A rough draft.

I'm not really energetic enough today to write a long post about the social conservatives (read: medieval shitheads) and their strange initiatives, which seem to me a combination of growing boldness and growing wackiness. Example: it used to be fine to acknowledge that people other than Christians lived in the US and that the "holiday season" incorporated Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years (even solstice for you old-schoolers). I mean, "seasons greetings" and "happy holidays" have been staple greetings since I was a kid in the heady days of the 1970's.

Apparently, 30 years or more later, the wacko right has discovered that not everyone is saying "Merry Christmas" when they greet them. Now it's a personal affront and some sort of denial of Christmas to not specify "Merry Christmas" while you're exploiting child labor by shopping at Wal-Mart.

The Post ran a story last week about President Bush's "holiday cards." The President's cards say something about the "holiday season." Here's a typical wing-nut's response:

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Okay, Willie, aside from the idea that you think acknowledging other faiths (notably Judaism) is synonymous with "capitulat[ing] to the worst elements in our culture," maybe you have a point. Maybe Bush's wording shows he has lost will. Oh...EXCEPT EVERY CARD BUSH HAS SENT AS PRESIDENT USES THAT WORDING, YOU FUCKNUT. The Post further notes this fact:

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Is it just that these fools have been stuck under their rocks for four years? What dislodged them?

Direction to go in if I had the energy: assaults on college admissions standards, assaults on schools calling the long break between Xmas and New Years "winter break," using the term "Xmas," return to eugenicist concepts of US as a white christian nation, hypocrisy of the consumerist frenzy a holiday supposedly celebrating the birth of one who renounced the material world, general hypocrisy of most US Christians (Catholic Worker types and most Quakers excepted), especially those who support the war in Iraq.