Canadian Baby Boomers And The War On Christmas

I was watching TV during lunch today and I saw the President give yet another speech designed to get feckless Senate democrats to just use the majority they have and do something useful already. Good luck with that, Mr. President. He talked a lot today about the deficit and CBO scoring, so I guess he figures the biggest obstacle to a health care bill is the cost. Well, the biggest obstacle he can talk about out loud anyway. He can't just come out and say that Joe Lieberman is bought and paid for by health insurance companies and is just blocking health care reform for campaign money and political revenge, because that wouldn't be nice. He also can't say that Joe Lieberman is only an independent because neither party really wants him, that too wouldn't be nice. So, I'll get to the war on Christmas in a minute, but first, all this talk about money and health care gave me a new idea.

Insuring so many more people would cost money. A public option would cost money, subsidies would cost money, adding more people to medicare would cost money. Everything costs money. The President optimistically believes a good reform bill would ultimately save us money, and it might, but there's no guarantee. At the same time, the federal deficit is under increasing stress from retiring baby boomers qualifying for medicare and social security. This makes it even harder to sell anything that costs money. So here's the idea, send all the baby boomers to Canada.

I love this idea. First of all, Canada is great. They have hockey, maple syrup, snow, health care, more syrup. And baby boomers may be too old to learn a new language, but I don't think they're too old to learn a cool new Canadian accent. Also, I'm not 100% positive on this, but I'm pretty sure everyone who becomes a new Canadian citizen gets a free moose. If Canada doesn't like it, too bad. We've been putting up with their Celine Dions and their Trebeks for years, it's really the least they can do. You think we would miss our baby boomer friends and relatives? That's why Canada is such a fantastic idea. It's right there. I was in Detroit once, I could have traveled right to Canada via bridge OR tunnel. How much easier does it need to be? So there you go, I solved health care, what's next?

Oh yeah, the war on Christmas. I don't know if I can solve this one so easily. On the other hand, this is another one of those times when I get to disagree with everybody, so there's that. First though, let me say that I don't blame Bill O'Reilly (who is sort of the king of this issue) or Glenn Beck (who is a good bet to cry at some point in the next nine days about how there isn't a nativity scene somewhere) for talking about this. It's an interesting debate, it gets good ratings and the outrage they show isn't anymore disingenuous or fraudulent than the outrage they show about anything else. So I'm laying off Bill and Glenn today (and Glenn's lucky, Monday night he did a whole show about how environmentalism is really just a way to replace god with the planet, because god gave us liberty and if you replace god then government can take away our liberty, I almost threw something at my TV). I'm talking more about the people who listen to them, or argue with them, the people who really get up for this issue. I suppose my only real question is, why?

I guess I can sympathize with where Christians are coming from on this, at least to an extent. If you believe in your religion, and you perceive the country to be burying it when it used to be such an accepted part of the culture, I can see how that would be concerning. I just have one problem. If you told the Jesus in the bible that some places don't want to put Christmas symbols on public property, because it makes people of other faiths uncomfortable, do you think he'd say "screw those people! They're gonna look at little plastic baby me on the state house lawn and like it!"? If you wished him happy holidays, would he respond by putting a big "we say merry Christmas" bumper sticker on his donkey as a passive aggressive FU to all the happy holidays people? I know I'm the last person who should be telling religious people how to be religious, but I went to 12 years of Catholic school, and I feel like I have an OK grasp on the basics. So, do you really think Jesus would be that dickish about Christmas? Probably not, right?

The other people, the people who act honestly offended by Christmas, I have considerably less sympathy for them. I understand the church and state implications of religious symbols on public land, and I don't want religion anywhere near public schools, but sometimes you just say "who cares?" Is anyone honestly offended by Christmas? Really?

First of all, Christmas is barely even a religious holiday anymore (I know Christians hate this, but shhhh for a minute, I'm on your side for once). Everyone gets off work for Christmas, and the people who have to work usually get overtime or weekend pay or a floating holiday or something. We treat Christmas the same way we treat the Fourth of July, it's a national holiday. So, I say anyone who complains about seeing Christmas symbols has to go to work next Thursday and Friday while the rest of us are going to church (or in my case, sleeping late). They have to sit in their empty offices and be sad and not get any extra pay for it. Deal?

Second, Christmas is just fun. There's lights and cookies and a big fat guy with presents. You have parties where you can watch your stupider co-workers jeopardize their jobs. It's an excuse to give presents to people you care about. We get weeks of awful television and music that I can't stand, but other people seem to enjoy. I like fun things, don't you like fun things?

Also, I really don't like political correctness, not even a little. I'm not talking about not saying words that are legitimately offensive and hateful and have no place in society. That's not political correctness, that's being a grown-up. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I used to work in an office where we had a secret santa gift exchange every year. Then, one year, we called it secret snowflake, and we weren't allowed to say secret santa anymore. Everytime someone said secret snowflake to me, I lost a few brain cells in a tiny explosion of rage in my mind.

Christmas is also an excellent chance to do good things. It's a chance to donate to a charity or bring food to a soup kitchen or give toys to poor children. Would I like to think that if there was no Christmas we'd find other reasons to do these things? Sure, but for now we have Christmas, so why not take the opportunity to do something good. We can argue about which religion is right, or if god is even there, in January, after people get food and toys and jackets.

I'd like to see a truce in the culture war, just for Christmas. If you celebrate Christmas, and someone wishes you happy holidays, just say something nice back. If you don't celebrate Christmas, and someone wishes you a merry Christmas, I promise they aren't secretly trying to indoctrinate you and your kids. I think most people already get this, but for everyone else, Christmas is a good time to be nice to people. Christmas can be crappy for real reasons. Christmas sucks if you're alone, it can suck if you lost a family member recently, it sucks if you lost your job this year and you can't afford gifts. It can suck even more if you try to reach out to someone by saying happy holidays and you get an earful because they say merry Christmas. It can suck even more if you can't afford gifts for your kids, but you can still take them to the park to see the big shiny tree, only it's gone this year because someone called it offensive. Dramatic scenarios? Sure, fine, all I'm saying is, everyone be nice for a couple of weeks, because it's Christmas. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, just be nice because there's a way to be a person.

Is it ironic for me to start by suggesting the deportation of baby boomers and end by asking everyone to be nice? Sure, as always, I'm a puzzle. What do these two things have to do with each other? If you're one of the millions of Americans who can't afford health care, and you spent all year hearing about how the President and Congress were on the job, and now you see that we're getting either a craptastic health care bill or no health care bill, wouldn't that be the crappiest Christmas of all?

I'm Not An Idiot, I Just Play One On TV

My world has recently been shattered, reality has come crashing down around me. Why? Did you know that some of the people on TV aren't who they claim to be? It's true. The doctors on Grey's Anatomy, their medical credentials are, at best, questionable. Same thing with the people on House. CBS has 43 different versions of CSI, I can't find any record of the people on any of the CSI's working for any police department. Jack Bauer isn't a government agent, Jack Bauer isn't even that dude's real name. According to IMDB, one of my chief investigative websites, that guy's had over 70 aliases. I could go on and on, it's shocking.

I'll give you a minute to digest.

Now, I could break this amazing news story and call it a blog, but I'd like to talk a little about what lead me to this horrifying revelation. What prompted me to do, literally, seconds of exhaustive research into our favorite TV personalities? Well, I recently found out(and you found out too if you read my blog a couple of weeks ago)that the White House has declared war on Fox News. How do I know this? Because Glenn Beck told me so, that's how. One of the many things I thought when I heard this was, is it possible that Glenn is stupid enough to compare the White House saying mean things about him to war, when our country is actually at war, in two places? I mean, I saw him do it, he had a map and little toy tanks and everything. Hmmm.

Around the same time, I was watching the Sean Hannity show, which now claims to be "not white house approved"(I'll give Sean credit for this, it may be childish, petulant and goofy, but it's all of those things in a clever sort of way). Anyway, Hannity was talking to Michael Moore, who was there to talk about his movie, but was off on some kind of tangent (that's sort of his thing) about the things that have been done in America's name recently. I don't really want to get into it, but he was talking about Iraq and saying we invaded a country that never attacked us. Moore pointed out that we now know that Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. Sean's response was "well, none that we saw, none that we found." So, essentially, Sean believes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but when we invaded his country, he decided to hide them all where we'd never find them, as opposed to, I don't know, using them. Is it possible for anyone to be that much of a complete moron? Hmmmmm.

Recently, I heard Bill O'Reilly tell me that saying Rush Limbaugh engages in race bating(not even that he's an actual racist, just that he makes race bating comments) is nothing more than a racial witch hunt. Do I really believe that someone could be that oblivious to reality? Hmmmmmmm.

The truth is, I watch a lot of Fox, because it's just so damn entertaining. There are many times when someone on that network says something that leaves me thinking "he can't possibly believe that." Why would an entire "news" network run itself this way? How can they be an effective PR arm for the shrinking Republican party when only people who already completely agree with them would believe anything they say? How did they let themselves get to the point where the Obama administration sees them as the annoying, irrational, crying children of journalism, trying to get a seat at the adult table?

Well, after my ground-breaking research, which I covered at the top, I have a theory. These guys aren't really idiots, they're just playing TV characters. OK, not all of them, have you ever watched Fox and Friends in the morning? Those people are actually morons, we don't have actors that good. But the rest of them, just characters on shows.

Glenn Beck is the quirky, eccentric, quite possibly insane neighbor. Like Cosmo Kramer. Sure, he gets himself into some hot water sometimes with his wacky ideas and his occasional disregard for reality. But at the end of the day, you like him, because he's amusing, and you feel a little sorry for him.

Bill O'Reilly is the old, crusty, Irish dad. Like Red Forman (I don't know if Red was Irish, I didn't really watch that show, but I know Bill is, so there). Sure, he's mean, often when you least expect it, and he says things that you wouldn't let other people get away with, and he yells a lot more than anyone really should, but that's all part of his charm. He's just a guy who wants the world to be the way he remembers it, before all these hippy kids came along.

Sean Hannity is your drunken Irish uncle, like, um, I can't really think of another TV character like this, maybe I should write my own show about a drunken Irish uncle. He'd be crazy and incoherent and a little racist, but that's just the beer talking, deep down, he'd be a great guy.

If you saw Hugh Laurie walking down the street, would you give him a hard time because Dr. House is mean to people? Would you hire Craig T. Nelson to coach your college football team? If you saw Claire Danes in a mall, would you ask her if she ever hooked up with Brian Krakow? (some of these references are just for me, but if you get this one, good for you). If you were on a plane with Dick Cheney, would you..(wait, you're telling me Dick Cheney isn't a fictional character? No, that can't be right, get your facts together and we'll talk more about this later).

See, my point is, the White House shouldn't badmouth Fox. Because Fox isn't actually a hate-mongering, fear-mongering, fact denying, corporate shilling, lying garbage dump of a news network. It's actually the best show on television.

Cable News Time - Part Two

Back for part two. First up, the 8PM hour with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. As usual, I'll be ignoring CNN, because, well, they're no fun. I still go to CNN whenever anything big is happening internationally, but if you're looking for political bickering and general ridiculousness, they don't bring much to the table.

If you've never seen Bill O'Reilly, here's what you need to know. If you just watch Bill on his own, he seems like your typical arrogant, disingenuous, pompous jerk. But if you put him in context with his Fox colleagues, he actually comes off as pretty reasonable. This is because Bill's world revolves solely around Bill, he is 100% narcissism. This trait actually helps him here, because he winds up being less married to the Republican talking points than the other Fox guys.

Keith's a little harder to get a read on. Sometimes he's really on target, like last week's hour long special comment about health care. Other times, I have no idea what he's getting at. He's an enigma wrapped in a riddle encased in a ridiculously large cranium.

uh oh, I may lose you here, I'm about to enter the no spin zone.

Bill's mad at Europe and Russia. He thinks the Obama administration should be more honest with the American people about this and tell us how much Europe and Russia suck. I guess Bill thinks the Bush foreign policy strategy just didn't have enough time to work, just give it ten or twenty more years, the world will come around if we just keep insulting them.

Oh! Oh! Dick Morris is on with Bill. Sorry Keith, I'm not going anywhere until Dick leaves. Dick starts off by agreeing with Bill about Europe and Russia, then a quick shot at Hillary Clinton (he can't help himself), but he's on to talk about health care. Dick's father is 99 years old, and Dick states, as absolute fact, that his dad would be dead already under "Obamacare". Bill says this is only true if the government completely takes over health care (that's fair and balanced for ya). This whole conversation was almost surreal because this whole new political strategy of just making something up and calling it the truth, instead of at least trying to work with the actual truth, seems to be attributable to Dick Morris, and now he's using it. It was like watching Van Gogh paint, only if it was a painting of a giant turd and, instead of Van Gogh, it was actually a troll without a conscience.

They've been talking about killing old people and punishing doctors for treating sick people for a few minutes now. Dick's whole life is some sort of acid trip. I'm surprised Fox hasn't given him his own show yet. Bill and Dick agree that, whatever form "Obamacare" takes, the government will be deciding who lives and who dies(as opposed to now, when the health insurance companies decide. I know I may be the one millionth person to make that point, but it's still a good one). Time for a commercial, but next, Bill's going to tell us why Rush Limbaugh isn't a racist. It's like he's writing the jokes for me.

Keith is talking to Howard Fineman about health care. Guests, by the way, are one of the most interesting features of Keith's show. I can't remember the last time he had someone on who disagreed with him. He has this sort of rotating group of about 10 guests who come on and tell him how right he is. Tomorrow night, Keith's hard hitting interview with a mirror!

Bill has audio of Rush Limbaugh denying he ever said anything offensive about slavery. OK, it seems clear the Fox talking point will be that Rush has never said anything racist in his glorious life. They know people tape his radio show, right?

Keith is plugging his effort to get people to donate to the national association of free clinics. Good for him. This is a good cause, if anyone is reading this, you can donate at freeclinics.us.

Bill is in the middle of his second segment defending Rush. He's got two lawyers on arguing over whether or not Rush should sue over not being allowed to buy an NFL team. Curiously, neither one of them is saying that this is a ridiculous idea, they both agree he'll obviously win, but one of them doesn't think it would be worth the bad publicity, since he doesn't really need the money.

Next, Bill has Hannah Giles. She pretended to be a hooker in some ACORN offices and her friend, while pretending to be a pimp, secretly video taped it (that's called multi-tasking). Interestingly, Bill only has her on. Bill never misses an opportunity to have a very young, attractive woman on the show, it's sort of one of his things.

Keith has some really good town hall footage of crazy people yelling at Lindsey Graham for not being conservative enough because he's willing to talk to Democrats on some issues. So they basically want him to do nothing until the Republicans are the majority again. The Senator tried defending his pro-life voting record, which prompted some woman to yell "god does not compromise". I know I saw that in the bible somewhere, I just can't remember where.

Bill has Dennis Miller on. What happened to Dennis? He used to be smart and funny, I loved his HBO show. It's like someone stole his brain. Dennis is defending Rush too, other people who own teams have said insensitive things. This is true, but how many of them made a career of it?

Keith is doing his worst person's in the world thing. Some nights, this is the best 3 minutes on TV. One of my favorite parts, he does genuinely funny impressions of people, tonight's worst person is Glenn Beck, Keith does a solid Beck impression. It must have been hard for Keith to pick just one reason to make Beck the worst person, so many to choose from.

Keith spends his last segment with the Monty Python guys. Yawn. Sometimes I think Keith has a show for the same reason I have a blog, just to entertain himself.


Back to Bill, he's showing a video which the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee posted a link to. In the video, an actor playing Hitler is yelling quite a bit in German, and the subtitles are suggesting that Hitler is a big fan of universal health care and Nancy Pelosi, but he's disappointed in the President, who he thought was with him. Bill and his guest explain that this is a clip from a 2004 movie with Hitler in his bunker, and people have been adding whatever subtitles they want to make it funny and posting it on youtube. Bill calmly suggests that it may have been a "mistake" for the RCCC to embrace this video. Five minutes later, Bill was rambling about Halloween candy and was clearly more bothered by candy corn than he was by the Hitler video. It's hard to make fun of Bill sometimes, he takes care of so much of it himself.

Bill always ends the show with a word of the day. I think the word of the day everyday should be smug.

9PM is Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. Rachel isn't there today, was isn't so bad because Rachel is actually pretty reasonable, bright and generally likable. I don't always agree with her, but I don't really have anything bad to say about her.

Then there's Hannity. Here's a good drinking game to play with the Hannity show. Take a drink every time Sean says something that is true. By the end of the show, you'll be buzzed, but still functional for the rest of the night. This is important, DO NOT take a drink every time Sean says something that is not true, this may sound like more fun at 9PM, but you'll be in a coma by 9:30.

Hannity picks up where Bill left off, defending Rush. He's got two guests. One of them is Steven A. Smith. I did this twice and I got a double dose of Steven A., I'm psyched. I'm also hoping Steven punches Hannity by the end of the segment.

The other guest is an African-Amercian guy who agrees that people shouldn't call Rush a racist. This is a key Republican strategy since Obama got elected. "Hey, look, this guy's black too, and he agrees with us, checkmate!"

Hannity denies that Rush has ever engaged in race baiting, the look on Steven A.'s face after that one was priceless. Steven A. just learned an important lesson, if you think you're going to come on the Hannity show and win an argument with facts, think again.

Quick fun editing note: Seven paragraphs in my notes on the Hannity show started with "Hannity is very angry..."

Sean's got Mitt Romney on now to talk about health care. This whole thing was a debacle, I'll make two points. First, if anyone wanted Mitt Romney's health care plan (or his economic plan, or any of his plans), they would have voted for him when he ran for President. Instead, he finished third in a craptastic Republican primary field. It's quiet time for him now. Second, if you look up "empty suit" in a dictionary, you'll find a picture of Mitt Romney. He's like Reagan without the charisma, and if you take the charisma away from Reagan, there ain't much else to work with, ya know?

Also, Mitt doesn't think the President should take any time to think about how to handle Afghanistan. I know Republicans aren't used to the President thinking before he does stuff, but that's actually how it usually works.

Sean is talking about Chuck Schumer, Chuck thinks insurance companies should be subject to anti-trust laws (they've been exempt since 1945, I'm not sure I knew that, but it explains a lot). This is best idea I've heard in quite a while, of course, Hannity hates it and he's got Michelle Malkin on to talk about why. Michelle is as crazy and unlikable as anyone you'll see on TV, including the bad guys on fictional shows.

A little back story here, Monday, the health insurance industry put out a "report" which basically threatened to raise everyone's premiums if health care reform gets passed. Michelle and Hannity think Chuck's idea is "Chicago-style" retaliation for this industry funded report that, surprisingly, made the case against any kind of reform

Michelle just said something is "clear to most sane Americans", I guess she knows one. Anyway, the great great great great American panel is next. That's what Hannity called it.

Time for Hannity's panel, and back to defending Rush. Ohhhhh, now i get it, this whole Rush thing is about Barack Obama. I'll let you figure out how. Also, Rush's only crime is giving "conservative commentary". Kudos to Hannity for admitting racism now falls under his definition of "conservative commentary"(the first step is admitting you have a problem).

Hannity wonders aloud why there's a double standard regarding what people are allowed to say about race. In response, Juan Williams just pointed out that black people have a slightly different history in America then white people do, Hannity's not buying it (seriously).

More nonsense with Hannity, I'm getting a little punchy, I don't think I've ever just watched him for an hour straight before. The panel, by the way, are all people who agree with Hannity. This is actually unusual, he usually has one token liberal to yell at.

Hannity's last segment is with Donald Trump's daughter, and I couldn't be less interested. Sean also enjoys any excuse he can find to invite pretty ladies onto the show.

So that's it, I'm done. What did we learn kids?

Well, as usual, we didn't learn much. I learned that Fox is much better at staying on message from show to show than MSNBC is, which is a pretty good reflection of the respective parties they represent. I learned that watching TV and typing about it at the same time is actually easier than I thought it would be. But, more than anything else, I learned that, at some point, someone at Fox figured out that while the truth may sometimes be stranger than fiction, it's rarely more entertaining.