By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
I don’t text or tweet but if I did, I’d have trouble with the acronyms. I like descriptive words that tumble off the tongue with conviction, layered with meaning. Shorthand doesn’t capture my imagination. In fact, it minimizes the importance of things. For instance, tongue in cheek, Stephen Colbert recently downgraded Christmas to Xmas, citing a conversation on FOX News where pundits supposed that Jesus would be considered a liberal today, probably a Democrat. Yes, they occasionally tell truth over at FOX, but only the kind their viewers are insulated against taking seriously. Evidently the Christ’s teachings vs. corporate Christianity is one of those topics. Trust Colbert to nail the argument, and brilliantly. He and Jon Stewart are valued as social commentators, but underrated as arbiters of decency and ethics.
FOX insists there is still a war on Christmas by the separation-of-church-and-state secular liberal hippy-types (me certainly, and maybe you). Their empty meme gets bumped into the agenda over and over by culture warriors like Senator Jim DeMint, who protested congressional meetings during the last week as an assault on the faithful who count their Christmas vacation sacred. Vice President Joe Biden, whom I suspect God/dess loves for his candor, suggested that it was a shame the nation’s business had gotten in the way of Jim’s Christmas shopping.
Another war I keep hearing about is the one going on between believers and atheists, with agnostics watching carefully to see who wins such an ideological battle (as if they’re waiting to hop the faster train.) Outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens is dying of cancer, and I’d bet that some Christian blogger has already mentioned how Gawd-His-Own-Self is orchestrating Hitchens’s demise as punishment for the gent’s blatant homosexuality and faithlessness. Apparently the Christian God has a cruel streak and doesn’t approve of most of us, certainly any of us who think for ourselves, let alone touch ourselves or each other.