How O'Liely stole Christmas

This is a take on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," by Dr. Seuss. Courtesy of Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times.

THE WHOS down in Who-ville
Were a tolerant lot:
Who Christians, Who Muslims — a Who melting pot.
Who Hindus! Who atheists! Who Buddhists, Who Jews!
Who Confucians, Who pagans,
And even Who Druze! The Who 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause
Said, "No creches in courts," and the Whos loved their laws.
Because somehow … they worked. The Whos rarely fought,
Mostly, each Who did just what he ought.
Every Who down in Who-ville
Loved the Consti-Who-tion a lot.
But the O'Reilly, who lived up in Fox-ville,
Did NOT!
The O'Reilly DETESTED the Who Consti-Who-tion,
He thought it was some sort of liberal pollution.
Now, please don't ask why, for I really don't know.
Perhaps it had something to do with his show.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
Or it could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his RATINGS
Were two sizes too small.
Well, whatever it was, bad ratings or tight shoes,
He stood there one Christmas, just hating the Whos.
"They're so multicultural," he sneered, "and wherever they're from,
They lack the good sense to just launch a pogrom!
There's no Who ethnic cleansing, no Who Inquisition,
If this PEACE can't be stopped, I may lose my position.
Those sensitive, tolerant Whos! It's quite grating.
I must think of something to fix my show's ratings!"
Then he said with a smirk, "I know just what to do
To destroy all the joy in the land of the Who!
I think I can end that PC Who peace.
This year, not one Who will enjoy his Roast Beast!
"Here's just how I'll do it:
I'll tell each Who Christian
That the liberal Whos have devised a new mission
To take away Christmas!
To mock and destroy
Till no little Who Christian is left with a toy!
And when secular Whos — most likely Who Jews —
Attempt to deny it? Why,
I'll just SPIN THE NEWS!
"I'll bluff and I'll lie; I'll sow seeds of mistrust.
Soon they'll form battle lines into
Who 'THEM' and Who 'US,'
Based on which Whos prefer
To sing out, 'Merry Christmas'
And which Whos say, 'Kwanzaa!'
Or 'None of your business!'
"They'll get so confused and so MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD
That they won't even notice the way
They've been HAD!
They'll be so busy squabbling
They won't notice the war!
They won't care if Who rich
Start to trample Who poor!
"Forget torture, and terror, and taxes, and health!
They'll waste all their time on some red-hatted elf.
"And the Who Consti-Who-tion?
They'll stretch it or burn it!
If it came as a gift, they would try to return it!
"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!"
—
… And what happened then?
Well, the rest's up to you.
But I know what I'd like this holiday season:
A little less NOISE and a little more reason.
So Who Christians! Who Buddhists! Who Muslims! Who Jews!
WHOever you are, just say NO to Fox "News!"
If you don't want to lose the whole Who Consti-Who-tion
It's time to reject the Far Right Revolution.
So turn off O'Reilly and everyone shrill,
Let's have some peace
And old-fashioned GOODWILL.

Can you hear me now? Not so good.

There have been so many allusions to Big Brother lately. Now, it comes to light that our worst fears for this democracy have come true.

And so this is Christmas...

Fux Nuisance this week had someone on Fox and Friends, dressed as Santa Claus. This "Santa" was presented as the "White House Santa." He declared that Santa was a Republican. Here is the
transcript of this transgression (courtesy of Newshounds)

WHITE HOUSE SANTA: ... I've seen him [the President] age, but this year I thought he looked better than he has looked in the last two years.
KILMEADE: 'Cause he said that, during the election season, he actually put on weight. He wasn't workin' out as much and plus he twisted his knee.
WH SANTA: Well, he's very strong. His upper body. He rides ...
KILMEADE: Did you take a run at him?
WH SANTA: Let me tell you, Brian, exactly what happened. (laughter on set) I walked in and we embraced and I said "My kinda guy!"
KILMEADE: He hugged you?
WH SANTA: Yes, he did. And I hugged him back.
KILMEADE: Wow!
WH SANTA: And then Mrs. Bush appeared - and she's beautiful ...
KILMEADE: Right.
WH SANTA: ... she is so lovely. And then we hugged. And I said "This is like a family reunion." And then Mrs. Bush's mother was there and so she hugged and then the next thing is the dogs were scampering about, so I was down on the floor with Barney and Miss Beazley.
KILMEADE (speaks at same time as Griffin): They have their own way of hugging.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: It's just a love fest. It's a big love fest.
WH SANTA: Well, the dogs, they, they - you know, they're beautiful. They're beautiful dogs.
CAMEROTA: And so can you answer the age-old question, Santa, of whether or not Santa Claus is a Democrat or a Republican?
WH SANTA: That is up to the individual, my dear.
CAMEROTA: I see.
WH SANTA: This Santa Claus has his preference.
KILMEADE: Which is?
WH SANTA: Republican.
KILMEADE: You're a Republican?
WH SANTA: Yes, I am. (points to his chest) Do you see all these medals pinned on this coat?
KILMEADE: Congratulations.
WH SANTA: That's called courage, my friend.
KILMEADE: Absolutely.
WH SANTA: You earn this.
KILMEADE: Understood.
WH SANTA: And when you're 227 years old, it's taken a while to get there.
KILMEADE: Absolutely.
CAMEROTA: You don't look a day over 200!


I can only say that my 8-year-old son tells me that, even though all of his friends say Santa is make-believe, he still believes in him. He also believes that George W. Bush is evil-incarnate (I try to correct him on this point all the time, as Bush is merely the guy that Satan sends down to the 7-11 when he wants a pack of smokes). He also tells me that all Republicans are bad (again, I correct him, ALL Republicans are NOT bad. Although, these days, the majority of them appear to be morally and ethically impaired).

We do not watch broadcast television at all in my household (as the entire purpose of this medium is to sell you things you don't need), but, if my child were to have observed this garbage, I believe it would really ruin Christmas for him.

Perhaps it is selfish of me (as he has been raised to be cynical of everything that is presented to him) to want for him to retain some youthful innocence. He is only 8, after all, and I pray that he will grow up to be happy and productive in his life.

Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere!

W. Won't Read This
by Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
December 14, 2005

WASHINGTON

Never ask a guy who's in a bubble if he's in a bubble. He can't answer.

'Cause he's in a bubble.

But the NBC anchor Brian Williams gamely gave it a shot, showing the president the Newsweek cover picturing him trapped in a bubble.

"This says you're in a bubble," Brian told W. "You have a very small circle of advisers now. Is that true? Do you feel in a bubble?"

"No, I don't feel in a bubble," Bubble Boy replied, unable to see the bubble because he's in it. "I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me." He added, "I'm very aware of what's going on."

He swiftly contradicted himself by admitting that "this is the first time I'm seeing this magazine" - his version of his dad's Newsweek "Wimp Factor" cover - and that he doesn't read newsmagazines.

The anchor and the anchorite spent a few anodyne moments probing the depths of what it's like to be president. "I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras," W. said. "A lot of my job is foreign policy, and I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries."

Brian struggled to learn whether W. read anything except one-page memos. Talking about his mom, Bubble Boy returned to the idea of the bubble: "If I'm in a bubble, well, if there is such thing as a bubble, she's the one who can penetrate it."

"I'll tell the guys at Newsweek," the anchor said impishly.

"Is that who put the bubble story?" W. asked. First he didn't know about it, and now he's forgotten it already? That's the alluring, memory-cleansing beauty of the bubble.

The idea that W. is getting good advice from very capable people is silly - administration officials have blown it on everything from the occupation and natural disasters to torture. In the bubble, they can torture while saying they don't. They can pretend that Iraqi forces are stronger than they are. They can try to frighten people with talk of Al Qaeda's dream of a new Islamic caliphate - their latest attempt to scare Americans into supporting the war they ginned up.

"Whether or not it needed to happen," the president told the anchor, "I'm still convinced it needed to happen." The Bubble Boy can even contradict himself and not notice.

W.'s contention that he's informed by people from all walks of life is a joke, as is his wacky assertion that he can "reach out" to the public more than Abraham Lincoln because he has Air Force One. Lincoln actually went to the front in his war, with Minié balls whizzing by. No phony turkey for him.

The president may fly over all walks of life in Air Force One or drive by them and hide behind dark-tinted windows. In his bubble, he floats through a comforting world of doting women, respectful military audiences, loyal Republican donors and screened partisan groups - with protesters, Democrats, journalists, critics and coffins of dead soldiers kept at bay.

(He has probably even been shielded from the outrage of John and Stacey Holley, both Army veterans, who were shocked to learn that their only child, Matthew, killed in Iraq, would be arriving in San Diego as freight on a commercial airliner.)

Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat close to the Pentagon who supported both wars against Iraq waged by the Bushes, has been braying against the Bush isolation. He told Newsweek that a letter he wrote to the president making suggestions about how to fight the Iraq war was ignored for seven months, then brushed off by a deputy under secretary of defense. Even after he went public, he still did not get a call from the White House.

"If they talked to people," he said, "they wouldn't get these outbursts."

Mr. Murtha told Rolling Stone that the administration's deafness had doomed Iraq: "Everything we did was mishandled. Plans that the military and the State Department had in place - they ignored 'em. The military tells me that when they were planning the invasion, the administration wouldn't let one of the primary three-star generals in the room."

The president's bubble requires constant care. It's not easy to keep out huge tragedies like Katrina, or flawed policies like Iraq. As Newsweek noted, a foreign diplomat "was startled when Secretary of State Rice warned him not to lay bad news on the president. 'Don't upset him,' she said."

Heaven forbid. Don't burst his bubble.

A once-lost-now-found friend emailed me a story about an unemployed man who was turned down for a minimum wage janitor's position because he didn't have an email address. He had made a great success of his life in spite of this setback and still did not have an email address.

I frequently find myself sweeping the floors at work (much to the consternation of my management), because I find it needs to be done. Nowhere in my contract am I required to do so. I chose to do so as it is necessary.

Each time I take this action (tonight is the latest), I find my mantra to be, "I am the highest paid janitor in this company."

I was unemployed before my current employer called me back from the abyss to offer me my position (certainly not a janitor).

I have blamed music for my lot in life. As this is how someone I have hurt has explained it to me. I now know there can be no such thing as blame. There is in-action and such consequence as will follow.

I have had an email address for 13 years. And yet, I find myself daydreaming about grapes and music.

The most satisfying work is yet to come, and it will not involve working "the man" (as great a company as mine is).

Don't observe life - experience, then live it.

T'was the night before the Winter Holiday

Rep. John Dingell (D - MI) composed an answer to the "War on Christmas" with his version of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas":


Twas the week before Christmas and all through the House
No bills were passed ‘bout which Fox News could grouse;
Tax cuts for the wealthy were passed with great cheer,
So vacations in St. Barts soon would be near;

Katrina kids were nestled all snug in motel beds,
While visions of school and home danced in their heads;
In Iraq our soldiers needed supplies and a plan,
Plus nuclear weapons were being built in Iran;

Gas prices shot up, consumer confidence fell;
Americans feared we were on a fast track to…well…
Wait--- we need a distraction--- something divisive and wily;
A fabrication straight from the mouth of O’Reilly

We can pretend that Christmas is under attack
Hold a vote to save it--- then pat ourselves on the back;
Silent Night, First Noel, Away in the Manger
Wake up Congress, they’re in no danger!

This time of year we see Christmas every where we go,
From churches, to homes, to schools, and yes…even Costco;
What we have is an attempt to divide and destroy,
When this is the season to unite us with joy

At Christmas time we’re taught to unite,
We don’t need a made-up reason to fight
So on O’Reilly, on Hannity, on Coulter, and those right wing blogs;
You should just sit back, relax…have a few egg nogs!

‘Tis the holiday season: enjoy it a pinch
With all our real problems, do we honestly need another Grinch?

So to my friends and my colleagues I say with delight,
A merry Christmas to all,
and to Bill O’Reilly…Happy Holidays.

War on Christmas and Christians?

There has been much talk as of late about the "war on Christmas." (albeit, all of this talk spawns from only one cynical, yet highly profitable, entertainment company which tries to pass itself off as a "news" organization).

These people claim that these United States were founded as a "Christian" nation. This is historically known as a load of horse hoo-hah.

If any of these self-agrandizing, self-serving, money-grubbing charlatans had read the writings of founding fathers Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Paine or Franklin, they would clearly see that our Nation was created as a refuge from this very notion. Read further on into our national history and you will find others on that stage expressing similar ideas.

- James Madison, introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, June 8, 1789:
"[The] civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed."

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."

- also, his Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own”

- John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: Written during the Administration of George Washington and signed into law as President Adams.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

- Adams, on Christianity
"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed."

- Adams, from a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”

- Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: London, 1757 - 1775
"If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England."

- Thomas Paine, excerpts from The Age of Reason:

"My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

"Whenever we read the obscene stores (of the Bible), the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God."

"...when I see throughout the greater part of this book (the Bible) scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name."

"(The Christian) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the Gift of Reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls if 'human reason' as if man could give reason to himself."

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity”

- Paine, Answers to Friends regarding The Age of Reason, Paris, May 12, 1797

"As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New."

"It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?"

And later, Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

- Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist,
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

- Ulysses S. Grant,
"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated."


all of these quotes come courtesy of Deism dot org

Politics 101

After attending the funeral for a dear friend today, I spent several hours discussing American politics with loving Sister, her daughter, and darling Brother.

It is quite telling that none of them were aware of any of the goings-on in our political system. They were unaware of the scandals in our houses of Congress and the White House. It was refreshing to get feedback from someone while discussing politics. Questions and answers.

My main admonition to them was to NOT take my word as golden. We should question and investigate all information that comes our way.