Happy Holidays 1
Bill O’Reilly cooks the books.
And has to confront the effects of his rabble-rousing. He roused the rabble (or generated a crank call). But in the process, he contradicted himself:
Caller: I wanted to punch her in the face…
O’Reilly: I think you’re out of line.—-if somebody says “Happy Holiday,” there’s no reason to get offended.
Brad (http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002140.htm) has the audio.
Emailer Joe: “So then Bill O’Reilly ripped into the guy and said he was a jerk for not tipping her. O’Reilly said “What if you had been Jewish or Muslim” she didn’t know what your religion was. She was just trying to be respectful. Then O’Reilly discovered he had contradicted himself and tried to back pedal and explain the difference.”
And Chris Satullo wrote rationally in yesterday’s Philadelpia Inquirer:
The War on Christmas crowd seizes on a few scraps of supporting evidence, stitches them into a fabric of hype, then uses it to alarm the credulous. (Hmm, sound familiar?)
(snip)
This year, the riff also targets retailers, Wal-Mart and so on, who allegedly are too liberal with “Happy holidays” in their ads and decorations and too stinting on “Merry Christmas.”
This is bizarre on so many fronts. Let’s review.
No. Wait. First, let’s grant something. Conservative Christians who howl about a plot to block them from the public square aren’t totally wrong. Their mirror image does exist. At the other end of the spectrum sit some equally humorless absolutists of agnosticism who imagine that the First Amendment shines on their biases. These partisans do tend to file lawsuits in reaction to any whiff of piety in their presence.
(snip)
The biggest threat to a distinctively Christian celebration of Jesus’ birth is not the smattering of Grinches, but the vast apparatus devoted to exploiting the sacred day as an excuse to sell sweaters, HDTVs and Lexuses.
That’s why the kvetching about Wal-Mart is so ironic. Christ-in-Christmas purists used to get angry at how retailers commercialized the holiday. Now O’Reilly gripes that the commercializers aren’t exploiting Jesus’ name aggressively enough to sell Obsession perfume and Xbox 360.
December 12, 2005 at 10:12 pm
At first I was thinking, “wow, this is amazing to watch: there are people coming to Walmart’s defense on this who would never do it on any other issue,” but then I realized they’ll all be gone by January 2.