political correctness, the war on xmas, & self-perpetuated outrage

http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/columnists/61473

but that may not be what you're asking.

1. bill oreilly devotes 2/3rds of his show to how the liberals have declared war on xmas and falsely claims kids arent allowed to say 'merry christmas' in schools anymore

2. mrs smith, a young non-political/moderate 3rd grade teacher from bamaville south carolina goes to her class the next day and takes down xmas decorations/rewrites the school play/whatever so her kids dont get in trouble w/ the liberal p.c. police as outlined by oreilly

3. oreilly hears about the incident in bamaville s.c. and dramatizes it on his show - 'theyre taking CHILDRENS DRAWINGS of SANTA CLAUS and THROWING THEM in the GARBAGE!! you arent even ALLOWED to speak the word CHRISTMAS!!!'

4. ms brown, a h.s. teacher in assfuck oklahoma, hears about the bamaville incident on oreilly and decides to follow suit so as not to rock the boat

5. oreilly hears about assfuck oklahoma

6. lather, rinse, repeat

What I'm getting at is that this is a recent invention, I think, because of mass media, and it can take a lot of forms besides "outrage," you can blow up anything if you keep covering it enough. Advertising works, surprise surprise? Creating a demand and an idea where it didn't exist before by repeating the same shit over and over until it becomes fact.

i mean ppl criticize big bad academia all the time but a lot of what's taught is just really useful bullshit-decoding stuff.

Why would you expect people who start out making less than military recruits but who have 10x as many bills to pay to be sharp or questioning - if you're shrap and/or questioning you wouldn't put yourself in that situation

Not if they went to one of those progressive colleges where they've recently tried to introduce intelligent design as legitimate science. Not all colleges are magical places for experimenting with lesbianism / Marxism.

But to the question at hand, let's get all Sociology 101:

The Thomas Theorem: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

Does O'Reilly realize his function in this self-fulfilling prophecy? Is he clever enough to have engineered this as a strategy, or he just another victim of the Thomas theorem? Does it matter?

you do understand that about 2-2.5 million people watch O'Reilly, which is fewer than the number who watch the News Hour on PBS, and about 10% of the viewership of the network newscasts?

O'Reilly and ilk's goals are to influence the "mainstream media" dialogue

Heavens, yes. This is why I like my parents' current church: the Christmas Eve sermon cast a gimlet eye on the "war on Christmas" and included the line "Personally, I've never felt the need to have my spiritual choices justified by a 15-yr-old behind the counter at WalMart, but maybe some people do." My expectations from small-town churches are so very low that I'm unusually gratified just to hear someone make sense.

and the "oppression" thing wasn't real -- it's not like anyone's gonna get the anti-defamation league and the ACLU to stand outside a wal-mart with picket signs cuz there's a santa claus in there. americans of all kinds are USED to christmas... we're beyond getting worked up over it, although some of us are a little tired of being bombarded with a "national" holiday that has nothing to do with us. that said, "happy holidays" is just a NICE, warm, inclusive thing to say, one that acknowledges that other cultures exist. it's weird that there's so much fear attached to that concept.

By SEAN REAGAN Staff Writer

When Ashfield resident Linda Callahan signed up for a Verizon email account using her surname, she ran into weeks of technical difficulties.

Kallahan, it turns out, contains within it the name "Allah," the name of God in the Islamic religion.

Because of that, Callahan was told by Verizon management officials that she could not use it as part of her e-mail address.

"'I was shocked," she said. "I think that nobody should be able to block that name."

Verizon spokeswoman Bobbie Henson said that the problem arose because Callahan uses a Yahoo portal. Verizon customers can choose between three portals - Yahoo, MSN or Verizon's own portal.

Portals are Web sites that offer a broad array of Internet resources and services, including email, chat forums, search engines, weather and online shopping stores.

Because Verizon is partnered with Yahoo, said Henson, Verizon customers are subjected to Yahoo's name filters, which apparently include the name "Allah."

Henson said that Verizon "had no idea this was an issue" when the company joined forces with Yahoo earlier this year. "Allah," she said, has never been a filtered name at Verizon and there are customers whose email addresses include "Callahan."

"This is not our list," she said.

Henson said Verizon officials plan to talk with their Yahoo counterparts about the issue.

Yahoo spokeswoman Meghan Busatch did not dispute Verizon's account. However, in telephone conversations on both Wednesday and Thursday, she said she was unable to provide additional information and asked for more time to prepare a response.

Matt Crocker, vice president of Greenfield-based Crocker Communications, said that the local telecommunications company does not apply name or content filters to its customers.

While some addresses - such as "postmaster" or "abuse" - are reserved for internal use, customers can utilize any name they choose, so long as no other customer is not already using it.

"We made a decision as a company that we're not going to censor or filter our customers that way," said Crocker. For her part, Callahan said she is wary of any company that wants to forbid the use of the word "Allah."

"I wouldn't want to support a company that has rules like that," she said. "It doesn't help anybody in our world right now."

WHAT WILL THE FAR LEFT PC EXTREMISTS AT YAHOO DO NEXT

allah
binladen
osama
raghead
yahoo
security
admin
fuck
asshole
cunt

Allowed Words:

god
messiah
jesus
jehova
yahweh
savior
buddah
quran
koran
mohammad
islam
usama
nazi
satan
devil
jihad
terrorist
suicide
murder
kill
priest
pedophile
rape
sex
pussy
cock
penis
rapeismyhobby1
pedophilepriest88
killallmuslimsandarabs1
nazisaremybestfriends
jewskilledjesus999
iloveadolfhitler293409
wasapmahniggah8888

It also meant I had to read Toni Morrison's "Beloved" three freakin' times by graduation, but was never assigned a single book by Hemingway. And I was an English major!

The newest addition to the getting-taught biggies is still Sebald, right?

And the question then is, what happens when the right takes over the political language, techniques and strategies of the left?

It's also something to do with the nature of news stories. News has a tendency not to report solid states, basic underlying situations. (If it does, it calls them background. But it doesn't do background well.) Instead, the news tends to report small changes, and to blow them up out of proportion. This has a particular interest to people who are radically dissatisfied with the status quo: radicals of the left and right alike. They love stories about how trends are "swinging" one way or another away from the status quo, because they want the world to swing. They're both focused on the future, hoping things will swing their way. But the fact is that they'd both get a much more realistic picture if they studied solid underlying states (ie read history, sociology, statistics, anthropology) than if they continually seized on every topical breeze that seemed to portend a swing.

By the way, this logic also underpins my suspicion of equality of opportunity as a focus, a justification... or even just. A focus on opportunity also fixates on possible swings away from the status quo in the future (the 2% of change, not the 98% of continuity), rather than solid states, the status quo, or present actuality.

* New figures show the (minority) birth-rate is higher than the (majority) birthrate.

* If this continues, the minority will one day be the new majority.

* The minority is already the new majority.

* Therefore the majority is the minority.

* Let us therefore adopt the tactics and rhetoric of victims (combined with the clout of victors, which is what we actually are).

* Let us use our incipient victim status as a way to banish all guilt about being bullies.

Every other MP stepped back and said "she's on her own with that one" (thank god), one pointing out that currently, our new arrivals to Australia are still majority UK, New Zealand and South African citizens way ahead of anything else.

So what do we do about it?

There's something really galling in it -- a sort of double hypocrisy -- which is kind of hard to isolate. But you get a sequence like this:

MINORITY: We need you to be more respectful of our rights.
MAJORITY: Tough titty / get over it / quit whining / go somewhere else.

But then, once that fake inversion takes place:

MAJORITY: What about being respectful of our rights as (fake) "minorities?" Weren't you the same people who were so keen on tolerance and respect? What say you now, suckers?

The first hypocrisy is the obvious one: acknowleding the strength of the other person's argument by co-opting it for yourself, and for your own gain. The second hypocrisy is even more maddening -- that the majority, in this example, pretends it's somehow exposing the hypocrisy of the minority! I think at its heart it's just deeply cynical and kind of Machiavellian. Like those in the majority, in this example, can't bring quite bring themselves to evaluate these things on principles (like the principle of protecting minorities); they only see them in terms of who benefits from them. So they think they're very clever by turning the whole thing around: "Aha -- what if it were us who benefited from this rhetoric? Would you still believe in it?" But that's a really dumb point for them to prove. I feel like it amounts to saying "Okay, fine, we're wrong, you win this argument on the merits and we have to give up certain advantages -- but oh poor us, we want you to recognize how hard that is! Just imagine if you were the one who benefited from an unequal system and had to give things up! You wouldn't like that at all -- you'd probably behave just like we do about it!"

Which may actually be true, but it's fundamentally just babyish. "Fine, we will share this toy we stole from you. But you'd have done the same. So we need you to think this sharing is really big of us, and feel bad for us that we had to do it."

Best galling example of that on ILX was some trolly 3NP type who was going on about white people being "a minority in their own postal codes." What was, like, umm ... so? Actual minorities have been doing that forever, dude, and even if they'd been weird enough to complain about it, I'm guessing you wouldn't have been shattered by it.

This bad-faith guilt also determines a large amount of the rhetoric we hear about the Iraq war. Whatever the war's real causes and motives, all we hear is that it's about being on the side of victims (Saddam's victims) and empowering them. It's taboo to say that the Iraq war created any victims, or that its principal purpose is to make the people who are currently the world's most powerful even more powerful.

(Of course, by claiming that my fairly normal opinion here is "taboo" I'm playing the same game. We all play it from time to time. Even the moderator likes to look in the mirror and see a maverick.)

"Clearly we need parking regulations to be enforced and there's nothing more annoying than people who park on double yellow lines or in disabled parking spaces when they don't have a disability. But equally we don't want it to be a form of exploitation."

Context: some councils are using "cowboy contractors" to remove cars illegally parked and charge massive fines, which end up as profit for the contractors and the council.

Sparks suggests the best way to solve arguments over enforcement might be to let local people decide. But which local people, the car drivers, the disabled, non car-driving residents, people with asthmatic conditions, children walking to school? These competing victimhoods often exist in the same individual (a car-driver who's also asthmatic, a driver whose garage is blocked by other drivers, etc).

And what does it mean to frame the question as one of conflicting victimhoods rather than one in which everything starts from clear a priori transport policy (ie a government statement like "we aim to reduce the number of cars on the road" or "we aim to provide enough parking spaces so that nobody has to park illegally")?

Now, situation is modest; it strips the pompous claims to universalism from our statements, and makes us more likely to admit vested interests. But the plurality of possible identities we each have at our disposal brings with it a crisis. Which of the "hats" I can wear is "the real me", and if none of them are, what happens when disputes are won by "competing victimhood" techniques? Isn't any claim to victimhood, in those circumstances, a bit of a ploy, a bit of a front? If I'm good enough at self-mediation and spin, I can pose as a victim when it suits me, and a successful winner-type when it suits me.

I think this is where we might have to diverge, Nabisco (pity, the agreement thing was nice!). I think I'd be much less inclined to see everything balancing out to be "fair" in the end, as if there were some sort of karma determining outcomes in the real world. For karma, you need gods to administer it. And also, given the Simpson stuff above, you're going to get into some horribly complex "karma accountancy".

"Yes, you're owed 51,738 karma points because you only have one leg, but minus 97,290,040 points because you're a member of the KKK, and minus another 38,848 points because you pollute the environment with the voluntary ambulance service you've set up..."

(and at the risk of dragging the whole cartoon thread up in here, i'd suggest that we consider that some religious leaders have figured out the same thing -- that all they have to do is cry "intolerance!" to get liberals shaking their heads and tut-tutting about sensitivity, inadvertantly ceding ground to people whose primary concern is power, not pluralism.)

Gypsy, I don't know if the answer has to be "don't let them" -- surely a part of it is to avoid letting the victimhood/tolerance framing control our decisions in everything. This probably was related to what you and I were arguing about on the cartoon thread. Religion is a good example, in part because the judgment can be hard to make -- religious groups will play the victimhood/intolerance role in response to nearly anything said about them. The important part might be to look outside that framing ("the victim must be right") and do the case-by-case evaluation: is this intolerance or legitimate criticism? Is this group being trampled on or just responded to? And so on.

yeah, that's what i mean by 'don't let them.' not that republicans, or religious leaders, can never have legitimate grievances. of course they can. but sometimes the liberal response to these things seems driven more by the form of the complaint than its content. and the content is often calculated hypocrisy.

and the war on christmas is a good example of people not buying in to the bluster, true. but that's partly because it didn't have much of a foundation -- it was mostly invented by two guys, o'reilly and gibson, and not even the church groups were all that exercised about it.

* Let us use our incipient victim status as a way to banish all guilt about being bullies.

Funnily enough.

Launching a preemptive attack on the ‘war’ on Christmas: We still tinsel
Paul Howey
September 17, 2006 12:15 am

It was either a confluence of coincidences or a harmonic convergence of divinely directed events. Regardless, what happened on Labor Day could not be ignored.

I was on my way to Sam’s Club when it happened. It started on Leicester Highway. I stopped at a red light and was soon engaged in the usual Asheville pastime of reading the bumper stickers on the car in front of me.

“We Still Pray”

What in heaven’s name is that supposed to mean, I asked myself. Of course, you can still pray. How does anyone know if you’re praying or simply lost in thought? In the Bible, Matthew advises praying in secret: “Go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father.” I’m thinking Matthew didn’t have a “We Still Pray” sticker on the bumper of his oxcart.

Then the light turned green.

A few moments later, I was on Patton Avenue and stopped at another red light. The car in front of me this time had but one bumper sticker: “We Still Celebrate Christmas.”

“Well, of course you can!” I shouted to absolutely no one in particular. Then I remembered the imaginary conflict conjured up last year by Fox newscaster John Gibson and his cohort Bill O’Reilly who tried scaring the bejeezus out of the God-fearing folks in this country.

Gibson wrote a book titled The War on Christmas, and O’Reilly quickly took up arms alongside his colleague. For weeks, the two ranted about the so-called secular plot to remove Christ from Christmas.

Reilly exhorted his audience, “... if you look at what happened in Western Europe and Canada, if you can get religion out, then you can pass secular progressive programs, like legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage, because the objection to those things is religious-based, usually.”

We Sell-a-brate Christmas

Wow, it’s all so simple when he explains it. If a department store clerk says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” then drug-crazed gays will soon be euthanizing everyone who doesn’t get an abortion. It makes perfectly good sense to me, Bill.

Christians for generations understandably have bemoaned the crass commercialization of Christmas. But now they’re incensed when business establishments decline to commercialize the religious aspects of Christmas?

Then the light turned green.

Inside Sam’s Club (remember, it was Labor Day — the flippin’ FOURTH of SEPTEMBER), I discovered that the Halloween decorations had been pushed aside to make room for the plastic crèches, wrapping paper, and holiday (Christmas?) lights that now filled the shelves. I wondered if Sam Walton had an “I Sell the Heck out of Christmas” bumper sticker on his car when he was still around.

Gibson and O’Reilly had two motives for pursuing this red herring of a “war,” in my opinion. The first was to do away with that pesky separation of church and state thing. The second was to rally the flagging support base for the Republican administration, simultaneously diverting everyone’s attention from its miserable failings.

The Christmas Theft

No, sir. It’s Christmas we need to worry about. They are stealing Christmas away from us, declared Gibson.

Wait a second. Didn’t the Christians steal Christmas?

For centuries before the birth of Christ, folks celebrated the winter solstice with gifts, parades, and by stringing garlands of greenery all around. Perhaps the best known of these ancient rites was the Roman Festival of Saturnalia in which homage was paid to the god Saturn.

About 60 years or so after Jesus died, the Christian movement decided it should honor his birthday. Problem was, nobody knew when he was born; so they arbitrarily picked January 6. Despite their best efforts, however, their celebrations paled in comparison to the pageantry of Saturn’s big party which preceded it. I’m guessing maybe the boys were a little too hungover for another big do so quickly upon the heels of the other.

This irked the Christians, especially since they regarded the Saturnalia festivities to be pagan worship. Church leaders finally decided to co-opt Saturn’s gala event, this time declaring December 25 as Christ’s birthday, thus taking the celebration away from the pagans and making it their own.

I love the spirit of Christmas, the feeling of generosity and goodwill toward all. It’s not a bad way to live the rest of the year either, for we all should strive to fill our lives with compassion and unconditional love.

We’ve had a war on poverty, a war on drugs, a war on terror — but for the love of Jesus, there is no war on Christmas. If we follow Matthew’s lead and keep our religious practices private, no one can take them away.

Paul M. Howey is an author, editor, and storyteller. He lives in a log cabin in the woods of Leicester, North Carolina, with his wife Trish, four dogs, and five parrots. He may be reached at paulhowey@charter.net.

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Copyright 2006 Asheville Citizen-Times. All rights reserved.

and now, there's cheap crap you can buy!

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/bracelet.jpg
If you want to see the ACLU activists turn green and red, just hand them one of these babies.

Anybody know if movement conservatism is ever going to find another rallying point aside from just "we hates lib'ruls"?

Whoa...sounds like they're dethroning the Jeebs themselves to moveunits quick!

Has the world already forgotten when the Martians attacked Santa for holding Union meetings in North Pole public halls, and the ACLU defended Santa, thus SAVING CHRISTMAS?

where the FUCK does this happen?!?!

that would actually be the funnest christmas i've had in a long time -- if such things actually OCCURRED.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:Zigly64GDgLg5M:http://www.fast-rewind.com/diner3.jpg

http://www.fast-rewind.com/diner3.jpg

fuck christmas, from the folks who brought you "fuckthesouth.com".

Can you elaborate on this?

Jehovah's Witnesses certainly are anti-Christmas. After all, it's a pagan festival disguised as a Christian one, and the Bible gives no indication as to the time of Jesus' birth. If there are other Evangelical sects that use the same logic it wouldn't surprise me at all. Any speculation as to whether they are simply too mean to buy presents would be inappropriate.

Most US conservatives are part of some form of reformed church.

YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH, NOBCHEESES.

roffles from fuckchristmas.com

oh, i don't think that american conservative christians REALLY mind commercialism as such (currier-and-ives/it's a wonderful life and religious kitsch are just as commercial as blaring electronics and lights and shit). i think that the bug up their asses is when folks forget "the reason for the season" or somesuch.

What you're saying is correct but its a stretch to go from "Several times during the history of the reformed church there have been attempts to ban christmas," to "Most US conservatives are part of some form of reformed church," as a way to conclude "Evangelicals are meant to be against christmas because there is no scriptural basis for it."

Also, Reformed Church |= Evangelical.

Yes, Christmas was started as a way to steal Pagans away from thier holiday, and no there is no scriptural basis for what happens every December, and yes lots of evangelicals will agree that Christmas brings too much consumerism with it and go and give and recieve and decorate the house and send out cards and all that anyway... but in lots of church sects church tradition is just one notch below scipture.

Is it so odd that a religion which revolves around the human manifestation of God would choose to celebrate his arrival on an annual basis?

as a general observation and a digression, i've always thought that the eastern orthodox is the one branch of christianity that has it right wr2 which christian holiday should take precedence (i.e., christmas or easter). not that xmas isn't important to them, but the REAL big deal for the eastern orthodox is easter. which to me makes the most sense -- isn't it the POINT of christianity that jesus christ came back from the dead (whilst any schmuck can be born), and if so then shouldn't the event that commemorates his resurrection from the dead take precedence over his birth?

this is correct but most US evangelicals are part of a church in the reformed tradition.

Ed, are you substituting "Reformed" for "Protestant"?

A church in the Reformed tradition |= The Reformed Church

?

If so, I understand what you are saying.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15717485/

(/end bitter rant of ex-retail-worker)

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/5774/upsidedownuc4sd0.jpg

(Also easier to fit higher quantity and larger size presents underneath, of course).

But think of the poor, poor children...

haha, i bet they have, i bet they have