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Monday, Dec 22, 2014 9:15 PM UTC
Let’s make Bill O’Reilly’s head explode: We desperately need a war on Christmas lies
O'Reilly's blather aside, there's no war on Xmas. There should be: From virgin birth to the date itself, it's a lie
Topics: Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, War on Christmas, Editor's Picks, Religion, Atheism, Life News
With a regularity that never ceases to stun, Fox News megastar Bill O’Reilly manages to be simultaneously ignorant, pompous and preposterous, inciting outrage among his legions of viewers year after year over a collective right-wing delusion partly of his own concoction. For a decade now, on “The O’Reilly Factor,” he has declared his opposition to the “war on Christmas” allegedly being waged against the good Christians of the United States by the godless, perverted and no doubt “pinhead” leftist-loon mavens of multiculturalism.
This year was no exception. O’Reilly announced on his show that “Every Christmas season, there are people who try to diminish the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. We all know it, but we do have a whole bunch of war on Christmas deniers who say that I and others are making the whole thing up.” His evidence: billboards sponsored by the American Atheists activist organization.
“Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is to skip church,” the billboards read. “I’m too old for fairy tales.” Accompanying these words is a photo of a preschooler grinning impishly at the prospect of avoiding the humdrum homily of Mom and Dad’s favorite priest or pastor, and, instead, doing something much more edifying and useful, like scribbling with crayons or playing Weebles Musical Treehouse. The organization’s website says the billboards have been placed mostly in Southern states, and are located “in more residential areas to be near schools and churches.”
O’Reilly cuts to a clip of Danielle Muscato, American Atheists’ P.R. director, who explains the billboard’s purpose: “A lot of atheists feel alienated at this time of year, and we want them to know that they’re not alone, and that it’s OK to admit that there’s no God and to be open about that.”
How tragic and telling it is that in 21st-century America those who stand by reason and abjure myth should need consolation and encouragement. But at least some do. Muscato’s measured, sane words, however, befuddle the pious O’Reilly. He brings on-screen Karen Ruskin, a psychotherapist and self-professed agnostic, who speaks as though miming and lip-syncing her own words, possibly to assist O’Reilly’s audience in understanding the turgid nonsense she is about to spew.
“When you feel like you are in the minority,” Ruskin says, “you feel the desire to push … to sell your belief in a loud way to others in order to make yourself feel better, to validate your views.” And so on.
O’Reilly remains puzzled. He tells her that he finds the American Atheists’ signs “insulting” and therefore “counterproductive.”
“It’s horrifically insulting,” says Ruskin, “but not unlike the bully who tries to push other people down in order to make themself feel better. That’s what’s happening here.”
O’Reilly isn’t persuaded. The atheists who have appeared on his show (Richard Dawkins included) have evinced no symptoms of low self-esteem, and certainly none have tried to bully him. So Ruskin elaborates, opining that atheists who keep quiet about their nonbelief are not the troubled souls she has in mind. She is referring to the impudent faithless who put up billboards saying “skip church”; they are none other than ”a group of people all coming together in a gang-like format in order to push other people down.” O’Reilly probes further, wondering why “that bullying group” would “try to hammer down” the wondrous traditions of Christmas. For Ruskin, a pathological psyche is to blame. “There is an emotional confusion for some who are atheists in their need to push their product to others to help themself feel they’re right.” The interview then draws to a close, with those who disbelieve O’Reilly’s contention that there’s a war on Christmas likened to climate-change deniers.
Mirabile dictu: Bill O’Reilly has beclowned himself once again! At first it seems patently absurd that anyone would find anything “gang-like” and oppressive in the American Atheists’ wry billboards. But there is a simple explanation. By the standards of the rest of the developed world, the United States is a fanatically religious land where believers (especially Christians, in their multifarious sects and denominations), day in and day out, and most of all at Christmas, make public displays of their faith and expect universal, knee-jerk respect for rituals associated with the practice of their superstitions. There is compelling evidence that atheists are one of the most discriminated-against groups on earth, but if they raise their heads and speak up in the Land of Free Speech, they must be confronted and slapped down.
Let me say right away that I, as an atheist, have never had and do not now have anything against Christmas. To each his or her own. But the nonsensicality inherent in the right’s cries of “the war against Christmas!” as well as said war’s nonexistence, put me in something other than a Yuletide mood and prompt me to hit the computer keyboard. And for reasons that go far beyond celebrating this particular holiday.
Last time I checked, store windows were decorated with boughs of holly and blinking lights, their tinsel-strewn aisles thronging with folks eager to express affection for loved ones in the sole way many know: buying them stuff. Gigantic Christmas trees stand illuminated for all to see at the White House and Rockefeller Center and in state capitals across the country. Mangers on lawns pay chintzy homage to the laughable legend of a virgin birth. Partiers will soon be boozing up, with eggnog only one of many libations available. Christmas, thus, is proceeding apace in America, with all its customary tidings of hysterical commercialism and inebriated jolliness. The rare dissenters are dismissed as Grinches.
So, a few billboards do not a war on Christmas make. In any case, polls show that eight out of 10 Americans consider themselves Christian. If marauding mobs of nonbelievers were torching nativity mangers and impaling shopping-mall Santas, or even besieging lines of holiday gift seekers and attempting to Christmas-shame them, we could definitely say there’s a war on Christmas. And we would all know about it, and fast, and not just from Fox News. The resulting publicity would not favor anyone, least of all atheists.
So what, then, is O’Reilly actually saying? His allegations of a “war on Christmas” are really about seething anger over America’s ever more diverse confessional makeup. The Christian master should be able to do as he pleases on his manor. Being occasionally expected to wish others Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas is an intolerable affront to centuries of faith-based privilege. And that a tiny (but thankfully growing) minority – atheists – dare to so much as put up billboards manifesting something other than respect for this privilege … Well, that’s an insult not to be tolerated. There must be something wrong with them, something suspect. It was not for nothing that back in 1987, presidential candidate George H. W. Bush wondered aloud if atheists should be considered citizens or patriots. After all, he said, “This is one nation under God.”
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