{"id":6126,"date":"2005-12-19T14:13:30","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T19:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6126"},"modified":"2005-12-19T14:13:30","modified_gmt":"2005-12-19T19:13:30","slug":"mything-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mything-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mything In Action’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to convincing Americans that there’s an ongoing “war on Christmas,” John Gibson, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell, and others rely on a series of horror stories that are supposed to prove that too many public officials and commercial outlets have gone to outrageous lengths to undermine the “reason for the season.”<\/p>\n

Some of the controversies have already been debunked<\/a>, but I’d always assumed that the others were isolated incidents in which well-intentioned people went a little too far, creating minor and solitary flaps, which do not a “war” make.<\/p>\n

But my friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State have done us all a big favor and analyzed the right’s alleged examples<\/a> of anti-Christmas animus to see whether the rhetoric meets the reality. Surprise, surprise, the “war on Christmas” is based almost entirely on hype and exaggeration.<\/p>\n

Americans United staff members researched the “war on Christmas” incidents cited most frequently by Religious Right leaders and found them to be based in myth, not fact. For details, read the AU report, “The Religious Right’s Phony ‘War on Christmas’: Mything In Action.” <\/p>\n

“This isn’t a war on Christmas it’s not even a skirmish,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “When the facts are exposed, the Religious Right’s ‘war on Christmas’ melts faster than a snowman on an 80-degree day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For example, Fox News viewers have likely heard that a Wisconsin elementary school has banned seasonal songs with a religious “motive or theme” from this year’s holiday program. Officials at the Glendale-River Hills School District have posted a notice on the district website calling the entire story “a fraud,” and pointing out that this year’s show includes “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “I Saw Three Ships.”<\/p>\n

The Fox News anecdotes never proved that there’s an actual war anyway, but the fact that so many of their stories have turned out to be completely without merit<\/a> make the O’Reillys and Gibsons of the world look pretty foolish. Make that, more foolish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to convincing Americans that there’s an ongoing “war on Christmas,” John Gibson, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell, and others rely on a series of horror stories that are supposed to prove that too many public officials and commercial outlets have gone to outrageous lengths to undermine the “reason for the season.” Some of […]<\/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-6126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6126","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=6126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}