The Ugly Fox News ‘War on Christmas’
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2005/12/the_ugly_fox_ne.php
[excerpt]
The “war on Christmas” is a term invented by the far right to describe what
they consider an onslaught by non-Christians against their most significant
holiday. The title of a best-selling book by Fox News anchor John Gibson
pretty much sums up the entire argument: It is called “The War on
Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is
Worse Than You Thought.”
And how is this war being fought? According to John Gibson, it is fought
every time someone uses the greeting Happy Holidays rather than Merry
Christmas. This is how columnist Joel Stein described it in the in
Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times: “Gibson and fellow Fox anchor Bill
O’Reilly…have organized a boycott of Costco, Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart and
Sears for using the phrase ‘Happy Holidays’ in their ads instead of ‘Merry
Christmas.’” For O’Reilly and others, talking about the “holidays” rather
than Christmas represents a victory by the secular left and a defeat for
all Christians.
It sounds crazy but both CNN and MSNBC have reported on the “controversy.”
The champion, of course, is Fox News, which invented the controversy and
which from November 28 to December 2 devoted 58 segments to the subject!
And now the war has spread to Washington, DC. On Wednesday, the
conservative and once serious Heritage Foundation actually held a symposium
on “the liberal plot” to ban Christmas.
Even President Bush is being attacked for abandoning Christmas. Tim
Wildmon, President of the American Family Association, called out President
Bush and First Lady Laura Bush for sending out “Season’s Greetings” cards,
asking whether the Bushes’ card is “sinister” or just pandering to
secularists. “Sometimes,” he says, “it’s hard to tell whether this is
sinister….or whether it just political correctness run amok.”
Laura Bush’s press secretary, Susan Whitson, has the answer. “Certainly
President and Mrs. Bush celebrate Christmas.” But their friends include
“people of all faiths.”
Of course, the “war on Christmas” it is totally manufactured. There is no
Jewish, or other non-Christian group, that campaigns to ban the term “Merry
Christmas.”
I suppose there are individual Jews (or Muslims, or others) who prefer to
be wished “happy holidays,” but that is simply neither here nor there. As
for the secular liberal groups making war on the term, they don’t exist
either. The whole issue was invented by the far right to divide Americans
from one another, at Christmastime no less. As the Christmas warriors
probably know, the reason businesses have adopted the term “the holidays”
in place of Christmas is that Christmas is one day, December 25th. “The
holidays” suggests a period that runs from Thanksgiving through New Year’s,
more time for shopping and exchanging. Anti-Christmas animus is a myth.
[end excerpt]
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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