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Even on Christmas, in the middle of celebrating Jesus and Christianity, Fox News made time for swatting at those with a different perspective. In a segment about a “singing Christmas tree” at a church in Memphis, Fox host Ainsley Earhardt introduced what was supposed to be a feel good piece with a sneering, “While some people are busy trying to erase Christmas from our culture, one church in the south is keeping Christmas alive.” Well, maybe that's what makes Fox News Christians feel good.

Despite the swipe, the piece was really a PR hype about the church’s Christmas production. Fox’s Christian crusader, Todd Starnes narrated the report. He noted that this is “not your old school church production” and that the only “major difference” between this and a “major Broadway show” is the religion. We saw b-roll footage of (presumably) parishioners praying and he concluded the segment with blatant evangelizing from the church’s pastor: “It really is about telling people the good news of Jesus Christ and that they would be different… if they remember the name of Jesus Christ and accept him into their life and let him change their life, families will be different, lives will be different. And that’s our real hope.”

Apparently, that’s the hope of Fox News, too.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever, everybody!

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If anyone doubts that Fox’s annual “War on Christmas” catalog is little more than an excuse to promote radical Christianity – while playing at being persecuted Christians – then check out how Fox & Friends teamed up with Christian extremists this morning to urge Americans to enact Nativity scenes on public property all across the country.

In one of three segments (one in each hour) devoted to the subject this morning, Steve Doocy went outside where the Faith and Action group staged a live Nativity scene in front of Fox News HQ in New York. Doocy was so busy slobbering over the presentation that he forgot to tell the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers that the group involved, Faith and Action, and interviewee Pastor Rob Schenck are not just a group of Americans suddenly moved to display their Christmas spirit in a re-enactment. They’re Christian activists with a right-wing political agenda. For example, Right Wing Watch reports that Schenck, a veteran abortion-clinic protester, was arrested back in 1992 for thrusting a fetus at then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

Nevertheless, after Schenck announced that his Nativity scene had been re-enacted in front of the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday and “sent a very powerful message,” Doocy asked all innocently, “What is the message?”

Sure enough, that message is that Christmas is for crusading - and using government property to do it:

We have Constititutional rights in this country and that includes free practice of our faith in the public square, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and we remind them that while this is the real reason for the season, we also gotta exercise our rights.

…Look, if we can do this in front of the United States Supreme Court, we can do this on the streets of New York, then you can do it in your own town and community and we’d like to see these nativity displays in front of courthouses and town, county seats and state houses. That’s our right in this country and we remind our public officials in Washington that it’s their job to guard these God-given Constitutional rights.

“That’s exactly right,” Doocy said.

Schenck closed by saying, “Merry Christ-mas.”

“There you go,” Doocy said approvingly.

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BillO goes from one nutty conspiracy to another. First, he's been treating Benghazi like a complex Len Deighton novel -- which it ain't -- and second, he needed a juicy target for his annual ritual, the "War on Christmas" and its associated nonsense. So he went out and found Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican, to be his patsy.

BillO has been running stories about the Rhode Island holiday tree story, in case you've had the good fortune to miss it.

A beaming Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee calmly weathered a cross-country Christmas controversy yesterday, standing by his PC pronouncement that the 17-foot spruce in the State House rotunda is a “holiday tree” as outraged residents cried foul. Taking the Christmas out of the tree is in the Rhode Island spirit, Chafee said, invoking the 1663 Colonial charter and the legacy of state father Roger Williams. “I’m just continuing what other governors have done,” Chafee told the Herald after dedicating a separate tree to soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I just want to make sure I’m doing everything possible in this building to honor Roger Williams.”

O'Reilly has been pining to get the governor on and he finally agreed to join him on The Factor. The first part of the video is Bill's talking points segment, which features Bill rambling on about secular progressives and atheists and so on. Then on comes Chafee, giving BillO the launching pad to ratchet up his patented "War on Christmas" hysterics on the governor.

Chafee made the case that it's a publicly funded building where the tree is located and he feels that these times-are-a-changin'. That's not music to Bill's ears -- after all, we know he sees his white dominant America slipping away -- and he kept pounding away. Chafee used as an analogy about how forcing students to say Christian prayers in public schools was the same thing, since not all the students were Christians -- but Bill wasn't buying it.

Chafee: Of course you can't ask non-Christians to say a Christian prayer in public school so these controversies, you generate them here, but they really shouldn't be controversies. It's a public building paid for by everybody...

O'Reilly: I think you're conflating two different issues.

Chafee: No, not at all.

O'Reilly explained that the Lord's Prayer was a religious act, but claimed that a Christmas tree is a secular symbol. Huh?

Governor, the Lord's Prayer is obviously a religious expression, a Christmas tree is secular.

OK, let's ask my Jewish friends about Christmas trees.

Near the end of the interview the Governor was getting tired of the attacks and pompousness and he loudly proclaimed for this holiday season that O'Reilly and Fox News are just plain angry all the time.

O'Reilly: You're making people unhappy. Everybody's unhappy with you.

Chafee: Merry Christmas

Governor, you know I'm right in your heart you know I'm right.

Chafee: No, your show -- Fox News, you guys are too angry. This is an angry network.

O'Reilly: I'm not angry, Governor. Look, I'm a happy guy.

Chafee: Listen to yourself, you're yelling.

O'Reilly: I want our traditions to be respected, that's all.

Chafee: Well, Merry Christmas.

Snap! BillO got played. Listen to yourself, O'Reilly. Way to go, Gov. Chafee. You didn't buy into his idiotic argument and you made him appear small, petty and angry all at the same time. Bravo.

At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

A Christmas Carol

Bill O'Reilly's most recent column:

"Keep Christ in Unemployment"

There comes a time when compassion can cause disaster. If you open your home to scores of homeless folks, you will not have a home for long. There is a capacity problem for every noble intent.

America remains the land of opportunity, but you have to work for it. The unemployment rate for college graduates is 5%. For high school drop-outs, it is 16%. Personal responsibility is usually the driving force behind success. But there are millions of Americans who are not responsible, and the cold truth is that the rest of us cannot afford to support them.

Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don't make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to "provide," no matter what the circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.

The Lord helps those who help themselves. Does he not?

Since that aphorism appears in no known religious work -- particularly not any known Scripture -- we'll refer instead to what Jesus actually said about the poor. And about rich men like Bill O'Reilly.

Continue reading »

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Bill O'Reilly decided to bring in Fox's newest big-name hire, John Stossel, to help buck up his annual pledge drive in the War on Christmas.

And Stossel -- who is no innocent in the ways of ideological reporting himself -- actually seemed embarrassed by it all -- mainly because O'Reilly was stooping to the lowest reporting methods possible to make his point.

Namely, he was citing as somehow authoritative ("I trust the folks") an online poll from an outfit called "StandForChristmas.com". Stossel briefly mentions that it actually was run by another group, and O'Reilly talks over him and emphasizes that it's "StandForChristmas."

Of course, "StandForChristmas" is actually run by the religious-right cranks at James Dobson's Focus on the Family. So there's an obvious bias built into the poll and its potential viewers in the first place. And then to treat the results of any open online poll as meaningful in any real sense is just palpable nonsense.

Stossel obviously understands this, and mostly tries to work his way around O'Reilly's insistence that the poll means something by just repeating its results.

But the whole thing goes completely off the rails and into another universe when O'Reilly tries to claim that corporate chiefs telling their employees what to say is "just fascist":

O'Reilly: But my point is, that I thought it was fascist -- fascism, which offends a libertarian like you -- for a CEO or a store manager to tell their employees, 'You better not say Merry Christmas' -- even though the reason we're selling stuff is because of Christmas. Isn't that fascism?

Stossel: No, it's ownership. He built the business, if he says, 'Stand on your head and sing when people come in,' you don't have to work there, you can quit, it's his business.

You realize from exchanges like this just how long it's been since Bill O'Reilly has had anything even remotely like a real job. Because in most people's real jobs -- especially in the retail biz -- employees are instructed all the time in exactly the kinds of things they're supposed to say. That's not fascist, it's just business.

Indeed, Bill O'Reilly has himself on numerous occasions demanded that people in various positions be fired for saying things he believes reflect badly on their employers -- remember his attacks on Rosie O'Donnell? Guess that makes him a fascist, by his own definition.

What would Christmas be without a warm cup of Bill O'Reilly hypocrisy?

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You are reading the headline correctly. Bill O'Reilly really has no material to work with on his phony "War on Christmas" theme-based show, so he's resorted to just making sh&t up. F&F's Gretchen Carlson is all fired up too over the big Christmas crisis so far. The only incident that he's been really passionate about because -- there ain't nothin' to complain about anywhere else -- is in Washington state. David gives you the back story:

According to Bill O'Reilly, it's the fact that an atheist group was permitted to erect a holiday display alongside a Nativity scene at the state Capitol in Washington state...read on

What really got Gretchen was a possible exhibit for the great "Festivus" holiday from Seinfield being proposed too. Hey, she can take only so much.

Carlson: When they wanted to do Festivus, give me a break.

O'Reilly: This is a mocking of Gregoire...

Carlson: To me that was the final straw today because Bill, what is going to be next?

O'Reilly: What's going to be next is in our secular progressive society they are going to try and revoke the federal holiday. You wait and see. That's going to come.

Carlson: That's what I said. Jesus is taking a back seat.

They're going to say separation of church and state, you can't have a federal holiday based on religion. You wait and see, that's what's going to be next.

Hey, I like Christmas and all, but Bill is speaking in "baby talk" over this stuff. We're assuming that most of us have jobs next year, what a moronic man who nobody likes, not even his boss. America doesn't get enough time off as it is and even if people objected to a federally mandated law based on it, I doubt they mind getting the time off from work. Oh, and Bill: Merry Christmas.

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I have to wonder how CNN's Lou Dobbs manages to pull in any kind of ratings these days. It's become such a tired schtick: Dobbs huffs and puffs and shakes his head at some kind of bureaucratic stupidity or liberal craziness or some awful crime committed by illegal immigrants. After awhile it just looks fake, because ya know what? It is fake. Dobbs constantly manufactures fake outrage. That's his schtick.

Now it's "the War on Christmas." Guess Dobbs, along with Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, is content to slither along Bill O'Reilly's slime trail.

And sure enough, near the end of the exchange, Dobbs says:

Dobbs: I've got to say -- it's an outrage, it's an outrage.

... Somebody needs to do something about it, I've gotta tell you.

... People have just got to wake up to what's happening in this country.

I'm sure they don't want to hear this (and would pay no mind if they did), but someone should tell them that nobody cares. Really. OK, there's a platoon of elderly koolaid drinkers who do everything BillO and Dobbs get them outraged about, but they're becoming just like their heroes: Irrelevant.

The only people who might make these rants relevant are the psychologically unstable haters out there in wingnutopia who decide to "do something about it" by acting out violently. Though no doubt, Dobbs will somehow find a way to blame illegal immigrants or liberals for that too.

People care about the economy. They care about getting our soldiers home. They care about fixing all the things right-wing basket cases talked the country into screwing up the past eight years. They could give a rip about meaningless local disputes about holiday displays. Really.

Maybe sooner or later, when the air goes out of those ratings, they'll finally figure that out. But I doubt it.

This morning I received an email, for real, reminding me it's ten weeks until Christmas. Good thing I forced the brilliant duo Paul and Storm to make a video for their "Way Too Early Christmas Song."

I fear for our culture, part 328957: The six-hundred dollar seven-foot pre-lit upside-down Christmas Tree at Hammacher Schlemmer is sold out. In August. (By the way, anyone seen John "War on Christmas" Gibson lately? Oh nevermind.)

Open thread below.