12/14/2011

The Mean, Mean Post Office That Ate the Heart of Christmas:
Ahh, there's nothing like the quality stupid that occurs annually with the various War on Christmas bullshit flogged by Fox "news" and various groups that need to make money scaring the yokels somehow, despite the fact that for two months, you can't go anywhere without seeing wreaths, ornaments, trees, strings of lights, and motherfucking mangers with creepy-ass dolls staring dead-eyed at you. And every year, it seems, there's some new outrage to make Team Baby Jesus rage out.

Like this one: seems that at a Silver Springs, Maryland, post office this past Saturday, a trio of Christmas carolers came in to sing to the people in line to buy stamps, send off, you know, Christmas gifts, and do other post office-y stuff. The postal workers didn't want them to sing. They said asked the makers of merry to leave. They did and caroled elsewhere. End of story, no?

Oh, fucking no. Because, see, J.P. Duffy was there. And J.P. Duffy is the douchey-looking bastard who is the Vice President of Communications for the evangelical Family Research Council. And the motto of the FRC is "Your War on Christmas is our cash bonanza." For an organization that exists to instill fear in the hearts of Christians everywhere that black Muslims want to rape your ass with a crucifix, this was like a gift of gold, frankincense, and myrrh rolled into one awesome Jesus doobie.

Duffy cranked up the old echo chamber of misplaced priorities and Fox "news" answered back, interviewing Duffy on a couple of its programs. Duffy, raising the drama queen factor to screechy, offered this: "Over the last several years, we have watched militant secularists team up with federal bureaucrats in the effort to sterilize the public square of anything remotely connected to anything religious...This postal manager has clearly received the memo which has led him to stamp out Christmas caroling. But I have my own memo to all the Christmas carolers out there. Let’s not surrender to the secularist version of Christmas future."

That's some impressive button-pushing. "Militant secularists" who "sterilize"? You mean like Hitler or a particularly atheistic veterinarian? And a conspiracy to deny carolers the right to sing about the birth of the Lord, one that comes straight from Obama's filthy Kenyan mouth? Oh, shit, Steve Doocy practically ejaculated all over that ugly couch on Fox and Friends.

How about a little sympathy for the manager of the P.O., who was booed by the patrons, according to Duffy (we haven't heard from anyone else who was there)? Look, it's a shitty time to be a postal worker since it's one of only two or three times of year that people remember, "Oh, yeah, that's right, we actually need a postal service." And Saturdays during the holiday season are a shitty time to go to the post office. How do the Glee-wannabes in Dickens drag singing "Jingle Bells" make it better for anyone? Oh, except for Duffy's daughter, who was apparently traumatized by Obama's jackbooted thugs strangling Santa right in front of her.

The point here ain't whether or not musical trios can entertain the masses who are imprisoned in long lines. The point is that the outrage machine didn't have to get going.

Except, you know, it always does. Right now, there's a bill working its way through the House of Representatives. H.R. 489 expresses "the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas." Because it needs so much protecting. Of course, the new National Defense Authorization Act, passed by the House, would probably result in Jesus being indefinitely detained.