and

a blog with cultural bulimia.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Stop ruining Christmas
or I'll beat you with a baby Jesus!

NO CHRISTMAS FOR YOU for being so neurotic!
Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it. The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words 'Merry Christmas' in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for 'Christmas.' Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a 'Christmas Under Siege' campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase 'Happy Holidays,' along with a poll that asks, 'Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?'

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one." New York Times
"The perspective-free purists who object to department stores saying 'Merry Christmas' are about as likable as the fish-in-a-barrel-with-an-AK-47 bloviators like Bill O'Reilly. I just wish both groups would find a very small, sound-proof room somewhere, shut the door tight and yell at each other for a while." Andrew Sullivan