The Prancing Elites - How About Some Holiday Tolerance? Kinky Boots Alabama Style

Sickening Moves in Santa Suits

On December 11 in the very right wing suburb of Mobile, Semmes, Alabama, folks in the community got something of a jolt at the end of their annual Christmas parade.  Clad in not quite fitting Santa suits and hats, white hot pants and go go boots, the "ladies" of the Prancing Elites came by strutting their sickening dance moves to quite a few dropped jaws.  By the way, for those not literate in tranny street talk, sickening means awesome.  I only know from watching Ru Paul's Drag Race on Logo but, being a white straight guy, I take pride in throwing around terms like that.

So yea, Semmes is a primarily white, very blue collar, very Baptist area in a very conservative state.  The Prancing Elites are all ladies of color and, to the crowd at the parade, represented about fifty things the citizens of that community rarely see.  Even on TV when all you watch is NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, Alabama football and Fox News, the only black people you see on a regular basis are on the football field.

Bringing Up the Rear and Throwing Some Junk

But remember the outrage over the Kinky Boots thing at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?  Well imagine that times about a hundred.  That particular event in Manhattan had people around the country bemoaning the fact that they had to explain to their kids what those men were doing dressed like that.  The funny thing is that children are much more ready to be tolerant than their parents.  For many, an answer like "those men like to play dress up, honey" wasn't an option.  I guess you have to explain that those men sometimes like to have sex with other men and sometimes those men actually want to become women.

Recently John Stewart's Daily Show came to Alabama and Mississippi.  They had a fantastic plan.  They had two kind of redneck looking actors pretend to be gay and in love walking around with a camera to see how people would respond.  To their field reporter's shock the couple met with almost universal approval.  They even had one propose to the other in a Waffle House and that got a standing ovation in the restaurant known pretty universally as the redneck headquarters of the South next to Cracker Barrel.  The best part of that story was that the sure that he's always right Nate Silver had to eat crow.  You can read that story and watch the hilarious video, if you missed it, here.

The point is that, despite many people down here being intolerant jackasses, there are a lot of folks who are accepting and more open minded.  If all you see is media coverage of Alabama you wouldn't know that.  That's what made the shock on Nate Silver's face so gratifying.  If all you do is sit in an office in D.C. or Manhattan or Los Angeles and rely on some well-worn talking points and assumptions, you'll certainly miss the fact that the world has some good people in it everywhere you go.  Sometimes you just have to look a little harder.

Case in point:  The Prancing Elites were supposed to appear in Mobile's MoonPie Over Mobile Parade, the city's annual New Year's Eve event.  You'd have to know the history of Mardi Gras in Mobile, yes Mobile had it before New Orleans, to understand the MoonPie thing but it's the most common throw during Mardi Gras in Mobile's parades where in New Orleans they only throw non-food items.  Due to the negative publicity over the event in Semmes, the people putting together the Mobile parade told the ladies they wouldn't be invited.  That's the bad news.

The good news is AL.com, sort of a news clearing house for the major newspaper dailies in Alabama, posted a story about the cancellation and included a poll.  The poll's question was "What do you think of the decision to pull the Prancing Elites’ invitation to perform in the New Year’s Eve MoonPie
Drop parade?"  The two options for answers:  They shouldn’t be invited and Get over it, bring them on.  As of the writing of this blog, the numbers on the poll are 2,587 for Get over it, bring them on, and 1,673 for They shouldn't be invited.  61% to 39% in favor of letting them dance in a state where George Wallace once proudly stood on the steps of a university risking his life to deny a black man an education.  Please cast your vote in the poll here.

Yes Alabama has a long, long way to go.  But it has a lot more to do with the politicians who end up representing us in Washington than actual public sentiment.  All the average American gets to see of us is the likes of our moronic Senator Jeff Sessions and other pols putting their feet in their mouths every chance they get.  Yea, rednecks are a big part of the equation, but the tide is changing here as in much of the rest of America.  And where once a black man was lynched on a street corner in the heart of town not 40 years ago, a group of young black men are now dressing in hot pants and shaking their asses like there's no tomorrow in the middle of the street.  Here's an interview with this stunning crew and them showing off their hot ass moves.  Enjoy!  and Merry Christmas!

All I've got to say is YOU GO GIRLS!!!!  And to all those wanting to throw shade on these ladies, take it back to the 1960s and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Sticking it to the Swiss Banks - One Less Hiding Place but Still Plenty Out There

Dark Skies for Tax Dodgers

December 31 is the end of an era for many Americans and the Swiss banks that have helped them dodge taxes for many years.  The Swiss bank account has always had the cachet of being the haute hiding place for money made in our country that those oh so patriotic wealthy want protected from having to pay for roads used to move their commerce or police and army used to protect them from the poor.  Nothing says screw the poor quite like a number with no name attached in a bank in Geneva or Bern or Zurich.  Well the party is quickly coming to an end.

Since the first warning shot was fired in 2009 when Washington fined UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, $780 million for helping Americans avoid paying taxes, the Swiss government has sought to comply with new rules and banks across that country are getting in step.  They will begin to make their records available to federal prosecutors and prepare to pay fines.  Billions of dollars in US currency have avoided taxation in Switzerland over the years so what does this mean now?  Are our wealthy patriots going to have to start paying their fair share?  I mean we're frequently told how much of the tax burden they already take on so how can they find fairness with the Swiss option going away?

Well, first, let's be clear, when you see statistics that say that the top whatever percent pay some whopping percentage of the total tax intake in our country it's totally misleading.  The anti-tax folks are taking what would be the corporate tax rate times whatever a company's gross is; that's before all the deductions, tax breaks, subsidies, etc. kick in.  And all you're seeing is the income tax, not fees paid by average Americans or sales taxes as part of the much larger pie.  So pity the poor right wingers, right?  You'll frequently hear how the big corporations would love to pay their share if only our corporate tax rates weren't so high.

Through clever accounting, tax dodges written into law, subsidies, writing forward losses, etc. many companies in America are able to avoid paying taxes and frequently get a government rebate to boot.  And should they find themselves in the unenviable position of actually having to pay their fair share they can always set up shell subsidiaries overseas.  According to Citizens for Tax Justice over a trillion dollars made by American companies is in foreign tax havens and hasn't been taxed by any foreign government, much less our government.  Again, these companies say they'd just love to repatriate this money if it weren't for our horribly unfair tax code.  I mean really, they would love to do the right thing but it just isn't possible.  Everyone knows shareholders are much more important than roads, schools, defense, that stuff.  And why should these companies be expected to have any patriotism anyway?  Everyone knows patriotism is for poor people.

Anti-Tax Nutjob Grover Norquist

Leading the charge in the anti-tax arena is Grover Norquist whose group, Americans for Tax Reform (reform meaning ending taxation), leads the fight for these companies.  In the world of Norquist any tax is unfair and any income the federal government gets is by theft.  Sound like an anarchy?  Feudalism?  Well, no, this is what the right calls Libertarianism.  Everything the government does, except when it's protecting the interests of corporations overseas, see the Dole Fruit Company in Nicaragua in the 1920s, or giving subsidies to large farming concerns or Park Avenue tree growers, is demonstrably evil.  What Norquist does is just more of what keeps the right in power in large parts of this country.  He claims to represent the little guy by opposing taxes across the board.  In the meantime, like while Romney was governor of Massachusetts, while taxes may not have gone up, state and local governments increase fees and local sales taxes which hit the average citizen but rarely have any effect on corporations.  The government gets its money and it's off the back of the common people; everybody is happy.  Well on Wall Street at least.  Of course good old common man warrior Norquist is a Harvard graduate and board member of the National Rifle Association but you only invoke cries of ivory tower when it's a Dem saying it.

The Big Four Swindlers

So what about all the other tax havens out there?  Where are they?  Well you can thank our good buddies the British of course.  British territories make up the majority of the tax havens of which companies the world over can take advantage.  According to reports from the Tax Justice Network some $32 trillion is stashed in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, and Jersey (not our Jersey of course).  This while Prime Minister David Cameron, with Britain being the current leader of the G8, stated his intent to "rewrite the rules on tax and transparency for the benefit of countries right across the world".  So while tackling Switzerland is admirable, the U.S. will further have to go after the British banks who profit from the other part of the swindle:  Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, and HSBC.

Again, thank God for the Elizabeth Warrens of the world.  They continue to try to hold these financial institutions' feet to the fire.  But at some point we, as a country, are going to have to lay down the law and say if you want to sell in our markets and profit off the backs of our workforce you're going to have to play by our rules.  And our rules need to be changed so that those companies who take advantage of our protections, our markets, our workers have to pay their fair share for the benefit.  Right now that's simply not the case.

Something of a Defense of Phil Robertson - Duck Dynasty Homophobe or Just Christian?

Duck Dynasty Star Phil Robertson

If you haven't heard about this by now perhaps you need to look into getting a satellite dish for your cave.  In an interview in an upcoming issue of GQ magazine, Phil Robertson, one of the Duck Dynasty guys, made the following comment when asked about what is sinful:

"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph from there.  Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men."

There were some other comments about how happy black folks were before the goodie two shoes civil rights types came along in the 60s and messed up the good thing they had going, picking cotton, not voting, singing gospel songs.  This stuff is the still there dark part of the South about which Oprah Winfrey said Phil Robertson's generation would just have to die off.  And she is right but ...

I am going to defend Phil Robertson here and push back against a lot of the vitriol coming from the left about this whole affair.  To be clear, I consider myself to be a "homophile".  One who loves gay folks.  I am extremely tolerant, pro gay marriage, all that stuff.  What I can't stand, however, is when things like this happen and they all want to shoot the messenger.  Why do I say shoot the messenger?  Well here's a quote that should be attacked:

"If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense."

Oh, well what redneck son of a bitch said that?  We need to take his show off the air!!!  That particular redneck is the Jews.  In the Book of Leviticus in the Bible that was written by the Jews.  Not like some anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, this just is what it is.  Leviticus is the book of the Levites who were the judges of the "chosen people".  There is no amendment to this declaration elsewhere in the Bible; no retractions and no soft peddling it.  According to the book that is the basis of all Judeo-Christian theology, homosexuality is a sin on par with murder.

It doesn't get any better in the New Testament.  The specific reference being made by Phil Robertson was from I Corinthians.  It says, "Don't you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people-none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God."

The Book of Bigotry

So where does tolerance come in?  If we expect Christians and Jews to be tolerant of others we're going to have to be tolerant of them as well.  Even if their views seem intolerant, how tolerant are we if we look down on their teachings.  This, The Bible, according to them, isn't some mutable document.  Sure a lot of Jews and the vast majority of Christians don't follow the book of Leviticus any more.  They pick and choose what's important and what's not.  For example the Jews still follow the Kosher dietary laws for the most part that are from Leviticus, but Christians just don't.  There are many reasons given for this based on what the "Old Covenant" vs. the "New Covenant" means but none of that makes sense.  It's what is called cafeteria religion, where you pick and choose what parts of it you want to follow.

But the point to be made here isn't that there are bigots in the world, it's that there is a religion that calls its followers to be bigots.  And to be very clear, to think that calling homosexuality a sin is being bigoted is a very, very recent phenomenon as is the concept of racism.

Chik Fil A Redux

One thing the defenders of Phil Robertson's free speech need to understand is that he works for the A&E Network.  When you have a boss you do not get to say whatever you want.  You are beholden to whatever your boss thinks is good or bad for their business.  Especially if you work in one of the wonderful "right to work" states like I do in Alabama where you can basically get fired for any reason your boss wants to fire you without explanation.

What should be obvious is what happens next.  This is where the religious right doubles down.  We saw it with Chik Fil A when the gay folks called for a boycott against them for anti-gay comments.  You couldn't get food at their stores at lunchtime for all the right wingers showing up to show their support for the anti-gay restaurant chain.  The religious right will double down behind Duck Dynasty as well.  Any advertiser who pulls ads will be asking for some serious trouble.  Considering there are only about five openly gay people who watch Duck Dynasty, I don't think anybody is really quaking in their boots.

The bottom line in the whole matter is that when the gay community expresses outrage over situations like this it always backfires.  If anybody thinks the average Duck Dynasty viewer is going to change their mind over some PC alert they are seriously deluded.  To the rest of the world it looks like some thin-skinned whiners who are way outside the mainstream and anti-Jesus.  If you want to stop it you'll need to stop people from teaching what's in the Bible.  Good luck with that agenda.  But for the record, more power to you.

Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia - This is Class Warfare!

Jack Kingston (R) - Georgia's First District

This week, Republican Jack Kingston of Georgia's 1st Congressional District (Savannah, Brunswick, Waycross) came out with the following statement regarding subsidized lunches for kids in public schools:

“One of the things I’ve talked to the secretary of agriculture about: Why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria – and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people – getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

This, of course, from a member of the party who continually accuses the left of trying to wage class warfare any time there is mention of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  Yet another attack on the poor.  Basically just another accusation that the poor in America are nothing but leeches taking advantage of handouts sponsored by the hard work of the American taxpayer (read middle class and wealthy white people).

Kingston assumes that, because these kids get free or discounted meals, they don't understand the value of money.  In Kingston's world these kids are getting the proverbial "free lunch" which we all know, thanks to the axiom, doesn't exist.

What School Looked Like for Me

Well, you see, I am one of those ivory tower liberals you hear about if you're on the right.  The picture here is from the primary and secondary school I attended and from which I graduated.  It's the most prestigious and elite school in Mobile, Alabama.  Blazers and ties.  Lots of white kids from wealthy families showing off trophies they've received for excelling in some area of study.  Growing up in this extremely privileged environment I had no concept of money at all.  As far as I knew, money was picked from money trees by some Mexican immigrants who brought it to my family in wheelbarrows.  I never wanted for anything.  If I did want something I had it without question.  Yes, I paid for lunch at my school.  But where that money in my pocket came from I didn't know and couldn't care less.

My family had been in the oil business since the early 1900s.  Some bad investments by my grandfather in the 80s prior to his death left my family in pretty dire financial straits for which I was not prepared.  I had not learned the value of a dollar or basic things like balancing a budget, keeping a checkbook, paying rent or bills.  I had a lot of catching up to do and I am still behind, now in my 40s.  So what is Jack Kingston's point?

Children of poor parents, in the world of Kingston and Republicans in general, just need to learn the value of a dollar.  Obviously their parents aren't able to teach them because they too suck from the teat of government.  They are the welfare kings and queens who somehow get a check every month for doing nothing.  They are lazy and shiftless and don't understand the value of good hard work.

Well, lazy and shiftless and not understanding the value of good hard work describes me in early life as well.  It describes a great number of people with whom I graduated.  We all went off to college, paid for by our parents.  Many graduated college to either go into a family business or find work easily due to the many connections our families had.  Most of those people would go on to bemoan those lazy welfare cases who had never had to work for what they had.  I'm not saying that these are bad people; they just have no concept at all of what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck, to be born without the benefit of privilege and connections.

Victorian Era Workhouse

You'll find plenty of this in the conservative community.  People who like to think of themselves as rugged individualists despite having all the breaks available to the top tier of our population.  These people think poor people are poor purely because they lack a solid work ethic while being totally unaware of how they, themselves, have benefitted from an increasingly unlevel playing field.  It's mostly an argument of ego.  If forced to face the facts, the wealthy and conservatives like Kingston would have to admit that their achievements aren't based solely on hard work or being well raised.

I had the whole world laid out for me if I hadn't ditched it all to pursue a career in music and screwed my life up with drugs.  If I had stayed on the proper path I would be a highly paid attorney with countless connections in a Mobile society that looks an awful lot like Medieval England with serfs working for the nobles.  And I could have had that life with minimal personal effort.  It really is like picking money off of money trees for the wealthier members of our society.

The Myth of the Welfare Queen

Once upon a time, actually before the Reagan years and the rise of the philosophy of Ayn Rand in mainstream conservative politics, the wealthy understood their place in society a little better.  It was much more common to give charitably through church or civic groups.  But Reagan brought with him the fable of the welfare queen.  America was exposed to the notion that there were millions of freeloaders out there who were basically taking money from the pockets of hard-working "honest" citizens.  And this concept serves to illustrate the hateful attitudes that have been in vogue in conservative politics since the Reagan years.

Prosperity theology makes the case that "good Christians" are rewarded for their faith with material wealth.  So, obviously, if you are poor maybe it's because you aren't living right.  Followers of this type of religion and Randian philosophy think the playing field is entirely level and you win if you play the game the right way.  To me, "class warfare" describes the attacks of conservatives on the poor in our society.  They work tirelessly to vilify the less fortunate and justify keeping as much of their own wealth as possible.

Lee Bright with Some Gun Freaks

Further, in this day of endless campaigns and not so dark money thanks to Citizens United, political races are going national in their efforts to raise funds.  Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is facing a Tea Party primary challenge for his long-held seat by State Senator Lee Bright.  At a fundraiser in Tulsa, Oklahoma, yes, for a seat in South Carolina, Bright made the following statements after claiming that there is a large number of Americans who simply "won't work": “It’s not politically correct to say this, but we’ve got a lot of people who won’t work,” he said. “And they won’t work because we’ll provide their food, and we’ll provide their housing, and we’ll provide some spending money. We’ve all seen it, the folks in line who are using [food stamps], yet they’ve got the nicest nails and the nicest pocketbook and they get the nicest car.”

The racial element of the argument is obvious to the point that it might as well have been a speech given at a Klan rally, but this is the face of the Tea Party.  It's all about thinly veiled racism and classism.  Ironically, if you read my post yesterday, The Grand Battle - Ayn Rand vs. Elizabeth Warren, Prime Movers vs. Populism, this will sound familiar.  Lee Bright's trucking company, On Time Trucking, is currently going through foreclosure proceedings due to lack of mortgage payments.  Undoubtedly the result of Obama's liberal policies.  Bright is a member of a church that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention which is something like what church would be if Jesus was a Klan member.  Want to find some good Tea Party members?  Just find a Southern Baptist church and start talking about those abusing the welfare system.  Ditto if you want to try to join the KKK.

But the good news is, especially with Pope Francis and Elizabeth Warren increasingly gaining prominence and acceptance, the Kingstons and Brights are preaching to an increasingly marginalized segment of our society.  Yes, that group has money and yes, they have political power, but the hate and venom they preach is falling on fewer welcoming ears as people in the middle keep getting exposed to their rhetoric.  Most of these disturbing quotes we get are from small fundraising gatherings, see Mitt Romney's 47% comment from the 2012 election.  But with cell phones and video cameras catching them speaking off the record like this, America is increasingly getting to be the fly on the wall, looking directly into the black heart of the far right.  Ultimately, I hope, the sense of fair play that is inherent in the true American Dream will win the day and these far right nut jobs will be further marginalized to non-existence.  But, until then, it is what I consider to be my job to expose the emptiness behind their argument and bring their backroom discussions into the light of day.

The Grand Battle - Ayn Rand vs. Elizabeth Warren, Prime Movers vs. Populism

Ayn Rand

As American politics increasingly moves away from centrist philosophies, two camps are developing behind two dramatically different female figures.  On the right we have Ayn Rand and on the left Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Though the politics on the left are still in a formative period on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the new-found status of Elizabeth Warren as the titular head of a new branch of Democratic politics, the right has a firm leader in place.  That leader is dead but her vision is the flag that flies atop the flagpole of the Tea Party and far right libertarian thought.

Ayn Rand was a Russian Jew who immigrated to America in the 1920s.  She was born Alisa Rosenbaum and later changed her name.  She received a degree in philosophy from the Petrograd State University and fancied herself a writer.  This blog isn't meant to get into the entire philosophy of Ayn Rand but she cultivated something she called Objectivism.  In short it's a philosophy that mankind is the ultimate king of the universe and that there are people called prime movers without whom mankind would still be living in caves.  She was an outspoken advocate of completely free market economics, anti-government, anti-regulation.

I can't think of a person alive or dead who would be considered to be a true prime mover.  I have known a lot of people who like to consider themselves to be one but they are people who have gotten where they are on the coattails of their fathers, taking over the family business, people like Mitt Romney who thinks he carved his own path I guess despite his father being governor of Michigan and CEO of American Motors.  A little like how Ayn Rand took advantage of a Soviet educational system.

The Tea Party and Libertarian Party are full of these self-styled prime movers.  You'll find a lot of small business owners who have had a hard time.  Though it's usually because they have bad business models, they'll blame any problem they have on Obama.  Even though they're exempt from Obamacare provisions due to having less than 50 employees, they'll blame the law for any negative financial issues.

I have worked for some of these people.  Once at a restaurant owned by two Tea Party folks.  The owner and his wife started their restaurant in a glutted market, a fried seafood place in Orange Beach, Alabama which is better suited for more upscale businesses and where there are already several places serving the type of menu he was.  Yet because her parents put up capital to allow them to start the business they thought they were the prime movers.  Providing jobs and being community leaders until they couldn't borrow any more money.

Then there was the trucking company for which I worked in the accounting department.  The owner of that company had inherited a good solid business from his father.  But he had his mind set on expansion because he wanted to carve his own path.  He really did consider himself to be a pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, self-made man.  He had to bring in somebody from the outside who actually knew how to run a business to manage it but he ended up overexpanding and losing money and eventually I was part of a predictable downsizing.

The Donald

There are many instances where money is leverage and money has an inertia where it grows itself.  You can see that in people like Donald Trump.  Trump came from a wealthy real estate family.  He used his money to make more money in a manner anybody with money could have done.  What made him what he is is unbridled greed and lack of morals.  In the world of Randian philosophy that is considered a good thing.  You know, "greed is good" to quote Gordon Gecko.

The bible for these people is Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.  Though I hate to recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it, it does give you a great deal of insight into the minds of those on the far right.  This is where all of their ideals originate.

The Far Right Bible

The book is so long and such a laborious read.  It's preachy to the point where you want to bang your head on something.  All of the characters are horrible two dimensional caricatures of Randian concepts.  None of them even vaguely resemble anything you'd find outside a work of fiction.  The draw is that egotistical people want to believe they're something more than the average person and that average people are jealous of that superiority and want to try to stop the prime movers.  Boy if that doesn't sound like the Donald I don't know what does.  A recent two part movie version of Atlas Shrugged had Defiance star Grant Bowler as the lead character Hank Rearden which really makes me not want to like Defiance but I do.  Usually people who associate themselves with movies like this one are also into the philosophy as no self-respecting actor would want to associate themselves with Ayn Rand otherwise.
At least he's not Ted Nugent or Donald Trump.

Senator Rand Paul (R) - Kentucky

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Ron Paul's son by the way and yes he was named after Ayn Rand, is one of the leaders of this movement in Washington.  Ironically he is in politics and was considered a viable candidate to begin with by drafting (NASCAR term, look it up) on his daddy's name.  Rand is all about gutting social security and Medicare, loosening or removing regulations, all that sort of thing that the Tea Party wants.  It's worth mentioning that Ayn Rand was an avowed atheist as are most of her followers.  Yet none of her political devotees in Washington identify as atheist.  That's because they use the power of the culture wars, pitting their die hard religious followers against the secular humanism pushed by the left, as a means of political leverage to get financial regulations eased on their corporate donors.  And this is where I do plug a book.  If you haven't read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? you definitely need to.  It explains the dynamics of poor to middle class conservatives voting against their own financial interests due to the machinations of people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, etc.

The very disturbing thing about the Objectivist philosophy is that it's utterly heartless.  Everything in the dogma relates to the individual.  There is nothing of the social contract or elements that make a society a society.  It's about ego.  It's about a certain small percentage of society that creates things and the rest of the society worshipping that small sub-group and owing them everything.  It's very weird.  It's a world of narcissism gone wild and bears no resemblance to anything in recorded history.  Even Bill Gates stole from Xerox.  Thankfully Bill Gates is everything that Randian philosophy is not.  Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation those two devote money and time to a wide number of causes.  Ayn Rand didn't think anyone should feel like they should help another person.  Her fantasy world is one in which the playing field is one in which the people with vision and drive must navigate the minefields of people who seek only to mooch off of them and keep them from thriving.  Oh, and it's written like a fifth grader has gotten hold of a book of basic philosophy and economics which is perhaps why it appeals to people who don't come off as being very intellectual.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) - Massachusetts
Photo Credit Tim Pierce at 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qwrrty/8152000438/
Thanks to Tim for a Great Photo
 

The antithesis of Ayn Rand is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.  Warren burst on the scene at the beginning of the Obama administration when she was picked to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which had been her idea.  Due to Republican filibustering her appointment was delayed long enough that she decided to run for Senator in Massachusetts and knocked off Republican darling Scott Brown.

From humble Oklahoma beginnings Warren became an expert debater in high school and received a debate scholarship to George Washington University when she was sixteen while also working as a waitress following her janitor father's death.  She became a Harvard professor after having two children and attending law school at a Rutgers satellite school in Newark, mostly working from home as an attorney while being a full time mother.  From 2006 - 2010 she was a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion and began to make appearances on TV and in Michael Moore's film Capitalism: A Love Story.

She gained notoriety quickly for her plain speech, ability to explain complex concepts well, and for her passionate sense of fairness and looking out for the less fortunate.  She pulls no punches when calling out the ways large financial institutions and Wall Street have manipulated our system.  Her status as a full blown class warrior came when, during her run for the Senate and in response to Republicans saying that to ask the wealthy to pay more in taxes was somehow "class warfare" she said:

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

This bold statement was a daring shot across the bow of the entire establishment, the entire free market, laissez-faire, deregulation crazy, Republican status quo.  It also propelled her to stardom.  She is the absolute antithesis of everything Ayn Rand and her followers in the Tea Party establishment stand for.  Terms like the "Warren wing of the Democratic Party" and "Neo Populism" and the sort are being thrown around and Warren has attracted an enthusiastic following.  With the gap between rich and poor expanding at alarming rates and with movements like the fight of fast food workers for fair pay and Occupy Wall Street, Warren has found herself as the figurehead of a movement whether she wants it or not.

She certainly is an eloquent voice for the movement and handles herself like no other politician in recent memory.  She may be the only truly viable progressive candidate to come along since Teddy Roosevelt and hopes for her are very high.  She has declared that she won't run for president in 2016, seeking rather to finish out her term as senator.  But you can bet that, should Hillary Clinton or Chris Christie win and not perform well or meet expectations, she'll be on the scene in 2020.

A VERY Flattering Pic of Hillary

But in the meantime it will be a continuing war between these two political extremes perhaps at the expense of centrism if you care about that.  The nation needs an Elizabeth Warren right now.  It needs somebody to stand up for the little guy since Obama has dropped the ball so badly in that area.  Hopes were high for him in the beginning but as Wall Street reaches new record highs and the rich to poor gap expands most have lost hope that anything will ever be done.  Warren gives those feeling disenfranchised a voice.

In all likelihood Hillary will get her chance since she was ordained even prior to 2008.  And in all likelihood she will be a hard guardian of the status quo unless the populist fire starts making her feel the heat.  At any rate, the empty rhetoric of the Ayn Rand crowd will never resonate with the common people and the right will have to continue to flog the culture war horse to keep the simple people on their side and the populism that resonates with most Americans will become a stronger force in our politics.

Bob Rucho - Why I'm Constantly Having to Defend the South

NC State Senator - Bob Rucho (R)

Having grown up and lived in the South all my life, I constantly find myself having to defend things about it.  Sometimes it's the weather, I mean the heat can be ridiculous on what I like to call the South Coast.  Fattening foods?  You bet, but man I love me some fried stuff and creole everything.  The biggest problem with the South is the people.  Before you get your knickers in a twist let me explain that I don't mean all of us down here in Dixie.  There's plenty to be proud of.  But there's a gigantic, huge percentage of Southern white folk who are just a plain embarrassment.

There have always been rednecks.  America has always known about them.  But with the rise of the Tea Party and the solid red state obstructionism in Congress, people are beginning to see how some of our "best and brightest", our elected officials, those we choose to represent us to the nation and the world on occasion, frequently fall far short in public displays.

New to the hall of shame is a state senator from North Carolina's 39th district, Robert Rucho.  I don't know if it's true or not but the gentleman's Wiki entry says he has never denied that his parents are blood relatives.  Rucho is a dentist by trade and a graduate of Northeastern University which is a pretty prestigious Boston school.  Maybe this is all an indictment of education in our country in general but let's focus on Rucho for now.  And actually he's not a true Southerner; he was born in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Yesterday, December 15, Rucho sent out the following tweet:

I'm not going to go with the obvious here and attack yet another Obama equals Hitler argument.  I'll just forget that the statement is absolutely insane.  If he's being serious then he has some serious mental issues.  Of course I think most in the Tea Party do.  But what I'm going after here are the obvious grammatical errors.

Politicians in the past have usually had a secretary, administrative assistant, speech writer, whatever to write up things for them to be put out for public consumption.  Not so much with Twitter.  Now we're getting to see what we're really dealing with more often.  Bob Rucho has a B.S. degree from Northeastern University, a D.D.S. degree from the Medical College of Virginia, Specialty in Prosthodontics from Boston University, and an MBA from UNC-Charlotte.  Two graduate degrees.  Yet he can't differentiate between "then" and "than".  His tweet should have read "done more damage to the USA than", not "then".  I know we have issues with people knowing the difference between "your" and "you're", and "their", "they're", and "there".  But "than" and "then"?  Come on man.  It's bad enough that people across America have problems with these basics, notably Sarah Palin's daughters; do we not have some way to check these things before kids graduate high school?

Picky on my part?  Sure, but something as small as this tells me a lot about a person and their level of intellectual curiosity.  With all of the course work this man has done in his life, how many times would you suppose he has come across "than" and "then" being used correctly?  Thousands?  Millions?  Yet it never crossed his mind that he has been using it incorrectly?  And not knowing the proper usage how did he get through all that college anyway?  In the first part of the tweet he says "Justice Robert's pen & Obamacare has done" when it should be "have done".  I mean, sweet mother, how can a man with this level of education not know?  How does he not hear it back in his head and know instinctively that it's wrong?

These issues aren't limited to the South.  It's an American crisis that people can go through college and get advanced degrees and still not understand basic rules of grammar or how to properly pronounce things.  I mean I can understand to a degree.  I was in my early 20s before I realized it was sherbet, not sherbert.  And spell check didn't catch sherbert so I guess that's not that big of a deal.  And you can certainly understand the problem in a case like George W. Bush.

George W. Bush

This was a man who had come from a very wealthy, old money Connecticut background.  Summers in Kennebunkport, the best schools money could buy.  Everything in our country that comes with privilege, this man had.  Harvard and Yale and Andover.  There is no finer education to be had in this nation.  Maybe not in the world.  His father was the head of the CIA before becoming vice-president and then president of our country.  But this man couldn't pronounce the word nuclear correctly.  So yea, I understand that, coming from privilege, people are going to be very selective in correcting you.  Especially when your family is like the Bushes.  But how many times in his life do you think George W. Bush heard the word nuclear pronounced correctly?  I'm sure thousands, at least.  Yet what consistently came out of his mouth was nook-you-ler, not noo-klee-er as it should be pronounced.
In both cases I can't help but believe both men are just not very bright.  You can wave all the paper you want in my face and show me what they've attained but if you can be so unobservant, so incurious, how can you say you're anything but just dumb?  And despite "Yankee" origins in both of these cases, both men having received good educations in Boston, both men are now associated with the South.

Congressman Paul Broun (R)

How about Paul Broun, a congressman from Georgia's 10th district?  This man is a doctor, an MD.  Graduate of the University of Georgia and Georgia Regents University where he received his MD.  I'm just going to throw him in here for being a moron.  I won't bother digging for grammar issues.  After the 2008 election when President Obama was discussing the possibility of starting a civilian national service corps Broun said "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."  When discussing evolution before a group of hunters and other assorted weirdos Broun called evolutionary theory "lies from the pit of hell".  Okay, I know most Southern Baptists share this notion and maybe he was just playing to the crowd, well I'm pretty sure of that.  But statements like these from a freaking doctor for God's sake?  A freaking MD!  Can you really be stupid and become a doctor, a lawyer, have an MBA?

Well actually the answer to this is yes.  A college education in America doesn't really do much other than teach you how to do something in the case of doctors and lawyers.  It's more like a trade school.  Once upon a time there was such a thing as a "well rounded education".  That literally meant something.  Maybe that's just limited to certain liberal arts colleges these days?  I come across people with MBAs all the time, and lawyers, and doctors who can't nail down basics of grammar.  Who don't know much about a map of the world.  Don't know the basics of our country or history in general.

I don't know if this has always been the case.  Maybe our attention spans just can't handle it these days.  But all the men I've mentioned here are older than me and I was raised on TV.  I remember eating on a TV tray watching Hogan's Heroes and Laugh In.  I did also have a set of encyclopedias and would open them to random pages and just casually read and learn something I didn't know before.  I would study maps like I was training to be a cartographer.  In short, what I had is what's called intellectual curiosity.  It wasn't taught to me; I just had it.  So I guess the question is are we born with this, is it learned, can it be taught?

Typical Tea Party Moron

I've seen studies saying that people who are conservative are typically not as smart and also the converse.  I think an accurate barometer would be, among college educated liberals and conservatives, which is the smarter group?  Since both sides have poor and undereducated elements those parts would pretty much wash.  I was trying to find some info on this and ran across a conservative blog bragging about the right being smarter than the left and pointing to a quiz on the Pew Research Center's website.  I scored 13 out of 13 on the quiz.  But I'm politically aware.  It would be very hard to put together a sample group to test and they didn't ask my political affiliation on the quiz.  If you'd like to give it a go you can take the quiz here:  http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/the-news-iq-quiz/

Science Torturing a Child

Part of the problem with the whole looking stupid thing is that, in the conservative community, and in the South especially, it's considered to be in poor taste or perhaps even blasphemous to question certain things.  Certainly it's ok to question science because of, well you know, the Devil.  Science is a big bogey man with those conservatives who consider themselves to be Christian.  The whole Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, current climate science, all of the things that question the legitimacy of religion or the status quo where it's perfectly okay to drive gigantic polluting vehicles or destroy the earth is to be questioned or denied outright.  And these people will call the sky green if it's what they think they're supposed to say.  Just ask the two "scientists" who go on Fox News to deny global warming exists.  Nobody wants to stick out as being "uppity" or a "know it all" or even overly educated.  Even doctors.  Conservatives know that it's the academics in their ivory towers who have been destroying our nation with their liberal ideas and Marxist teaching methods.  It's these hippies who have introduced notions like global warming in their effort to destroy capitalism and erase what we've fought for:  corporate profits and gun toting freedoms.

I really do suspect that Paul Broun is just playing the role.  I don't think he's half as stupid as he tries to sound.  But examples like Bob Rucho and our former President Bush point out some glaring problems in what we expect and accept from our leaders.  They point out basic problems in our system of higher education.  When a man can get a graduate degree and not understand basic grammar we have some very deep problems on our hands.  It's no wonder America continues to fall behind internationally in all categories of education.  If we keep teaching to the tests and forgiving a lack of knowledge of the basics we'll continue to fall behind.  And if we keep putting imbeciles in charge of our politics we'll be hopelessly lost.

Remembering Sandy Hook - Confessions of a Gun Grabber

There is no way you can truly put yourself in another's shoes.  I do try.  Yesterday was the first time I actually tried to imagine, from the perspective of the kids, what it was like to be facing certain death from a crazed gunman who had just burst into your world with no warning. I tried to go back to my own memories of when I was six or seven years old.  How the classroom smelled, sounded.  I tried to imagine my six year old reaction.  How the gun shots would have sounded in a room with the tile floors, how the screams of my classmates would have sounded.  The flurry of thoughts that would have been going through my head, the whys and the feeling of utter helplessness.

It's an exercise I wish more people would do.  Maybe the horror of what happened a year ago in Newtown, Connecticut would resonate even more.  Maybe it would bring out more empathy.  Twenty children, ages six and seven, and six adults were killed on this day a year ago.  A year later, no one has answers to the whys.  Twenty year old Adam Lanza killed his mother, took her guns, and went to the school and massacred twenty-six people before killing himself.

In an effort to shut up people like me, the NRA, the gun nuts, the manufacturers have pointed out that it's in poor taste to use this incident as a means to push an agenda of gun control.  Frankly, I don't care.  The time for concerns over taste are long past.  Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, these names must be used and kept alive to try to change the outrageous state in which we currently live.  And yes, I am what is known in right wing circles as a "gun grabber".


This is what is known as a teachable moment.  The pro-gun crowd would like us to focus our attention on anything but the tools that were used to take twenty-six lives.  I can agree with some of that.  Strangely enough, the right wingers are all concerned about mental health issues in the wake of this tragedy.  Well that's nice.  They haven't been concerned at all before.  The only reason they are now is that it deflects attention away from the guns.  Sure, we can have the talk about mental health but a man with a knife wouldn't have been able to pull off what Adam Lanza did.  Certainly we can talk about the world of violent video games and I also welcome that discussion.  But these kids weren't killed with virtual weapons.  The guns used in the commission of this heinous crime were very real and very common.

The Sturmgewehr 44

Two of the weapons used that day by Lanza were the Bushmaster XM15-E2S assault rifle and the Glock 20sf handgun.  The gun nuts go crazy over calling the XM15 an assault rifle or assault weapon.  But that term goes back several decades when describing weapons such as this.  They just want it to seem not quite so nasty.  Like most of what is used in modern warfare the origin of the assault rifle can be traced back to the German military in World War II.  In 1944 the Sturmgewehr 44, called a machine pistol to get Hitler's approval, was introduced in front line fighting, primarily used by the elite troops of the SS.  One captured by a Soviet soldier named Kalashnikov led to the development of the AK-47 and the rest is history.

 

The Bushmaster XM15-E2S

You can get into all the semantics you want but the XM15 and all weapons like it are designed to kill people.  They're not for hunting or target shooting.  They are designed to be a highly portable and efficient killing tool.  The one used by Adam Lanza had thirty round clips.  Thirty shots before you would need to reload and the gun is designed to do that rapidly.  It's insane to think that this is a weapon that needs to be available to the common citizenry.

Glock 20sf

The primary handgun used by Lanza was the Glock 20sf.  This isn't your typical handgun.  This particular model fires 10mm ammunition.  10mm ammunition was designed to give police and federal agents a leg up on criminals who are increasingly well armed.  The larger bullet is meant to put somebody down in one shot.  This isn't just a weapon made for defense or shock, it's meant to kill.  And when I say kill I mean kill human beings.  It holds fifteen rounds.  Fifteen large pieces of hot lead to be put into fifteen human beings if you want.

Adam Lanza

Adam Lanza's first victim was his mother Nancy.  She was the whack job who decided she needed to have things like assault rifles and large caliber handguns in her house around an obviously disturbed teenage boy.  She is the one who got him to learn how to use the weapons.  She is the one who allowed him to play violent video games in a room with windows sealed with garbage bags for hours on end.  It's a testament to the gun culture in our country that a middle-aged housewife would feel the need to have enough weaponry to put down an attacking army battalion in a house in suburban Connecticut.  And further that she would consider introducing these weapons to a child with a long history of emotional and developmental disorders who had shown an interest in violence since his early years.

Simply put, it's absolutely insane to think that people like the Lanzas should have access to this sort of weaponry.  As amazing as many seem to think our founding fathers were, they really screwed up on the 2nd Amendment.  Let's take a look at its text.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Muzzle Loading Flintlocks

In the era in which is was written there was a standing army, but police forces did not exist.  There was a need to defend against attacks from Native Americans, the British, any foreign invader, not, as the lunatic fringe claims, a repressive central government.  Guns at the time were muzzle loaders.  It took a good minute after firing one highly inaccurate lead ball to reload another.  Firearms were definitely a powerful tool on the field of battle but nothing even remotely close to what we have today.  It stretches the imagination to consider the founding fathers would have been comfortable with what has become of the 2nd Amendment today, that they would be comfortable with the number, availability, and firepower of guns today in the U.S.  But that has been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.  The whole militia clause in the 2nd Amendment is basically ignored.

Modern Swiss Soldier

I think, if our founders were available today for comment, they would say they would have envisioned something like what you find in modern Switzerland or Israel.  Those countries have compulsory military service for the purpose of maintaining a rapidly deployable national defense force.  Those former soldiers keep their weapons and are extensively trained in their use.  They are a well regulated militia to be called on for the security of a free state.

In most modern, civilized countries the notion that guns of any type should be in the hands of regular citizens just doesn't make any sense, and it shouldn't.  America leads the world in gun related deaths by a number that doesn't compute.  More than nations involved in civil war, ethnic cleansing, more people are killed by guns in America every year.  It's a credit to mankind's development of missile weapons in the stone age and even before, the ability to stand at a distance from your enemy, or prey, or attacker and dispatch them without the need for physical contact.  It detaches you from the act.  Allows you to kill dispassionately.

So what I'm calling for is a disarming of this country.  I know that's not going to happen any time soon but I'm sure in the future something will have to be done.  I'm talking about taking guns out of the hands of everybody but police, National Guard, and military reservists.  Making it a major felony to be found in possession of one if you're not one of these people.  Taking them off the street and destroying them one at a time.  They call this gun grabbing and I am behind it 100%.  You'll hear many left wing pundits trying to assure people that "nobody wants to take your guns"; well I do.  And I think they do too but are just too scared of the backlash to say it.

Many will say you'll have to "pry it from their cold dead hands" and I would like to see if they have the cojones to back up their words.  I would suspect the answer to almost a man would be no.  It would surely take some sort of constitutional amendment or a very packed Supreme Court, but if the spirit of America is to survive, we need to start grabbing the guns and remember the children cowering together in the corner of a classroom waiting to be murdered by somebody who so easily got weapons whose pure intent is to kill human beings.

- Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female
- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male
- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06, male
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female

I won't even give any credence here to the stuff coming out of the lunatic fringe considering this to be a gun grabber conspiracy.  They call this a "false flag" incident.  If you're not familiar with the jargon of the crazies on the right that means the government either staged or allowed the event to happen to sway public opinion toward more gun control.  Look it up if you want but it's a chilling look into how truly deranged minds work.  It's very unsettling to say the least.

BREAKING: Santa is White! - What the Hell is Wrong With Fox News?

FOX News Host Megyn Kellly

Ok, seriously, what's up with these Fox News people?  At one moment they're demanding to be taken seriously and the next they're back on to things like the "War on Christmas" and other items from the lunatic fringe.  Megyn Kelly is one of the channel's nighttime anchors with her own show.  She was recently on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno saying "I'm a straight anchor.  I'm not one of the opinion hosts."  That's Megyn in the picture to the left by the way just oozing anchor credibility.

On her show yesterday she brought up as a topic a recent opinion piece by Slate contributor Aisha Harris titled "Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore".  She began the segment by reassuring all the kids who might be viewing, you know her viewership that still believes in Santa Claus, that the man was indeed white.  So rest easy kids.  No worries that he might be Hispanic or black or, God forbid, Asian.  What I found funniest was that she was obviously assuming that any child who might be watching at the time would be white.  Says a lot about Fox News in general.

Gratuitous Scarlett Johansson Photo

She further went on to claim that Jesus was white as well.  Not like the Jesus those minority, PC whiners have been trying to push.  We won't even get into that one but, if Jesus was real and I do believe he was, he was Hebrew.  So he would have, in my best guess, have looked something like the modern day Hebrew and Palestinian folks who populate the Middle East.  Of course some modern day Jews like Joe Lieberman or Scalett Johansson could easily be seen as white but they've passed through generations of mixing in Europe.  Jesus would certainly look more Middle Eastern.  Maybe even something close to bin Laden as freaky as that might be.  You'll excuse the gratuitous photo of Scarlett here.

Penguin Claus?

So, yea, Fox News knows its audience and Megyn Kelly isn't really a serious anchor.  I think we've established that.   What Aisha Harris was talking about in her piece was that it's time for a more race neutral Santa and I like her alternative.  I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing the picture.  She has suggested something like a Santa penguin.  Kids love animals and Happy Feet and it just seems fun.  I mean I honestly don't care what Santa looks like.  It's the story that counts.  It's the thought of some selfless somebody going around the world bringing joy to kids.  Nevermind that he obviously seems to like wealthy kids more and that some poor kids are totally off his radar.  But seriously, come on, does it really matter what the origins of Santa Claus are?

One of these days, if and when I have a child, I still don't know how I would handle the Santa Claus thing.  On the one hand it seems like it ends up being the first time that your child finds out you might lie to them.  But if I raise a child not believing in Santa you know they would go to school and blab and then every parent around would hate me.  Touchy subject.  So just for the sake of discussion, who is Santa Claus anyway?

Nikolaos of Myra

Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, Nikolaos of Myra that is, who was a Christian bishop in what is today Turkey.  He was a real man who had a reputation for giving gifts in secret.  Specifically he was reported to have put coins in the shoes of people who left them outside for him.  Guessing that's where the stocking thing originated.  Anyway, somewhere in the passage of time and the Danish something or another with Sinterklaas we ended up with the Santa Claus of Currier and Ives, Norman Rockwell, and Clement Clarke Moore.  He is a sort of amalgam of Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Sinterklaas, maybe even Odin.  At any rate I think it's very important that people remember where Christmas really came from.

Christmas is an invention of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.  Originally in the pagan lands of Europe the holiday was Yule.  It was a celebration of the winter solstice.  There may have been sacrifices which is the reason for the red and green that symbolize Christmas to this day.  Blood sacrifice to bring back the green of spring, that sort of thing.  As with Easter, the Church didn't want these pagan celebrations going on while they were trying to proselytize and convert the peoples of Europe so Christmas was invented and Jesus' birthday was forever made to be December 25.  But the stories pagans had long associated with the Yule season still wouldn't go away.

Tomte

Cernunnos

In Scandinavia there were tales of little people, gnomes, trolls, what not, who would protect the flocks and were given gifts of oatmeal for Yule.  Which is of course where the cookies for Santa thing comes from.  These tomte were little goat-headed critters when depicted in festivals of the season.  The problem with this is they also look a little like the Devil.  In the Bible Lucifer is described as being a beautiful angel, the most beautiful in fact.  But along the way popular depictions of him were made with goat hooves and horns or antlers.  A combination of the Roman Pan and the Celtic Cernunnos, combinations showing the animalistic potential of mankind; it's what we usually think of when images of the Devil show up.  Totally not acceptable to commemorate the birth of Jesus.  So even though some of these old traditions still survive in parts of Europe, the more traditional and inoffensive Santa Claus is the more common face of the season.  He has been since the 1800s thanks to commercialism, print media, song, and story.  The modern Santa is a symbol of abundance and joy.  I certainly don't find him offensive but then again I'm white and of European stock, Scottish to be specific.  The Father Christmas of England with which my ancestors would have been familiar is very similar to the Santa of today.

Yes This Was a Thing

But the point here is that the entirety of it all, Christmas, Santa, how it's all celebrated, has been evolving since the dawn of man.  From midwinter festival to Frosty the Snowman it has changed from year to year.  The only reason to resist any change the way the people at Fox News do is just another excuse to feel culturally superior.  This is the stock and trade of the far right, Tea Party, et al.  It's the Culture War.  It's the outsiders trying to change the way we celebrate our Americanness (read whiteness).  There are old things from Europe that many children still learn, Grimm's Fairy Tales and that sort of thing, but even those are viewed through a modern lens.  Children in America today have a new set of fairy tales and they are from the minds of Disney and Pixar not the Brothers Grimm.  Despite protestations things have changed.  I was raised on Three Billy Goats Gruff and, like it or not, Little Black Sambo.  Fairy tales today are snails who want to be race cars or rats who want to be famous chefs.

Thomas Nast's Santa Claus

Fox News just represents a segment of our society that refuses to accept change.  They're okay with having salsa as a condiment but don't want to think that their kids might have to be exposed to a Mexican Santa.  Well how about a penguin?  I mean really.  I loved Happy Feet.  Penguins are cute and they're considered cute and fun in cultures around the world.  It's fun for kids and it certainly makes me smile.  After all, Santa Claus isn't real, right?  He is a myth.  There are no elves making little toy trains or android powered tablets.  Those are real people in factories in China.  Those clothes you don't want to get are made in sweatshops in Bangladesh, not a cute little factory in the North Pole.  So here's my vote for Santa Penguin.  Just needs a catchier name now.