{"id":6015,"date":"2005-12-07T10:11:48","date_gmt":"2005-12-07T15:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6015"},"modified":"2005-12-07T10:11:48","modified_gmt":"2005-12-07T15:11:48","slug":"the-backlash-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-backlash-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"The backlash begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bush gang really hasn’t been paying much attention to the far-right whining about the alleged “war on Christmas,” or they’d be far more on-message. At this point, the White House has done nearly everything wrong<\/a> — from Laura Bush’s “happy holidays” wishes, to “Children’s Holiday Reception” (where kids were encouraged to have a “very happy holiday”), to the “holiday reception” for the White House press corps.<\/p>\n

But it’s the greeting card<\/a> that wishes Bush’s supporters a happy “holiday season” that seems to have completely sent the conservative base over the edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Bush “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn’t act like one,” said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. “I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it.”<\/p>\n

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether this is sinister — it’s the purging of Christ from Christmas — or whether it’s just political correctness run amok,” he said. “I think in the case of the White House, it’s just political correctness.” […] “It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we’ve got Ramadan celebrations in the White House,” Wildmon said. “What’s going on there?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Laura Bush’s press secretary defended the holiday card saying the First Family “included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths.” But that’s only likely to make things worse — conservative whiners don’t care about non-Christian faiths and they don’t want the White House to care either.<\/p>\n

The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue told the WaPo, “They’d better address this, because they’re no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say ‘Merry Christmas.'”<\/p>\n

OK, but how does the White House respond? If they continue to respect diversity and keep their holiday wishes generic, far-right activists will continue their public gripes, only with increasing volume. If they turn around and start explicitly honoring Christmas, it’ll look like the president is letting his base push him around.<\/p>\n

Can’t you just feel the holiday spirit? Let’s all remember the reason for the season — petty semantics debates the whole family can enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bush gang really hasn’t been paying much attention to the far-right whining about the alleged “war on Christmas,” or they’d be far more on-message. At this point, the White House has done nearly everything wrong — from Laura Bush’s “happy holidays” wishes, to “Children’s Holiday Reception” (where kids were encouraged to have a “very […]<\/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-6015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6015","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=6015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}