
ReplyDeleteDollar-store theocracy
ReplyDeleteThose big tall (white)Jesus(white)milk glasses have to be the religious icon from Hell.
Is "icon" the right word for those things? Maybe "Theogeegaw" would be better...
Way of the world, innit? Everyone's in favour of being good in theory - and then when they're actually put to the test, they protest, with every sign of earnestness, "but you don't understand! It turns out that if I do all those things I claimed I'd do, it might actually cost me something!"
ReplyDeleteYes! Even if you can't feel happy for the relatives he bought presents for, at least rejoice with the hard-working store owners that he bought all those presents *from*!
ReplyDeletePlus, also, externalities--who pays for them, and from what pot of money or what life chances? When your corporate overlords poison the land and water on which you are trying to raise your kids on the skimpy salary they pay you they are stealing from the "fixed body of wealth" that belongs to the entire community--something that becomes obvious when we freak out if a foreign power does the same thing as an act of war.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny to read the part about the cashier at Whole Foods who had the gall to correct Althouse about the holiday bag she was carrying. Althouse is somehow acting like Whole Foods is some bastion of liberalism, when just the opposite is true. The Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, is a hard core libertarian and anti-ACA nut, who is extremely pissed at Obama for making him provide decent health care insurance for his employees. Except for obsessive compulsive weirdness about proper words to say when greeting others in the month of December, they are in perfect ideological alignment.
ReplyDeleteYes, the point of Tiny Tim isn't merely that charity can give the kid a crutch. Its that love of even a worthless, crippled child, has made that child's family richer than Scrooge on an emotional level. Although they have nothing material, less than nothing, they prize their relationships with each other and they mourn the loss of the child that Scrooge and the other materialists think of as worthless because not a worker.
ReplyDeleteIndeed they are, and in googling this, I encountered this blog post
ReplyDeleteAnd, um...
Are my husband and I Republicans? Yes. And we also love our little black child. I’m learning, for example, how to braid hair with colorful beads, I’m learning which colors look good against her chocolate colored skin tone, and I’ll teach her about her country of origin right after she learns her ABCs.
Ho Lee Fuck. Enter the era of the Trophy Black Child. I shudder to think what that poor kid's life is gonna be like...
Also, and must we go over this again for the slowest Law Professor in the class, the reason they went for the generic "holiday" theme is that it enables them to use up the bags between Christmas and New Years. Thrift, thrift, horatio, will coldly furnish forth the holiday feast.
ReplyDeleteA link that is worth following for Misandrist Christmas Carols:
ReplyDeletehttp://the-toast.net/2013/12/16/misandrist-christmas-carols/
"hear that fucking McCartney christmastime song"
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard that song,(for the first and I hope, the only time) I celebrated. I thought the War on Christmas had been fought on to Victory!
Woah! Takes me right back to this period in our lives. I don't think we ever told the kids anything about Santa, to be honest, but I do seem to remember that other parents were anxious to find out whether we were going to join in the fantasy for fear that our little darlings would tell their little darlings. Reminds me of the time I found out that my 6 year old (?) knew all about the egg, sperm, penis and vagina when I'd been tryign to hang on to some euphemisms.
ReplyDeleteCheeseburger 'n Pepsi. Traditional Greek (or in my case, Polish-American) dish. Though for Xmas I'd substitute Clausthaler N.A. If I could find any...
ReplyDeleteEverything you say is true, and put well. Thanks for the mammalities.
ReplyDelete"Unskewed North Poles!"
ReplyDeleteWhat on earth are you talking about. The very first successful expedition to the pole used skis!
oh shit, its this iteration of American's worst mother? I think I read a piece she wrote about her daughter's cute boots and materialism which is ok for a deprived child from ethiopia. Her fetishization of her own perfection with the hair and dress choices is pretty rank, and its one of the only ways she can address race in this country. I am very, very, curious to see what happens when her daughter grows up and the actual racism of this society becomes evident, even to the Frenchs. I think its very easy to see yourself as a culture warrior for "white people aren't racist" when your task is simply to bring a cute orphan child to jesus in your home. But in the long run I doubt very much her christianist community will be all that accepting of her daughter as a marriage partner or, if she starts to identify as AA. This happened to some friends of my parents who adopted a child from India in the 70's--and found that for lack of other people of color in her life she identified as AA when she was in high school. Its not that they were anti black, its that they thought their white privilige would extend to include their adopted daughter and she would be able to live life in the US as an honorary white. They were quite naive.
ReplyDeleteOut here we sing
ReplyDelete"I'll get stoned for Christmas!
You can count on me.
I-502 passed right on through,
By a large ma-jor-i-ty!
Christmas day will find me,
Toking by the tree!
I'll get stoned for Christmas,
And for the first time le-gal-ly!
Yes, for the first time, le-gal-ly!"
What about just telling the little brat: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, lid. And the same goes for reindeer.
ReplyDeleteAnd we all know why mooses have never been employed, or rather, kidnapped into slavery, to pull a sled. Mooses are free!
And Christmas lights and decorations are the last true folk art in America.
ReplyDeleteWhat, shoes are Old Tech? Yeah, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAlt alt: set a fake "red" plastic card reader next to the real one, look the customer in the eye, and slide it through slowly, letting a hint of a smile play around the edges of your mouth (this takes practice), hand it back, and wish the customer a *very* nice Xmas.
I love how he lectures Charles Fucking Dickens, 150 year out, on the "reality" of the Industrial Revolution, how one of the most popular writers of the 19th century somehow missed the entire story of the age he lived in. Jesus the hubris of this asshole.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway I would like someone to explain to me why redistributing wealth fairly would "destroy all socialist systems" but not fairly distributing wealth based on the labor performed won't destroy a capitalist system.
Along the same lines of how the point of the Good Dr's book was not that the Grinch stole Christmas, but that the Whos kept it anyway, because the Grinch, like Conservatives everywhere, just doesn't get it.
ReplyDeletepulls up chair
ReplyDeleteYes, go on?
Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a little bit worse.
ReplyDeleteA møose bit mï sister once.
ReplyDeleteThis is the age of tabloid thinking, which presumes that if allegations rise to a sufficient level of heinousness, no defense is conceivable, not even the defense of "innocent of the charges alleged."
ReplyDeleteHence, "Liberal fascism", and HitlerHitlerHitler!".
Jayzus, the lack of self-awareness on the Right is sometimes literally ungebelievigable... .
Santa was always the bastid who brought shirts and pants, the things the child welfare laws required our parents to provide. The parents took credit for the fun gifts.
ReplyDeleteI would like to man the arbalests and siege towers with this comment.
ReplyDeleteMoose bites can be very nastii.
ReplyDeleteNothing, not even that McCartney rubbish, is as bad as The Christmas Shoes. That's the one that made me want to go kill a motherfucker.
ReplyDeleteIf Mozart had written an opera akin to Andy Warhol's Eat. Forty-five minutes of a sullen, resentful Puritan couple sitting in a bare room, glaring at each other. No singing. (Hey, I think I like Performance Art Mozart!)
ReplyDeleteActually, the North Pole does have to be unskewed every so often, as recently happened at Oakland airport:
ReplyDeletehttp://gizmodo.com/why-we-renumber-runways-when-the-earths-magnetic-field-1482779621
Revising William Blake is a job for professionals.
ReplyDeleteAdults have had to give up pretending they're going to be an astronaut or a superhero or a princess or a wizard.
ReplyDeleteYou'll get my self-delusive fantasies when you take them from my cold dead hand.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NgPWACaq8qo/Up_ixHElQCI/AAAAAAAAOHA/1bmbtBZXzKw/s1600/santa.JPG
ReplyDelete"Rare Exports" also too.
ReplyDeleteWell, I had to look up The Christmas Shoes. I somehow have never heard of it, much less heard it, so God may in fact exist (although that would also mean you are doing Satan's work by bringing it to my attention...). Man, a crappy song apparently based on a chain email (of course), and which in turn inspired a TV movie starring The Original Sextape Guy (TM), Rob Lowe.
ReplyDeleteWow!
No, his wife is preaching something radically different from the blather she wrote for Princess Dumbass:
ReplyDeletemy wife outed our family as “Santa Truthers,”
But she is under no obligation to believe any of the crap she writes for Palin, any more than Palin is expected to believe it.
Via Pupienus @SN, we learn that the whole "War on Christmas" is largely recycling tropes from 1920s antisemitism, so Palin / French's latest book probably didn't take too much effort to write.
Gramscalinski! Stronger than its separate halves! Unstoppable!
ReplyDelete"As French rises in the organization I expect National Review will offer a Roundhead Christmas Cruise on which passengers will swab the deck and eat gruel on December 25th. Then conservatism can be truly said to have triumphed."
ReplyDeleteI've said this before and it looks like I'll say it again: to conflate the Puritans with modern-day righties is to do a huge disservice to the Puritans. The Puritans were intelligent, book-learned people, they were precursors of the 19th-century Abolitionists, and by God they were earnest. Those of them who were not born into the educated classes educated themselves and were willing to educate others, because for them a bare minimum of human existence involved knowing how to read and write. (Their position was that it was necessary at least to be able to read, if not write, in order to have access to the Scriptures.) They would totally have understood the rationale behind a footnote — they invented proof-texting so all their arguments could be demonstrated to withstand the test of the Book. They knew their way around a citation. Those of them who didn't possess great learning revered it, and their standards for "great learning" were high. If Beck or Althouse or Coulter or Goldberg*et al. had spent any time around that crowd they would have ended up crushed. Crushed, demolished, flattened, atomized. The Puritans would have annihilated them gleefully and with a good conscience. They would have done it in the name of the Lord. "The Lord is not mocked," they would have said.
And if the Puritans were eager to impose their rules on everybody else (they were) they were equally eager to live by their own rules (yes!!). They didn't invent their rules as a pretext to ride herd on a proletariat while they themselves lived off their dividends and lounged around a pool nibbling
pâté. They accepted life as a hard task which was imposed on everyone alike, no exceptions allowed. The idea that there should be an elite set apart the trials of existence was abhorrent to them — that's why they didn't like convents or monasteries and why they objected to the Catholic notion of the priesthood — and they hated Royalists. Contrast, if you will, with the modern-day righties, for whom the much-longed-for plutocracy figures as the New Jerusalem. No, I don't think the comparison holds up.
You've got it backwards, Mr. French. Santa exists. Here is a photograph of him. (Yes that's me.) Now show me a photograph of "God," Mr. French.
ReplyDeleteYeah but they weren't all Puritans, any more than every Jamaican dude with dreadlocks in Jamaica is a committed and practicing Rastafarian.
ReplyDeleteWuh Oh! Sarah's got some 'splaining to do!
ReplyDeleteA veritable Voltron of liberal depravity!
ReplyDeleteThe Jamaican dude with dreadlocks may not be a committed and practicing Rastafarian but he understands what the Rasta doctrine is and stands a better chance of being down with the Rastafarians on most issues than he stands of being against them. Persons who aren't part of his specific subculture and who catch a glimpse of him are likely to think "Rastafarian" — and even though that's a measure of their ignorance, so far as many of his basic loyalties go they're at least as liable to be right as to be wrong. For English society in the 1600's and 1700's a Puritan was a person who dressed and spoke in a certain way and who supported a certain kind of politics — the religious thing was the way in which both the Puritans and the people who opposed them constructed the struggle in which they were engaged. That struggle included religion but wasn't confined to it. The problem with Puritanism (in the broader and less exact sense) for the pastors and masters of the English 16th and 17th centuries was that a person who adopted it was almost certain to stay away from Anglican church services and even (if he or she was a committed, practicing believer) to preach against them. The Church of England at that time worshiped a God who supported the kings and the American right today worships a God who glorifies the rich. Both factions resemble each other more than either resembles the Puritans, whether you want to spell that with a capital or a small "p".
ReplyDeleteMy deepest sympathies and most abject apologies. I've written about it over at my blog before (even covering the Rob Lowe! angle) - the best I can offer is that there's a great Patton Oswald bit where he takes the song (and all the ideas behind it) apart in front of a live audience. Look for the version with the illustrations on the youtube.
ReplyDeleteI love how he lectures Charles Fucking Dickens, 150 year out, on the "reality" of the Industrial Revolution
ReplyDeleteThese guys have their own personal Jesus to tell them that selfishness and ego just happen to be the true pathway to Heaven. Pointing out Dickens' ignorance of economic realities is nothing in comparison.
Damn you for making me laugh horribly inappropriately in public.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you're forgiven!
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/iq10bz3PxyY
I once had a woman checking out of the hotel where I work practically snarl Merry Christmas at me in a fuck you tone of voice. I laughed at her and told her it wasn't Christmas until Dec. 24.
ReplyDeletenot to mention the concubinage. that's what I miss about Biblical marriage.
ReplyDeletePointing out Dickens' ignorance of economic realities
ReplyDeleteOr his reliance on his own lying eyes, anyway.
The Algonquin of Cyberspace, Ms. Parker, no question about it.
ReplyDeleteShe'll soon enough discover that in America, you are what you look like.
ReplyDeletePatrick Howley will be ogling them all night...
ReplyDeleteI could not accept a reality where [Jesus and Santa] were "real" and Spider-Man was not.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that I ever really believed in Santa--it was pretty much impossible to hide, in a household full of inquisitive, energetic kids who lived out in the country and were easily bored, where the presents really came from--but I did believe in Superman briefly.
they put government in the place of god and they take the merit out of
ReplyDeletegiving as believers are denied the chance to choose (free will) to be
charitable and instead are forced to be charitable.
Ever notice how you never have to force these jaspers to be stingy?
Wonder what advice he'd have given Dickens to keep Americans from pirating his work.
ReplyDeleteThat is if you don't count the prequel, The Banker Of Seville
ReplyDeleteAnd also: perhaps the reason Dickens didn't "tell us anything about competitive alternatives for Cratchett's services" is because THAT WASN'T IN ANY WAY MATERIAL TO THE POINT OR PLOT OF THE STORY, YOU GIANT FUCKING PRICK.
ReplyDeleteFake "magical works-based theology"?
ReplyDeleteRight, so: I was taught as a
Catholic that good works are one road into heaven, and I've met
some haaaardcore Protestants who've laughed at that -- No,
you cultist (they say), the only way in is to "accept Jesus as your
intercessor."
This means you could cure cancer and make it free, give every orphan
a unicorn, and die from exposure while hammering the last roof shingle
to the last house for the last homeless family, and still you'd go straight to
Hell if you believed any of it meant anything in the
eyes of God. Works are for losers; having Jesus in your heart is the whole game.
So French is so rightwing he isn't content to attack just the world's various terrorist, brown-people religions -- he also sees civilization's failure in
other kinds of Christian, and he uses Santa to take a self-righteous swing at the world's one billion Catholics. Ho ho ho, Merrrry Christmas, you goddamn weirdo!
And like everyone at the Algonquin we are all afraid to get up and go to the bathroom for fear of what will be said of us as soon as we have left the table.
ReplyDeleteWell? Did it work?
ReplyDeleteThe conservacreep hatred of A Christmas Carol never fails to crack me up, even beyond the fact they're raging about a 150-year-old story that's been repurposed by everyone from the Simpsons to Scooby Doo. You know how they're always saying that we don't need government aid because charitable individuals will take care of it all? Well here we have Scrooge, a jerb creator, inspired to be charitable by his newfound love for Christmas, and it's still not good enough. Still commie. It's hilarious. Because-and this is the only answer left-Scrooge's conversion was too sincere. You're not supposed to give money because you actually feel sorry for people, only to spitefully and smugly gloat about it to the librulz.
ReplyDeleteThere must be begging and scraping and ass-kissing on the part of the unworthy and end with the rich guy grudgingly, spitefully parting with a small pittance, but only if it involves the maximum embarrassment of the people who weren't chosen, and only with the rich guy continually emphasizing that his benefactors would be nothing without him-then it's Tru Cunservaturd charity. And that's only the second best option. The best option would be the rich guy telling the poor guy to FOAD. The conservative alternate happy ending involves the Cratchitt family starving and dying and Scrooge looking on saying they deserve it. And I'm not even exaggerating at this point.
And now it's giving Halloween the stink eye and toying with its shankin' knife. Thankfully, Halloween is well-armed with candy-apple razor blades and poisoned jawbreakers.
ReplyDelete