{"id":5941,"date":"2005-11-29T10:30:27","date_gmt":"2005-11-29T15:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5941"},"modified":"2005-11-29T10:30:27","modified_gmt":"2005-11-29T15:30:27","slug":"the-white-house-undermines-the-christmas-crusade-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-white-house-undermines-the-christmas-crusade-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House undermines the Christmas crusade — again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Considering the right’s unyielding<\/a> obsession<\/a> with the non-existent “war on Christmas,” it’s worth noting that the Christmas season began<\/a> at the White House yesterday, but Laura Bush wasn’t on-message<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Well, all things bright and beautiful is the theme this year. I think it will be really bright and beautiful with this fabulous tree. But thank you all very much. Happy holidays<\/b>.” (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This follows last year’s obviously anti-Christian assault by the president himself, who, just five days before Christmas, told<\/a> the White House press corps, “I wish everybody — truly wish everybody a happy holidays.”<\/p>\n

The First Family clearly hasn’t gotten the memo. As far as conservative activists are concerned, Christians are supposed to boycott<\/i> enterprises that dare to wish people “happy holidays” when they should be saying “Merry Christmas.” Indeed, according to some activists<\/a>, Bush’s victory in the last presidential election was supposed to free Christians from worrying about non-Christians’ feelings in the first place.<\/p>\n

And yet the Bushes refuse to stick to the script. Will James Dobson take this lying down?<\/p>\n

At least the right can take solace in the decisions being made at the other end<\/a> of Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has told federal officials that the lighted, decorated tree on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol — known in recent years as the “Holiday Tree” — should be renamed the “Capitol Christmas Tree,” as it was called until the late 1990s. The Capitol’s senior landscape architect confirmed the name switch yesterday for The Washington Times. […]<\/p>\n

“The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that,” said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering the right’s unyielding obsession with the non-existent “war on Christmas,” it’s worth noting that the Christmas season began at the White House yesterday, but Laura Bush wasn’t on-message. “Well, all things bright and beautiful is the theme this year. I think it will be really bright and beautiful with this fabulous tree. But thank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}