{"id":6020,"date":"2005-12-07T12:49:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-07T17:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6020"},"modified":"2005-12-07T12:49:59","modified_gmt":"2005-12-07T17:49:59","slug":"they-must-see-a-war-the-rest-of-us-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/they-must-see-a-war-the-rest-of-us-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"They must see a war the rest of us don’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t intend to do two “war on Christmas” posts in the same day<\/a>, but I saw a poll that needs more attention.<\/p>\n

The story has generally been a tongue-in-cheek commentary for weeks. There isn’t a real conflict because only one side is doing all the complaining. When the O’Reilly\/Falwell\/AFA crowd starts a letter campaign against a department store that wishes its customers “happy holidays,” there is no other side — secularists and religious minorities are not organizing to keep the word “Christmas” out of newspaper ad supplements. I more or less assumed some far-right activists were worked up, but the rest of the country recognized how silly this “debate” really is.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that may not be the case. National Journal reported<\/a> that a new Fox News poll suggests that many Americans genuinely believe that a campaign against Christianity is real.<\/p>\n

Nearly six in 10 respondents said they felt like Christianity is under attack, and a 49-percent plurality said religion in general is currently embattled. Forty-two percent said there was a “war” on Christmas in the United States, although a 48-percent plurality disagreed.<\/p>\n

Even more — 58 percent — said the Christian symbols of the holiday, such as nativity scenes, are being attacked more now than they were one year ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granted, I haven’t seen the wording of the questions. For that matter, the poll did come from Fox News. But has all the conservative whining really been this<\/i> effective? Could 42% of the country really believe that there’s a “war on Christmas”? What do they see that the rest of us don’t?
\n
\nOver the weekend, writer Neil Gabler was on Fox News explaining<\/a> that FNC personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and John Gibson are “demagogues” who seek to “rally the masses” with this “war on Christmas” silliness.<\/p>\n

“They’ll do it every Christmas. They did it last Christmas; they’ll do it next Christmas…. The media, particularly Fox media, has been pumping the hell out of this thing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And apparently, it’s working. The overwhelming majority of Americans will be celebrating Christmas, many with Nativity scenes on their lawn and a tree in their house. It’s even a federal holiday. Where’s the “war”? <\/p>\n

Last year, armed police broke up a Christmas Mass<\/a> at an underground Catholic church in eastern China, arresting the priest, demolishing a makeshift pulpit and scattering two thousand worshippers. Around the same time, some seasonal temp at the mall wished Bill O’Reilly a generic “Happy Holidays” and he felt like a victim.<\/p>\n

Too many people have completely lost their sense of perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t intend to do two “war on Christmas” posts in the same day, but I saw a poll that needs more attention. The story has generally been a tongue-in-cheek commentary for weeks. There isn’t a real conflict because only one side is doing all the complaining. When the O’Reilly\/Falwell\/AFA crowd starts a letter campaign […]<\/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-6020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020","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=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}