Re: New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
- From: marcus_gen@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 26 Dec 2005 12:37:25 -0800
marcus_gen@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Donna,
>
> Have you read the shorter article from the New Yorker, the link in a
> prior post in this thread, or the longer article I sent you from Salon?
> If you have, or when you do, you will see the point I am making.
>
> Let me tell you what I'm not saying. I'm not saying your experiences
> are invalid. I'm not saying that your observations are wrong.
>
> Let me tell you what I'm saying. I'm saying that the observations you
> have made are in some cases, isolated...not the norm...and some are
> anecdotal. I am saying(and the two articles I've cited bear me out)
> that these isolated instances (especially in the John Gibson book which
> started this year's controversy) are vastly over-exaggerated, and have
> been done for the sole purpose of making a political statement to
> manipulate fear and loathing in people, especially during these times
> of worrying about terrorists.
>
> That's all I'm saying
>
> Marc
> TAR wrote:
> > marcus_gen@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > >
> > > Francie wrote:
> > > > The following quote comes from the end of a "Talk of the Town" item
> > > > about "The War on Christmas":
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > John Lennon, who died in this city, at this season, twenty-five years
> > > > ago, didn't bother with "Happy Holidays" and the like. In 1971, he and
> > > > his wife Yoko Ono, wrote and recorded a song that has become a classic.
> > > > Here's its final verse:
> > > >
> > > > A very Merry Christmas
> > > > And a happy New Year
> > > > Let's hope it's a good one
> > > > Without any fear
> > > > War is over, if you want it
> > > > War is over now.
> > > >
> > > > That's the spirit, John. You bet we want it. And merry Christmas to
> > > > all.
> > > > -Hendrik Hertzberg
> > > >
> > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > > >
> > > > Pretty simple, if we allow it to be.
> > > >
> > > > Francie
> > >
> > > I have a very difficult time believing that Yoko Ono today, and John
> > > Lennon, if he were still alive, buying into the lie, promulgated by the
> > > Fox News network, and Televangelists that there is a war against
> > > Christmas. It's all a lie, meant to fester illwill towards other
> > > people and religions.
> >
> > You keep saying this as if it's a fact. It's not all a lie, Marcus. I
> > have so many examples of this happening... in schools, in stores, in
> > communities. And just yesterday, my brother-in-law in New Jersey told
> > me that a nearby store owner said that he went through it's holiday
> > music last year to make sure that they only played seasonal songs, but
> > left out all references to Christmas so that they wouldn't offend
> > anyone. This year they changed it back and included Christmas songs
> > because they noticed that their sales went down last year, and wondered
> > if this was the reason.
> >
> > Also, here I've copied some quotes from a friend that wrote on another
> > newsgroup two years ago. I don't think she would mind if I copied this
> > here since it was made public and is in the archives. These are from
> > two of her posts:
> >
> > "I am having a hard time with some of the residents in the homeowner's
> > association I manage. This year, to be perfectly PC and not offend
> > anyone's
> > religion, we decorated the community only using white lights, lit
> > garlands,
> > snowflakes and green wreaths with red bows on. I have gotten a couple
> > of very
> > irate residents telling me that the wreaths with red bows and the
> > garlands are
> > very offensive to them because they represent Christianity."
> >
> > "I guess someone will complain no matter what you do. I'm just becoming
> > very
> > angry that we can't celebrate Christmas in the spirit of friendship and
> > giving
> > anymore because it is "offensive" to some people."
Here is the New Yorker piece that Francie was referring to...it is not
as in depth as the Salon piece, but in some ways gets the point across
quicker. Note the second paragraph, first sentence, for starters:
"Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, with Jack Frost nipping at
your nose and folks dressed up like Eskimos-or, to update the line
for political correctness, with tots in boots just like Aleuts. It's
that magical season when lights twinkle and good will abounds. It's
time again for the thrill that comes but once a year: the War on
Christmas.
The War on Christmas is a little like Santa Claus, in that it (a) comes
to us from the sky, beamed down by the satellites of cable news, and
(b) does not, in the boringly empirical sense, exist. What does exist
is the idea of the War on Christmas, which, though forever new, is a
venerable tradition, older even than strip malls and plastic mistletoe.
Christmas itself, in something like its recognizably modern form, with
gifts and cards and elves, dates from the early nineteenth century. The
War on Christmas seems to have come along around a hundred years later,
with the publication of "The International Jew," by Henry Ford, the
automobile magnate, whom fate later punished by arranging to have his
fortune diverted to the sappy, do-gooder Ford Foundation. "It is not
religious tolerance in the midst of religious difference, but religious
attack that they"-the Jews-"preach and practice," he wrote.
"The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and
certain patriotic songs shows that." Ford's anti-Semitism has not
aged well, thanks to the later excesses of its European adherents, but
by drawing a connection between Christmasbashing and
patriotism-scorning he pointed the way for future Christmas warriors.
Over the next few decades, when the country was preoccupied with the
Depression, the Second World War, and going to movies like "It's a
Wonderful Life," the W. on C. went into remission. But at the end of
the placid nineteen-fifties the John Birch Society, a pioneering
organization of the bug-eyed right, took up the Yuletide cudgels. As
Michelle Goldberg recalled recently in Salon, a 1959 Birch pamphlet
warned that "the Reds" and "the U.N. fanatics" had launched an
"assault on Christmas" as "part of a much broader plan, not only
to promote the U.N., but to destroy all religious beliefs and
customs." The enemy's strategy, the Birchers warned, was to aim at
the soft underbelly and shake it like a bowlful of jelly. "What they
now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department
stores throughout the country are to utilize U.N. symbols and emblems
as Christmas decorations." The focus on department stores was a
prophetic insight, but its full potential as a weapon in Christmas
war-fighting was not realized until the next century.
Today's Christmas Pentagon is the Fox News Channel, which during a
recent five-day period carried no fewer than fifty-eight different
segments about the ongoing struggle, some of them labelled "Christmas
under attack." One of Fox's on-air warriors is John Gibson, whose
new book, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the
Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought," presents itself
as the definitive word. So one opens it eagerly with hopes of learning
what this war actually consists of. These hopes are soon dashed-or,
rather, fulfilled, since it turns out to consist of very little. Gibson
provides a half-dozen or so anecdotes, padded out to stupefying length,
in which a school board or a city hall renames its Christmas break a
winter break or declines to rename its winter break a Christmas break,
or removes Christmas trees from the lobbies of government buildings and
then restores them after people complain. "The war on Christmas,"
the author concludes triumphantly, "is joined."
Gibson is a mere grunt in Fox's army. Bill O'Reilly, the
network's most prominent religio-political commentator, is its
Patton. The shortage of anti-Christmas atrocities (plus the fact that
the U.N. fanatics long ago switched to subverting Halloween) may
explain why he has concentrated on department stores, many of which, in
their ads or via their salespeople, wish people "Happy Holidays"
instead of-or in addition to, or more frequently than-"Merry
Christmas." (In 1921, Henry Ford attacked from the opposite flank,
sneering that "the strange inconsistency of it all is to see the
great department stores of the Levys and the Isaacs and the Goldsteins
and the Silvermans filled with brilliant Christmas cheer.")
O'Reilly sat out Vietnam. In the war on the War on Christmas,
however, he not only has been in the trenches but has gone over the
top. "I am not going to let oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian
forces in this country diminish and denigrate the holiday!" he said
the other day. And, "I'm going to use all the power that I have on
radio and television to bring horror into the world of people who are
trying to do that!" And, "There is no reason on this earth that all
of us cannot celebrate a public holiday devoted to generosity, peace,
and love together!" And, "And anyone who tries to stop us from
doing it is gonna face me!"
O'Reilly sees the War on Christmas as part of the "secular
progressive agenda," because "if you can get religion out, then you
can pass secular progressive programs like legalization of narcotics,
euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage." Just as Christmas itself
evolved as a way to synthesize a variety of winter festivals, so the
War on Christmas fantasy is a way of grouping together a variety of
enemies, where they can all be rhetorically machine-gunned at once. But
the suspicion remains that a truer explanation for Fox's militancy
may be, like so much else at Yuletide, business. Christmas is the big
retail season. What Fox retails is resentment.
In this war, no weapons of Christmas destruction have been found-just
a few caches of linguistic oversensitivity and commercial caution.
Christmas remains robust: even Gibson says in his book that in America
Christmas celebrators (ninety-six per cent) outnumber Christians
(eighty-four per cent). But the "Happy Holidays" contagion has
probably spread too far to be wiped out. "President Bush and I wish
everyone a very happy holiday," Laura Bush says sweetly on a video
posted on the White House Web site. And even the Fox News online store
advertised, until a couple of weeks ago, "The O'Reilly Factor
Holiday Ornament." ("Put your holiday tree in 'The No Spin
Zone.' ")
John Lennon, who died in this city, at this season, twenty-five years
ago, didn't bother with "Happy Holidays" and the like. In 1971,
he and his wife, Yoko Ono, wrote and recorded a song that has become a
classic. Here's its final verse:
A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now.
That's the spirit, John. You bet we want it. And Merry Christmas to
all.
- Hendrik Hertzberg , The New Yorker
.
- References:
- New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
- From: Francie
- Re: New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
- From: marcus_gen
- Re: New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
- From: TAR
- Re: New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
- From: marcus_gen
- New Yorker Lennon Quote for Xmas
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