I know I have not been doing these entries lately, it is all about the inspiration and I now have some for another entry on two subjects, both somewhat short, both political:
The De-religioning of Holidays:
When you are young, you don’t notice the strife between family members around the holidays that the comedians are always talking about because you are young, innocent, and ignorant of all this and have yet to form your own world views, even if you are one of the oldest and do have world opinions, your cousins may still be young enough so you don’t have conflicts with them.
My point is that certain things happened at my families Thanksgiving party. This is with my mom’s side of the family who are mostly conservative. What I wanted to talk about was something one of my aunts said during dinner. She said that she felt that the liberals were taking all of the religious meaning out of the holidays mostly with all their political correct attitudes I guess because you are supposed to say happy holidays so as not to offend people.
I really, really disagree with this. First off, as a liberal, I was insulted by this remark.
One thing, I know a majority of atheists are liberal which I guess makes sense but that does not mean we all are, like me for example.
Secondly, as a liberal, I feel like most of the “PC” stories are conservative propaganda and I disagree with them. Now I do agree that hateful terms such as “nigger” “fag” “dyke” “spick” etc have no real need to be used by people who are not members of these groups, even if the person doesn’t intend it to be hateful it can still be perceived as hateful. Celebrating one’s own holiday is not hateful and therefore I see nothing wrong with having a Christmas tree and wishing people a happy Christmas. I have two approaches to this: 1) since it is my holiday, my celebrating it does not lessen or cheapen other religions, and I do not see them as inferior so I will wish you happy my holiday and you can wish me yours and that is fine. 2) With friends that I know celebrate, something different then I will wish them a happy that instead.
Furthermore, even with all the PC bullcrap that does not take the religion out of it. I think of Scrooge saying “Keep Christmas in your way and let me keep it in mine” now this was before his change but it is not a mean, unreasonable, or rude thing to ask of someone. He is saying practice what you want and celebrates how you please and do not try to force me to do it the way you do.
Besides, I would argue that the real group that is taking the true meanings out of the holidays are the capitalistic conglomerate corporations who are commercializing the holidays, blending them together, and selling images rather than key concepts of the holidays and rarely selling religious images or ideas at all. In addition, these businesses are typically supported in Republican platforms and Republicans are typically conservatives. Logically, it is the conservatives who are taking the religion out of the holidays, which I find hilariously hypocritical as Conservatives are also more focused on religion in their platforms.
Next, I want to talk about the new Muppet movie and no, this is not a review. Fox news the other day called the Muppets Communists. It rather saddens me that hundred years have gone by and people still do not understand communism. The reason Fox gave for making this assessment was that the movie makes a wealthy capitalist oil baron the villain. Now as a liberal, I would say that in real life, 9 times out of 10, these people are villains. However, in the context of the movie, he is a villain—he even breaks the law—of course, that is what being a wealthy conservative capitalist is all about, right? It is not breaking the law it is playing the system.
I think the real reason Fox did this was that they were mad at the movie for making fun of them. I did not even think the joke was that obvious or insulting to Fox per se. Kermit is going around recruiting all the Muppets from their new jobs since they have been split up for so long and one of these Muppets is Sam the Eagle. Sam is supposed to be the stereotypical conservative patriot. In the movie, we see that he got a job on Fox news doing a segment called “Everything Stinks”
Fox is got to be stupid (well I actually think this) to call the Muppets communists. First off all, the Muppets have been liberals since they were created, hell; Jim Henson was a huge liberal. The Muppets in all their various forms and various shows for years have been expressing liberal ideas. Off the top of my head I can think off: vegetarianism, veganism, the whole band are a bunch of hippies that everyone loves, equal rights, poverty as an American issue, that it is okay to be yourself, special, and a little weird, etc Regardless, the Muppets may have been created by an amazing liberal but the Muppets themselves have never really ever been about being political, their primary focus is on entertainment.
No comments:
Post a Comment