“Who Cares If Santa Claus Is Real?”: The Megyn Kelly Scandal Is About Race
The brouhaha over Megyn Kelly’s comments about Santa Claus continued this weekend with Kelly’s astonishingly dishonest non-apology. But first a recap: after an article in Slate argued that Santa Claus should not necessarily be played by white men, Kelly expressed outrage on Fox News over the politicizing of her beloved Christmas. “Santa just is white,” Kelly stated. “Santa is what he is.” (She added that Jesus was “a white man too.”) Understandably, the internet erupted in outrage, Jon Stewart mocked Kelly, and various commentators pointed out that the Santa Claus most people recognize today is barely based on Saint Nicholas, who himself was from what today is Turkey. So, on Friday Kelly went back on her show to address the controversy.
It’s here that I should say my once stalwart confidence in the P.R. geniuses at Fox has been shaken. Apparently the best they could come up with was that Kelly was joking (as she states in this clip: http://mediamatters.org/embed/static/clips/2013/12/13/33245/fnc-kf-20131213-whitesantaresponse ), but then she proceeds to play the clip from the previous show where it is abundantly clear that she was not joking. Guys, c’mon! This isn’t rocket science. Kelly then went on to say that America is becoming too politically correct and sensitive, and that Fox News is targeted for its politics.
It’s this last bit that is the most interesting, and also explains why people have been focusing on the wrong aspect of this story. “Race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country, and Fox News and yours truly are big targets for many people,” Kelly said. Well, yes. Both those things are literally true. But Kelly wasn’t saying them because they are true. She was saying them because one of Fox’s most popular topics is that white people are victimized by accusations of racism, and must tiptoe around all racial topics. (Of course this would be less true if our society didn’t have so much racially insensitive garbage peddled by the likes of Fox News, but let’s leave that aside). In short, Kelly was playing the victimization/self-pity card, which white conservatives have oh-so-charmingly been playing for decades.
But why is this especially relevant? Because this same card was the whole point of the original segment. Why do you think a Fox panel was discussing a Slate piece in the first piece? Well, because they want their audience to feel under siege, and who better (in the minds of Fox execs) to be under siege from than non-whites.
The historical accuracy of Kelly’s comments, which has garnered the most attention, is nearly irrelevant. Imagine for a moment that Santa was real and white, and then imagine that Jesus was white too. And then ask yourself why Fox would run the segment. (Hint: It would have nothing to do with historical accuracy). Fox wants to rile up racial feelings because that is what Fox does. The accuracy can be called into question here, but what is truly despicable is the intent.
This particular Fox News controversy was about religion; yesterday’s was about Sean Hannity lovingly interviewing George Zimmerman; tomorrow’s will be about God-knows-what. Our #1 news channel loves dealing in racial innuendo, regardless of the ostensible topic. Santa has nothing to do with it.
By: Isaac Chotiner, The New Republic, December 15, 2013
“A Wall That Protects Us All”: Sarah Palin Can’t Tear Down The Wall Between Church And State
“We have just enough religion to make us hate,” wrote Jonathan Swift, “but not enough to make us love one another.” A lifelong religious controversialist, the 18th-century Irish satirist definitely knew whereof he wrote. After all, it’s fewer than 20 years since Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland quit dynamiting each other’s gathering places.
Even here in the United States, it often seems that picking fights over religion increases during the Christmas season. If anything, claiming to be persecuted while expressing contempt for others’ belief appears on the rise.
And, no, I’m not talking only about the annual invocation of paranoid triumphalism Fox News calls the “War on Christmas.” Nor even about noted theologian Rush Limbaugh assailing Pope Francis as a “Marxist” for criticizing the tyranny of markets and the worship of money. Because Jesus was all about capital formation and tax cuts for the wealthy.
Everywhere you look, somebody’s insulting somebody else’s religion.
To me, the cultural left’s only marginally better than the right. I recently witnessed a remarkable online colloquy concerning a Catholic organization’s shipping 3,000 rosaries to the Philippines to victims of Typhoon Haiyan, “so that they can thank God” as one cynic wrote.
“Do these people ever use their minds for one second?” one person asked. “Hearing this is thoroughly depressing. It shows how ignorant and warped so many people are and how daunting is the amount of education there needs to be to cure the world.”
Cure it of what, I wondered. Of typhoons? Of charity? Or merely of belief? Almost needless to say, Roman Catholic churches worldwide were taking up special collections for storm victims in that largely Catholic nation—along with religious and humanitarian organizations worldwide.
“They are vultures sweeping down on those in need to shove more control down their throats,” wrote another. “I have nothing but contempt for the Catholic church and religion as a whole.”
News flash: The world will never be cured.
Meanwhile, how this kind of free-floating rage differs from Bible-beating preachers who blame earthquakes and tornadoes on other people’s sexual sins escapes me. The main characteristic of the fundamentalist mind is an inability to refrain from expressing contempt for beliefs different from one’s own—whether one’s spiritual leader is Pat Robertson or Christopher Hitchens.
Which brings us back to Sarah Palin’s remarkable appearance at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last week—the last stop on a tour publicizing her book Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.
“I say in a very jolly Christmasy way,” the Alaskan babbler claims, “that, ‘Enough is enough.’ Say enough is enough with this politically correct police out there that is acting to erode our freedom to celebrate and exercise our faith. Some Scrooge wants to force Christ out of Christmas and wants to ban Jesus out of the reason for the season?”
To hear Palin tell it, there’s a veritable army of “angry atheists armed with an attorney” who “want to try to abort Christ from Christmas” by filing lawsuits “when they see a plastic Jewish family on somebody’s lawn—a nativity scene, that’s basically what it is, right?”
Actually, no.
But never mind theology, here’s the deal: If Palin or anybody else can provide a single, verifiable instance of somebody being successfully sued for exhibiting a crèche, a cross or any religious symbol on private property anywhere in the U.S., they’d have something to complain about.
They’d also have the certain support of the American Civil Liberties Union in defense of their First Amendment rights.
But of course that’s not what these (to my mind overblown) fights over nativity scenes at courthouses, city halls and state capitols around the country are about. Instead, they’re about an “establishment of religion” which the same First Amendment categorically forbids.
In typical scattershot fashion, Palin even invoked Virginia’s own Thomas Jefferson, a conventionally pious Founding Father in her mind, who would, like, totally object to the persecution of people like her who can’t make everybody admit that their God is America’s God:
“I think Thomas Jefferson would certainly recognize it and stand up and he wouldn’t let anybody tell him to sit down and shut up.”
Now it’s definitely true that Jefferson was rarely shy about his religious views. Courtesy of Martin Longman in Washington Monthly, here’s his opinion about what Palin calls “the reason for the season” from an 1823 letter to John Adams: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter.”
Like Swift, Jefferson recognized the dangers of religious strife. That’s precisely why, he assured Connecticut Baptists in 1802, the First Amendment decreed “a wall of separation between church and State.”
A wall that protects us still.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, December 11, 2013
“Cheney’s Descent Into Incoherence”: The “Guy At The End Of The Bar” Agument
It stands to reason former Vice President Dick Cheney would be unimpressed with the international agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Heck, Cheney didn’t even get along with George W. Bush late in their second term because Bush was reluctant to launch military strikes on Iran, so the notion that Cheney would balk at President Obama’s policy is hardly a surprise.
But as Ben Armbruster noted, Cheney appeared on Fox News this morning to complain about U.S. policy towards Iran, and the former VP doesn’t even seem to be trying anymore.
The former vice president moved to Iran and without mentioning any specific criticisms of the agreement, claimed it’s bad because of unrelated health care issues. “We don’t follow through and Iran we’ve got a very serious problem going forward and a deal now been cut,” he said. “The same people that brought us ‘you can keep your insurance if you want’ are telling us they’ve got a great deal in Iran with respect to their nuclear program. I don’t believe it.”
This is what I like to call a “guy at the end of the bar” argument. You may know the type: there’s some angry guy watching the TV above the bar, and to no one in particular, the loudmouth wants to share his poorly informed wisdom about a variety of subjects. He’s the guy who’s convinced government is inherently bad because of lines at the DMV.
Cheney has become that guy. About 1 percent of the population will be adversely affected by changes to the messy individual, non-group insurance market, and as such, the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran is suspect. What do these two things have to do with one another? For sensible people, nothing.
But in Cheney’s mind, if Obama used oversimplified rhetoric about a sliver of the population individual health plans, then literally everything the administration says on every subject should be rejected. One wonders if Cheney would hold himself to the same standard, given his lengthy record of breathtaking dishonesty.
Indeed, in the same Fox appearance, Cheney added, “I don’t think that Barack Obama believes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation,” which is demonstrably silly.
And why should anyone care what the failed former vice president thinks? It’s a fair question, though I’d note that Cheney’s perspective remains relevant, not just because of his frequent media appearances, but because congressional Republicans continue to seek his counsel on matters related to foreign policy and national security.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 9, 2013
“Oh Ye Of Little Intelligence”: Rick Santorum Wins The Prize For The Worst Nelson Mandela Tribute
ObamaCare is a great injustice, much like the institutionalized racism and segregation of post-colonial South Africa, according to former Pennsylvania senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R).
In an appearance on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly Thursday, Santorum likened Mandela’s anti-apartheid crusade to Republicans’ continued efforts to dismantle the president’s health care law.
“He was fighting against some great injustice,” Santorum said, “and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives. And ObamaCare is front and center in that.”
Leaving aside the fact that shanghaiing a world leader’s death to peddle your political beliefs is gross opportunism at its worst, Santorum’s comparison is flawed for another simple reason: Mandela was a prominent proponent of expanding access to health care, especially for the poor and disadvantaged.
From a South African department of health report on the nation’s health care system:
On the 24th of May 1994, President Nelson Mandela announced in his State of the Nation address that all health care for pregnant women and children under the age of 6 years would be provided free to users of public health facilities. The free care policy at primary care level was extended to all users from 1 April 2006. [DOH]
Free public health care? Sounds like socialism to me.
There’s more.
South Africa’s constitution enshrines a “right” to health care in the same subsection that it guarantees the rights to “sufficient food and water.” The Kaiser Family Foundation named an award after Mandela honoring “the efforts of individuals who make extraordinary contributions to improving the health and health care of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population in South Africa and internationally.” And Mandela’s work, both in office and after, laid the groundwork for South Africa’s new universal health care system.
We’re sure Rick Santorum will be issuing a retraction any moment now.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, December 6, 2013
“Rooting For Failure”: Hard To Remember A Time When A Major Political Party And Its Media Arm Rooted For Fellow Americans To Lose
I just spent 15 minutes on my local health care exchange and realized that I could save a couple hundred dollars a month on my family’s insurance. Of course, I live in Washington State, which has a very competitive market, a superbly functioning website and no Koch-brothers-sponsored saboteurs trying to discourage people from getting health care.
California is just as good. It’s enrolling more than 2,000 people a day. New York is humming as well. And Kentucky, it’s the gold standard now: More than 56,000 people have signed up for new health care coverage — enough to fill a stadium in Louisville.
This is terrible news, and cannot be allowed to continue. If there’s even a small chance that, say, half of the 50 million or so Americans currently without heath care might get the same thing that every other advanced country offers its citizens, that would be a disaster.
But not to worry. The failure movement is active and very well funded. You probably know about the creepy Uncle Sam character in ads financed by the Koch brothers. Sicko Sam is seen leering over a woman on her back in a hospital exam room, her legs in stirrups. This same guy is now showing up on college campuses, trying to get young people to opt out of health care. On some campuses, he plies students with free booze and pizza — swee-eeet!
The Republican Party started a failure campaign earlier this year, but then the strategy got sidetracked in a coercive government shutdown that cost us all $24 billion or so. With the disastrous rollout of the federal exchange, Republicans now smell blood. A recent memo outlined a far-reaching, multilevel assault on the Affordable Care Act. Horror stories — people losing their lousy health insurance — will be highlighted, and computer snafus celebrated.
Ron Paul, the nuttier of the two political Pauls, recently suggested to a crowd in Virginia that “nullification” of the health care law might be the best way to kill it. I’m not sure what he meant by that, but it sounds illegal.
It’s hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose. When the first attempt by the United States to launch a satellite into orbit, in 1957, ended in disaster, did Democrats start to cheer, and unify to stop a space program in its infancy? Or, when Medicare got off to a confusing start, did Republicans of the mid-1960s wrap their entire political future around a campaign to deny government-run health care to the elderly?
Of course not. But for the entity of the Obama era, Republicans have consistently been cheerleaders for failure. They rooted for the economic recovery to sputter, for gas prices to spike, the job market to crater, the rescue of the American automobile industry to fall apart.
I get it. This organized schadenfreude goes back to the dawn of Obama’s presidency, when Rush Limbaugh, later joined by Senator Mitch McConnell, said their No. 1 goal was for the president to fail. A CNN poll in 2010 found 61 percent of Republicans hoping Obama would fail (versus only 27 percent among all Americans).
Wish granted, mission accomplished. Obama has failed — that is, if you judge by his tanking poll numbers. But does this collapse in approval have to mean that the last best chance for expanding health care for millions of Americans must fail as well?
Does this mean we throw in the towel, and return to a status quo in which insurance companies routinely cancel policies, deny health care to people with pre-existing conditions and have their own death panel treatment for patients who reach a cap in medical benefits?
The Republican plan would do just that, because they have no plan but to crush the nation’s fledgling experiment. Sometimes they bring up vouchers, or tort reform, or some combination of catchphrases. Here was Sarah Palin, who is to articulate reason what Mr. Magoo is to vision, on the Republican alternative, as she told Matt Lauer:
“The plan is to allow those things that have been proposed over many years to reform a health care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there’s more competition, there’s less tort-reform threat, there’s less trajectory of the cost increases. And those plans have been proposed over and over. And what thwarts those plans? It’s the far left.”
Yes, it is a big and legitimate news story, for a presidency built on technical expertise, that the federal exchange is not working as promised. Ditto Obama’s vow that people could keep their bottom-feeder health care policies.
But where were the news conferences, the Fox News alerts, the parading of people who couldn’t get their lifesaving cancer treatments under the old system? Where was the media attention when thousands of people were routinely dumped once they got sick? When did Republicans in Congress hold an oversight hearing on the leading cause of personal bankruptcy — medical debt?
All of that is what we had before. And all of that is what we will return to if some version of the Affordable Care Act is not made workable. Republicans have a decent chance, in next year’s elections, of killing the dream of progressive presidents going back to Teddy Roosevelt. But they shouldn’t count on it. What’s going against them, or any party invested in failure, is that Americans are inherently optimistic. That alone may be enough to save Obamacare.
By: Timothy Egan, Contributing Op-Ed Writer, The New York Times, November 28, 2013
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