Paranoid Assholes On Parade (Holiday Edition), by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #352 | @MDWorld
December 23, 2013 Mike Gold 4 Comments
You may already be a paranoid right-wing asshole if…
You Believe Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are White.
With apologies to my late friend Stan Lynde, himself quite the religious person, “Fox News” is a better name than “Conniption Fits.” But the latter is far more appropriate.
Currently, Fox is all bent out of shape because some people portray Santa Claus as a black person. This is out of a misperception common to paranoid right-wing assholes: they think that Santa is real. Not so: in the United States, he/she/it started out as a Thomas Nast illustration during the Civil War (War Between The States, to you-all paranoid right-wing assholes). Different countries and different ethnicities at different times have depicted this guy according to their own customs.
But, here’s the rub. It doesn’t matter. There is no more a Santa Claus than there is a Maynard G. Krebs. Santa Claus is a concept, one molded into the needs and promotional campaigns of big business. Concepts are defined in the heart and mind of the observer; if you want Santa Claus to be a skinny Rastafarian backup singer, so be it.
As for Christ… well, I hate to break it to you but some of us wonder if there ever was such a person. There is absolutely no documentation or evidence and, of course, the dude has transcended to concept status anyway. Was Christ black? He could have been, given the area of his alleged birth. As a concept, he’s whatever floats your boat.
Oh. And the Easter Bunny? She’s a manatee. Deal with it.
You Believe Phil Robertson is the Victim of Discrimination.
After Phil Robertson got his ass suspended from Duck Dynasty for repeated attacks on gays and Muslims, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal tweeted “I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment.” The always-reliable Sarah Palin revealed “Free speech is an endangered species. Those ‘intolerants’ hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch…”
Oh, really? Did those sucking at the Tea Party’s bitter teat say the same thing about the Dixie Chicks, or Alec Baldwin, or Martin Bashir, or Keith Olbermann? Or does “free speech” only apply to right-wing lunatics?
Free speech means you get to say whatever you like. Free speech doesn’t mean you are exempt from being held responsible for the ramifications of what you say. In this case, Robertson’s corporate masters did not like what he was saying from (not on) the platform they built, and they responded accordingly. Just as MSNBC responded to the mutterings of Baldwin and Bashir.
You Believe There’s Any Sort of War on Christmas.
“Happy Holidays” offends you? In a six-week period, we have Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Saturnalia, the Equinox, Kwanza, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day. That is truly a holiday season, ergo it is perfectly and overwhelmingly legitimate to wish somebody “Happy Holidays.”
Oh, and while I’m at it… Happy Holidays!
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
Vinnie Bartilucci
December 23, 2013 - 1:57 pm
Disclaimer – I don’t agree with the Commander’s opinion, sentiment, or stance. He has a right to say and believe any damn fool thing he likes, but is not free of reprecussions from such statements. When it comes to television, I’m very Free Market. It should be based on the wants and desires of the viewers, period. If ratings for the show drop precipitously after comments like this are made that, and little else, is a sign of how the viewers feel about them.
I think the audience of Duck Dynasty is comprised primarily of:
1) People who agree with the Commander’s statements.
2) People who don’t give a damn what he says, they just want to watch the rich hillbillies try to use their ce-ment pond.
In short, very little of the viewership will be swayed to change the channel by his “shocking” admissions. The majority of people who are protesting don’t watch the show. If pressed, most didn’t know what station ran the show before this happened. Hell, most of them don’t even read GQ, they just read the quote online. The actual article could very easily be seen as a carefully crafted attack piece on the family, not for their religious beliefs, but simply because the guy didn’t think they knew their place.
Bluntly, those people don’t pay the bills. MAYBE if you can show direct cause can one make an exception. If he had advocated violence, I might have a different stance. And the only reason I say “might” is because I keep in mind that he’s a guy on a friggin’ TV show about duck calls. I give the same weight to anything he says to that of Snooki, or a Hilton. Paris OR Perez.
A&E’s mistake was they brought the hammer down BEFORE there was a controversy, presuming there would be one. I don’t even think GLAAD had a chance to get out a letter of protest; instead they were left with an after the fact “good show” letter that barely got them any press at all. Instead of a protest that they could use to explain their move, they went with a knee-jerk response that only makes them more susceptible to being afraid of the “gay gestapo” as some misguided yukkapuck has already said.
A&E is currently running the numbers on how much they stand to lose if the millions of Duck Dynasty viewers leave, as opposed to how much they might lose in the future (from all the people who don’t watch the show, but MIGHT watch something else they show at some point) if they let the comments pass. They’ll get pats on the back from the DD fans, but likely a double whammy from GLAAD and the like for exactly what the DD fans are accusing them of – buckling to undue pressure.
Cracker Barrel already made their mind up…after they made their mind up. They announced their plan to pull the DD products, only to have their customers (or at least, the people online who CLAIMED they were customers, or said they might be someday) tell them Oh No You Don’t, and they yanked their hands back from the shelves like it was a hot oven.
Ironically, A&E stands to make a great deal of money over the next week or so, as people snap up all the DD merch they can, either out of “support” for the clan, or because they assume they’ll be rare collectibles very shortly. I am confident A&E is making more off that stuff than the family is. Nothing spurs sales like controversy.
Rick Oliver
December 23, 2013 - 8:27 pm
I’m pretty sure Maynard G. Krebs is white. I had a Maynard G. Krebs fan club when I was a kid. And it’s a fairly safe bet that Frosty the Snowman is white too. Well, under certain circumstances, I guess he could be Asian. That’s your cue to play a Frank Zappa song, Mike.
Doug Abramson
December 23, 2013 - 9:31 pm
Olbermann doesn’t really apply. The only time he was fired for something he said on air was from Fox; when he was hosting the Baseball Game of the Week pre-game show. Rupert didn’t like him announcing that he had reached a verbal agreement to sell the Dodgers. He decided that Keith was disloyal, even though a Dodgers executive and high ranking News Corp exec. confirmed the story and gave him the go a head to broadcast it. Most of his other career changes were due to personality conflicts. Except possibly the Currant job. He was out of there too fast and the supposed reasons cited would have fallen into the category of Keith being Keith. My theory is that he was hired to give the channel a profile (if not ratings) boost, so Gore could sell the company at a premium. The Aljazeera America deal seems to be the result.
Going back on topic, the Happy Holidays hysteria really gets on my nerves. The phrase goes back to at least the 40’s. (Hence Irving Berlin’s song: Happy Holiday[s]) As for its “anti-Christian” basis; my Arkansas born, farm raised, WWII veteran,small business owning, Protestant church going Grandfather is who taught me to use the phrase. He told me that unless I knew someone celebrated Christmas, it would be rude to presume and say Merry Christmas to them. Before anybody is tempted to frame this to suit their world view, let me say one thing: my Grandfather wasn’t a liberal by any definition or stretch of the imagination, about anything. Don’t even try it.
Rene
December 25, 2013 - 4:50 pm
From what I know of the research about the historical Jesus, he was more brown than white, and physically would blend very well in a Muslim neighbourhood. The blonde Jesus one sometimes see is as “wrong” as a black Jesus. Funny no one complains about that.
In any case, and I have no doubt that Jesus existed and still does exist, Jesus is supposed to be the Way, he is more than just a guy with a certain skin color, he is an example to all of us, so yes, he can have any skin color that would allow your congregation to identify with him.
So yeah, I don’t believe there is a War on Christmas, but definitely there is a War on Christ, and some “Christians” are among those waging it.