So now it turns out Bill O’Reilly and the raucous Right own Christmas. Is it really one of the major problems of the day when a business or a friend substitutes "Happy Holiday" for "Merry Christmas?" I liked O’Reilly better when he was enjoying phone sex with a co-worker. I started using "holiday" instead of "Christmas" not as some form of misplaced political correctness, but because some of the people I greet don’t celebrate Christmas. Sometimes it seemed an appropriate shortcut for "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." Is there really a danger Christmas will become obsolete?
O’Reilly wants to boycott big businesses such as Macy’s for their cavalier disregard for the word Christmas. I would think linking the birth of Christ with a 20-percent discount on lingerie would be much more offensive, but what do I know – I who have a parental lock on the FOX News Channel.
The Right hasn’t gotten this exorcised over a non-issue since flag burning. But what do you say – dear liberal Hilary has gotten behind a compromise to ban flag burning! Hilary Clinton has been a good senator, but she’s a female who wants desperately to become president (either to obliterate her husband’s legacy of oral sex in the Oval Office or perhaps to try it out herself). As a female, she apparently believes she must show she has the you-know-whats to handle the office. What better meaningless act than to come up with a solution for which there is no problem? On the agenda of world problems we face, flag burning is at the bottom possibly tied with department stores that don’t use Christmas in their ads. Tell me, when is the last time you saw a flag burned after 1972? When Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren use the flag as part of their haute couture, isn’t that the real desecration we see today? Maybe I’ve given O’Reilly another idea for a boycott.
Mayor John Street reminds us, even though another pal has been caught taking bribes, his administration has a "zero tolerance" for corruption. This holiday pronouncement comes at a time when Condi Rice is traveling Europe telling our Allies we do not torture, never mind our secret detention centers in Eastern Europe. Look, if FOX News can proclaim it is "fair and balanced," then surely we can give a little latitude to Street and Rice. We live in a time when you can get away with the most blatant untruths, so long as you sound sincere and determined. The president is able to raise his approval rating merely by making a series of speeches in which he insists we are making progress in Iraq. It’s worked before. His tax cut benefited the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, but he sold it as a boon to the middle class. Hey, even Andy Reid has joined in the fun. His team rolled over and quit by a score of 42-0 recently and Andy stood there at the podium and told us that real effort was being exerted by his team. Maybe none of these examples quite match Richard Nixon’s declaration, "Your president is not a crook!"
It is the holidays, or Christmastime if you prefer, and most of the emphasis is frankly on making money. Economists worry and fret over whether we are spending enough on the mostly worthless junk that’s hawked during this time of year. Economists use the term "consumer confidence." Consumer confidence is just another phrase meaning credit card debt. When we buy, we show consumer confidence in the economy, which is as patriotic as most of us get. The TV news reporters are embedded at the shopping malls rather than Iraq these holidays, joyously rooting us on during our shopping sprees. To help get us in the mood, some radio stations have been playing Christmas music (or is it holiday music?) since Eagles training camp. We might as well be honest with ourselves and set an example for our politicians. Christmas has merely become the pre-Super Bowl bash.
Only in America can a guy who, a short while ago, was caught on tape talking dirty to a female co-worker become the spokesman for making everything right with Christmas. Many of us believe all the B.S. We’re so full of ourselves we believe we have an obligation to export our lifestyle, as kind of a Christmas present to the rest of the world.
And if those damn Iraqis don’t appreciate what we’re trying to do for them, if they’re going to be so ungrateful about us turning their country upside down in the hunt for weapons that weren’t there and fail to see how noble we are and that we got rid of Saddam, whom we used to arm, then by all means let’s get out in time for Christmas.
Maybe we’ve lost the right to call it Christmas.
