“A Bleeding-Heart Liberal”: Why Conservatives Should Hate Santa Claus
The war over the War on Christmas has flared up again. Slate’s Aisha Harris fired the latest salvo with her piece last week, “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore,” prompting a famously confused response from Fox News host Megyn Kelly that “Santa Claus just is white” and “Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure, I mean, that’s verifiable fact—as is Santa.” Every single living being on the Internet weighed in. Kelly later defended herself in the usual manner of someone who regrets having said something: “Humor is a part of what we try to bring to this show, but sometimes that is lost on the humorless.”
She was not joking, of course. To conservatives—of which she is one—the War on Christmas is a very real and serious thing, and the holiday’s two most revered figures, Jesus and Santa, must be defended at all costs from liberals who would dare make the holiday more inclusive. What’s even weirder than the insistence that Santa is white, though, is that conservatives dare to defend him in the first place. He’s a conservative’s worst nightmare, actually.
Consider the lyrics to “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”:
He’s making a list / Checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice / Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake
That he’s “making a list” sounds more than vaguely McCarthyistic, I’ll admit, but this is 2013, not 1954. You know who makes lists these days? The National Security Agency—for the express purpose of finding out who has been, or may one day be, naughty. By monitoring your emails and cell phone metadata, the NSA also has a pretty good idea of when you’re sleeping or awake. (Another agency that likes lists: the Internal Revenue Service.)
Santa invades our privacy in more literal ways, too. He breaks into everyone’s homes in the middle of the night—a crime that no one of any political persuasion, except perhaps anarchists, should endorse—and once inside, what does he do? He leaves presents totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars under your tree. You know who else gives Americans free stuff simply for being alive, rather than making recipients work for it? The bloated federal government and its social safety net. Every day, millions of Americans open unearned gifts in the form of Medicaid, unemployment insurance, TANF, and food stamps.
Santa’s home address further complicates matters. Eventually the North Pole will become the equivalent of a Caribbean beach, converting Santa into the world’s most famous and influential climate-change activist—at which point the only coal being mined in America will end up in presents beneath conservatives’ Christmas trees.
And as longtime Santa actor Jonathan Meath points out, “Santa is really the only cultural icon we have who’s male, doesn’t carry a gun, and is all about peace, joy, giving, and caring for other people.” Sure sounds like a bleeding-heart liberal to me.
Note: Humor is a part of what we try to bring to this website, but sometimes that is lost on the humorless.
By: Ryan Kearney, The New Republic, December 16, 2013
“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
“Jesus, Santa Claus, And Race”: Conservative Secularism And The Pride Of White Identity
It’s probably appropriate that an anchor on the media network which annually gives us the maddening agitprop over the “War On Christmas” has kicked up a stir by insisting that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were (and presumably “are” for believers) white folks, just like most Fox viewers. Politico‘s Hadas Gold has the story:
On Wednesday night Megyn Kelly declared on her Fox News show that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Discussing a piece in Slate by Aisha Harris about a black versus white Santa, Kelly that “just because it makes you feel uncomfortable it doesn’t mean it has to change.”
“You know, I’ve given her her due. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” Kelly said. “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?”
Santa Claus can be traced to a real life monk named St. Nicholas who lived in what is today Turkey, according to the History Channel. Jesus Christ was born to a Jewish family around what is now Israel, and his race has long been debated with several scholars saying he likely looked like what many modern day people of Middle Eastern descent look like.
The unusual segment, where the panelists also debated whether Santa Claus should be a penguin as Harris writes in her piece, seemed to be directly contradicting what Kelly said on Monday when she appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
“I’m a straight news anchor, I’m not one of the opinion hosts,” she told Leno. “The way we do it on the Fox News Channel is the straight news anchors like us give a hard time to both sides.”
It seems especially idiotic to claim a race for a mythical figure like Santa Claus. As for Jesus Christ, we have the authority of a fellow named Paul of Tarsus (Galations 3:28):
In Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
So who cares to what race–or for that matter, gender–the “historical Jesus” belonged? The principal of absolute equality before God is a central principle of Christianity–or at least forms of Christianity that haven’t succumbed to the secularism (yes, that’s what it is, folks) that associates the faith with cultural or political conservatism or the pride of white identity.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 12, 2013
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