Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I don’t know why we’re arguing about whether there’s a “War on Christmas” or not. As long as the Judeo-Christian religion, and variants thereof, remain “politically incorrect”…and as long as it’s the nature of administrators and bureaucrats to be weasely, spineless and lacking in testicular fortitude…there will be a War on Christmas. Count on it. It’s like the sun rising in the east.
Case in point, there is Ken Mott, a school bus driver who was ordered by his superiors to ditch the Santa hat he’s taken to wearing every Christmas season.
Mott, the big meanie, squealed to the parents of the kids he was driving. Some of them, anyway. Next thing you know, “supervisors suddenly had a change of heart” and decided he could go ahead and wear the hat.
In the meantime, there was some kind of foolish nonsense about the bussing company getting a phone call from a parent, saying their child didn’t believe in Santa Claus and was bothered by the hat. So — okay — look at this. Let’s assume Mr. Mott isn’t lying about what he was told…and whoever told him what he was told, in turn, wasn’t lying about what they were told. That all seems reasonable. So assume that…what we have here, then, is a parent finding out about the bus driver’s Santa hat, and taking the time to call the bussing company to protest. I would guess if that’s the case, this is a parent who called the school district, and was told about the bussing services being contracted to Mott’s employer, maybe being given the phone number, and proceeding to punch that one in as well.
Hey look, those people are out there. And without a doubt, that’s what I would call a “war.” A war going on in someone’s mind, if nowhere else.
Should Christians take offense? Well, first you have to settle the question of whether Santa’s hat is a Christian symbol. That’s got a few problems in itself. But it seems someone has surmounted those problems…and if they have, then everybody else can get past it as well. So we have those people walking around out there, determined to treat a certain religion as a dirty contaminant. They see a Santa hat on a school bus driver, and it’s gotta go.
So if someone’s treating your religion as a dirty contaminant…is that offensive? Should it be? Maybe I have a personal bias in this, but if that’s the relevant question, it gets a big fat “DUH” out of me. A personal system of beliefs, being treated by a bunch of outsiders as something akin to a public health hazard. Why, I’m hard pressed to think of anything that could be more offensive than that.
Preventing the establishment of a state-sponsored religion is one thing. Going after a specific religion or set of religions, like an antibody after a virus — that’s an entirely different thing.
But if I had to bet money on it, I’d bet this parent doesn’t exist and the weasely supervisors lied to Mr. Mott. After all, I’m left with no reason to infer they have any of what passes for “character” at all, whatsoever. They cracked down on Mott with some zero-tolerance policy, or the equivalent of same…and then once the wind blew the other way, suddenly it wasn’t zero-tolerance anymore. Like freakin’ magic. So being forced to make a snap-judgment, I think they’re liars, and the originally-complaining parent doesn’t exist.
Assuming that’s what happened, that’s offensive too. Would they invent a fictitious parent who objected to, for example, a star-and-crescent dangling from the rear-view mirror? No, I don’t think they would. So the religions most closely associated with Santa, are singled out for special abuse — because those religions show the greatest capacity for tolerating it.
You know, that’s offensve on a whole different level, as long as we’re looking for reasons to be offended. You don’t have to be a Christian to find that offensive. Specific creeds being targeted for attacks from the bureaucracies, just because they’ll put up with it — that’s kind of like a schoolyard-bully environment for religions. Religion, in general, deserves a lot more respect than that.
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