It's two weeks to Thanksgiving. Stores are hawking Christmas trees, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, and so on and so forth. (The really enterprising stores started putting all this stuff up right after Labor Day.) I guess that means it's time for Bill O'Reilly and Fox News to go into their annual "War on Christmas" paroxysm of spluttering outrage. And this year, the jihad starts in Fort Collins, Colorado.
You see, last year there was a kerfluffle in Fort Collins because the city rejected requests to include a Chanukah menorah in the city's official holiday display. Because of this, an official "Holiday Display Task Force" was convened to find ways of including non-Christian residents in the official celebrations. One of their recommendations was to use white lights rather than colored lights as part of the displays.
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "Of course you realize this means war."
On his TV show last night, O'Reilly went into a frothing rage over the decision, calling it "insane...an assault to diminish Christmas for secular progressive reasons," blaming (nonexistent) ACLU lawsuits and sneering that "we're going to decorate Fort Collins public buildings with snowflakes."
A guest didn't stop there, calling it "something out of the old Soviet Union."
For the record, people in Fort Collins or anywhere else are perfectly free to put up or not put up any decorations they choose. The task force's recommendations are just that - recommendations, with no force of law - and concern themselves only with official city decorations, not any private displays. But that doesn't matter to Bill.
O'Reilly has been pushing his "War on Christmas" nonsense now for years, and every time around it just gets more shrill and hysterical. He should quit before he bursts a blood vessel or something.
You see, last year there was a kerfluffle in Fort Collins because the city rejected requests to include a Chanukah menorah in the city's official holiday display. Because of this, an official "Holiday Display Task Force" was convened to find ways of including non-Christian residents in the official celebrations. One of their recommendations was to use white lights rather than colored lights as part of the displays.
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "Of course you realize this means war."
On his TV show last night, O'Reilly went into a frothing rage over the decision, calling it "insane...an assault to diminish Christmas for secular progressive reasons," blaming (nonexistent) ACLU lawsuits and sneering that "we're going to decorate Fort Collins public buildings with snowflakes."
A guest didn't stop there, calling it "something out of the old Soviet Union."
For the record, people in Fort Collins or anywhere else are perfectly free to put up or not put up any decorations they choose. The task force's recommendations are just that - recommendations, with no force of law - and concern themselves only with official city decorations, not any private displays. But that doesn't matter to Bill.
O'Reilly has been pushing his "War on Christmas" nonsense now for years, and every time around it just gets more shrill and hysterical. He should quit before he bursts a blood vessel or something.
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