Culture Warrior

  Yet some courts, led by the U.S. Supreme Court, have demonstrated an unmistakable hostility toward religious expression in the public square. This effort to cleanse virtually all things religious from public life, including Christmas, is impossible to ignore and is contrary to our nation’s founding principles.

  Public expression of faith—one of the very freedoms most cherished by our Founding Fathers—should not be allowed to fall victim to a pervasive misunderstanding of the First Amendment perpetuated by a handful of secularists and judicial activists. In particular, during this time of religious celebration for so many Americans (Christmas and Hanukah), we should remember that we should, by right, be free to exercise our religious beliefs openly and to celebrate those beliefs as we choose.

  Kudos to Senator Cornyn. President John Adams could not have said it better himself.

  There is ample evidence that the Founding Fathers were exactly in tune with Senator Cornyn’s analysis. While disagreeing with me about the Christmas controversy on my radio program, a caller adamantly claimed that founder James Madison was an “avowed atheist” who would have supported the S-P attack on Christmas. Of course, that’s nonsense. I scolded the caller, pointing out that Madison, while not a particularly religious man along the lines of, say, John Adams, made numerous references to the benefits of spirituality in his public statements, including this one documented by the American Historical Association: “All men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate.”

  Let’s see…“unrestrained by the magistrate”…“full toleration”…I believe that means Madison would encourage all of us to say “Merry Christmas,” including those working at Sears, where ol’ James might be getting his tires and buggy whips.

  While the religious aspect—Christianity—is certainly in the forefront of the Christmas controversy, the political agenda in the war on Christmas has remained largely hidden. It is a decidedly covert operation, in other words. In fact, many people were surprised when I said on TV and radio that politics, not religion, was the driving force behind the attempt to keep Christmas behind closed doors.

  Here’s my explanation in a nutshell: Almost every social change the secular-progressive movement wants to achieve is opposed by religious Americans. Therefore, the more the S-Ps can diminish religious influence in America, the faster their agenda can become a reality. For example, the S-Ps are furious that gay marriage initiatives keep getting voted down, even in the most liberal states, and believe that the primary opposition comes from organized religion rallying their flocks to oppose homosexual nuptials with sin-based arguments. But gay marriage is just the start.

  The S-Ps want no restrictions of any kind on abortion. That means they approve of partial-birth abortion up until the actual birthing process without a defined catastrophic health situation that could endanger the mother. In other words, the S-Ps believe a woman can end a pregnancy for any reason, at any time, under the banner of “reproductive rights.” Some S-P loons even contend it should be legal to kill a baby up until the time the umbilical cord is detached. Obviously, most religions would find that blatantly sinful, to say the least.

  On the same issue, secular-progressives want girls of any age to be able to obtain abortions without parental consent or even notification. Do you know of any traditional religion that endorses that extreme view? Even Henry VIII would be offended.

  S-Ps are also behind the euthanasia movement, which is, again, opposed by many religions on the same grounds as abortion. A hallmark of most traditional theology is that only God has the right to decide the matters of birth and death.

  Want another one? Legalized narcotics is frowned upon by many organized religions because intoxication is not considered a healthy act; that is, it does not bring a person closer to God—or to anyone else, for that matter. As previously stated, S-P bankers George Soros and Peter Lewis are pouring millions of dollars into campaigns to legalize drugs.

  Organized religions also tend to oppose unbridled personal gratification and the idea that the individual is the center of the universe. In fact, on just about every moral topic, the S-P playbook and traditional Bible passages are at odds.

  So, for the S-P agenda to succeed, religion in America must be deemphasized, just as it already has been in Western Europe and Canada, where secular-progressives have made huge gains. Looking at the entire battle zone, we can see that the American S-P generals have learned that goal number one is to secularize the American public school system in order to drive children away from religion and into the S-P camp. And what is the most wondrous display of religion worldwide? Why, Christmas, of course. Little kids seeing a manger display just might develop a curiosity about this baby Jesus person. What’s this Christmas deal all about, anyway? There is no danger of that happening with winter solstice or with a holiday tree. Is there?

  The secular-progressive press strongly disputes my analysis linking the attacks on Christmas to far-left, secular politics, but I stand by my hypothesis. I know politics is behind the war on Christmas because S-P philosopher George Lakoff told me so on page 102 of his Elephant book. There he urges liberal Christians to move away from Jesus to a broader “vision” of God and salvation:

  [The conservative] God is understood as punitive—that is if you sin you are going to hell, and if you don’t sin you are going to be rewarded. Since people tend to sin at one point or another in their lives, how is it possible for them to ever get to heaven? The answer in conservative Christianity is Christ. What Jesus does is offer them a chance to get to heaven [if they toe the line].

  But liberal [S-P] Christianity is very, very different. Liberal Christianity sees God as essentially beneficent, as wanting to help people.

  So what Lakoff is embracing is an S-P God putting forth the standard S-P doctrine of no judgments on most human behavior. Since the Gospels have Jesus [God] in the judgment business (and Him alone—remember the “cast the first stone” passage), the S-P movement must move away from the traditional view of Jesus. Thus, the less said, the better about anything to do with Him. So there you have the genesis (sorry) of the Christmas controversy.

  Now, admittedly, this is heady stuff. I have thought long and hard about it. But it makes no sense to attack one of the most cherished traditions in America, Christmas, without a powerful ulterior motive. And Lakoff provides one. A God of judgment is not helpful to the secular-progressive cause; that is for certain.

  Nothing if not pragmatic, the S-P brain trust knows a complicated explanation of liberal theology would be impossible for most Americans to even listen to, much less accept. So, using the diversity ruse, they have first attacked Christmas as being “divisive.” How many times have you heard S-Ps say that the words “Merry Christmas” are offensive to many people? Well, that’s another falsehood. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, only 3 percent of Americans say they are offended by hearing or seeing the words “Merry Christmas.” And since we can assume that 3 percent of any population is certifiable—there is absolutely no problem in the United States with respect to “Merry Christmas.” (By the way, pollsters always warn that the margin of error in a typical poll is also 3 percent or a similar number. Meaning, maybe everyone likes Christmas except the S-P leadership and a few media fanatics.)

  It is hard to believe, but some CEOs of major retailers bought into the secular nonsense about Christmas and so they had to be educated. And they were. At the beginning of the 2005 Christmas season, outfits like Wal-Mart, Sears/Kmart, Costco, and Kohl’s were hesitant to use the words “Merry Christmas” in their advertising. A few weeks later, however, The Factor’s reportage combined with a concentrated public outcry had convinced all of them that the greeting was appropriate and welcoming—and that, in fact, ignoring it was bad for business.

  And so the great battle for Christmas 2005 was won by traditional forces, but not before there was a Battle of the Bulge–like offensive launched by
the secular media. A charge that, as we will see, was ferocious in its intensity.

  The No Spin truth is that I have never had a good relationship with the print press or even with many of my peers in the electronic media, as I noted in Chapter 2. I am cocky, outspoken, well paid, and critical of the mainstream American media in general. Over the years, only a few writers, like TV Guide’s Mark Lasswell and newspaper columnists Liz Smith, Cindy Adams, and Denis Hamill, have been complimentary of my work. The rest of the print press generally despises the overall “O’Reilly Factor” concept and, with a few exceptions, loathes me personally.

  I…don’t…care.

  In fact, I loathe many of them right back, which, I admit, is immature. I sincerely feel that many of these newspaper people are jealous, mean-spirited, petty, and cowardly. For those reasons, I rarely speak to any of them. It took years, but I finally wised up: The print press is not looking out for me and never will be. Collectively speaking, they’d be happy if I got run over by a train.

  Which, figuratively speaking, did happen in the war-on-Christmas controversy; the media came after me with a vengeance that reached ludicrous proportions. More than thirty separate newspapers attacked me by name for defending Christmas traditions. Not one media person that I’m aware of mentioned my name in a positive way. Not even Bill Moyers.

  The plan of attack in the press was to charge that I “fabricated” the Christmas controversy to “get ratings.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Never mind that lawsuits were flying and that a number of stores had eradicated any mention of Christmas in their advertising displays. No, according to the press, I made up the entire deal (and the evidence be damned). S-P sympathizer Sam Donaldson put it this way on the ABC News Sunday-morning show: “There’s no war on Christmas. There’s a Bill O’Reilly attempt [to get ratings]. Bill O’Reilly wants ratings. He wants to stroke the yahoos—where is Mencken when we need him—in his audience by saying there is a war on Christmas.”

  Somehow Donaldson missed the lawsuit against the city of Palm Beach, Florida, which allowed a menorah display but banished the Nativity scene. Palm Beach lost this one in court, and the city’s taxpayers were out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. (By the way, Sam’s reference to H. L. Mencken concerned a short book he wrote called Christmas Story. It’s satirical but doesn’t diss the concept of Christmas, just those who would spoil it with hypocrisy.)

  While reading Mencken, Donaldson apparently also missed lawsuits filed by the ACLU against Christmas symbols in Rhode Island and Louisiana. The ACLU lost both times. But Sam wasn’t the only one ignoring the evidence. My pal David Letterman, in addition to not liking my stance on Cindy Sheehan, didn’t like my Christmas take either, as he made plain in our TV chat: “I don’t think this [Christmas litigation] is an actual threat. I think it’s something that happened here and there, and so people like you are trying to make us think it’s a threat.”

  With guys like Donaldson and Letterman failing to see reality, the hard-core S-P shock troops become even bolder. Take, for example, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, who actually removed the words “Merry Christmas” from a display at City Hall. After a huge outcry, Hickenlooper backed down, but, believe me, he didn’t want to. There are scores of other examples that make the Christmas-controversy deniers look foolish.

  In addition to Letterman and Donaldson, Jon Stewart weighed in, addressing my concerns on The Daily Show: “Bill O’Reilly thinks there’s a war on Christmas…If Bill O’Reilly needs to feel persecuted, here’s my Kwanzaa gift to Bill O’Reilly: Make me your enemy. I, Jon Stewart, hate Christmas.”

  Stewart was joking (sort of), but the message was clear: O’Reilly’s a buffoon. Don’t believe him.

  But the TV guys were absolutely gentle in the criticisms of me compared to the newspapers. They went wild!

  The New York Times ran three separate opinion pieces calling me all kinds of names and pretty much assigning me to hell (again, figuratively; S-Ps don’t really believe in hell, although they might make an exception in my case). Times columnist Nicholas Kristof went completely off the rails, implying I was another Mullah Omar: “Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to religious hypocrites because I’ve spent a chunk of time abroad watching Muslim versions of Mr. O’Reilly—demagogic table-thumpers who exploit public religiosity as a cynical ploy to gain attention and money.”

  Kristof then went on to compare me to Father Coughlin, the far-right radical radio priest in the Depression, and communist blacklist-era scourge Senator Joseph McCarthy. I assume he was saving Hitler and Stalin for a follow-up column. By the way, in an interesting aside, a few months after his initial attacks on me, which included a rant that I didn’t care enough about the Darfur atrocities in the Sudan, Kristoff was put in a delicate situation. The New York Times accepted close to a million dollars to run advertisements from Sudanese interests. Wow! What about Darfur, Nick, what say you about those ads? Mullah Omar would like to know.

  Kristof, the S-P culture warrior, refused to comment. In fact, ol’ Nick never did agree to debate me. Instead, he went on the Bill Maher program and leveled some cheap shots my way. That’s a common S-P tactic: avoid face-to-face encounters, snipe from afar.

  Anyway, back to the good tidings about Christmas. Kristof’s coworker at the Times, Adam Cohen, no relation to the aforementioned Randy, took up a different theme: “The Christmas that Mr. O’Reilly and his allies are promoting—one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward non-believers—fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools.”

  Of course, that is absolute rubbish. Cohen just made it up. As I have made abundantly clear on my programs, I have no interest in forcing religion on retailers, Christian prayer in public schools, or any other kind of “theocratic” display. Like his namesake Randy, Adam Cohen is a rank propagandist, and he’s not alone.

  About a hundred miles down I-95, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist writer Jeff Gelles also distorted a few things: “I address [my comments] to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly: Please quit claiming there’s a war on Christmas and threatening to boycott businesses just because some tell customers ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas.’ ”

  Of course, as you probably know, there was no boycott threat. Gelles picked that misinformation up from Joel Stein, writing erroneously in the Los Angeles Times: “In fact, [John] Gibson and fellow Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly are so upset that they have organized a boycott of Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears, and Costco for using the words ‘Happy Holidays’ in their ads….”

  Two days later, the Los Angeles Times issued this correction (which apparently Jeff Gelles missed): “A Dec. 6 column by Joel Stein said that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson had ‘organized a boycott’ of stores…they have not called for a boycott.”

  But the Christmas hits just kept on coming:

  The Philadelphia Inquirer, apparently crazed by the Christmas controversy, editorialized this way: “Now O’Reilly gripes that the commercializers aren’t exploiting Jesus’ name aggressively enough to sell Obsession and Xbox 360.”

  Associated Press writer Frazier Moore, a committed S-P trooper, chimed in: “O’Reilly is the sort of guy for whom the expression ‘stuff it’ was invented, eh Santa?”

  Hard-core left-wing editorial writer Cynthia Tucker had a very interesting take in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “The oddest thing about this cultural imbroglio is the insistence by some Christian purists that stores—palaces of consumerism—should observe the season with declarations of ‘Merry Christmas.’ ”

  That’s right, Cynthia, it would be nice if the American stores that prohibit the words “Merry Christmas” would stop doing that. After all, most people are buying Christmas gifts, madam, so it’s not at all “odd” to respect the public holiday that generates the gift-giving, especially in a place that is profiting from it.

  For the record, there are m
any misguided journalists in America, but Cynthia Tucker may top the list. Her giveaway expression “Christian purists” is about as condescending as it gets.

  But the height of the print-press nuttiness was reached in the Washington Post. In a column rhapsodizing about Irving Berlin, Harold Meyerson rallied the S-P forces with this final paragraph: “Now the Fox News demagogues want to impose a more sectarian Christmas on us, supplanting the distinctly American holiday we have celebrated lo [lo?] these three score years with a holiday that divides us along religious lines. Bill O’Reilly can blaspheme all he wants but, like millions of my countrymen, I take attacks on Irving Berlin’s America personally. If O’Reilly doesn’t like it here, why doesn’t he go back to where he came from?”

  Lo, Harold, that would be Levittown.

  Attacks on Irving Berlin’s America? Easy on the eggnog, Bud—I am an Irving fan. He wrote the song “White Christmas” when he could have called it “White Holiday.” (He also wrote “God Bless America,” when he could have called it “We Like America.”) Irving Berlin seems to be a Christmas kind of guy. Meyerson seems to be, well, a bit unhinged.

  After a while, this semicoherent nonsense got boring as the list of newspaper people decrying my reporting on Christmas went on and on and on; the media lemmings were jumping off the secular cliff in astounding numbers.

  But at the same time that these S-P newspaper zombies were imputing false motives to me feverishly at their computers, some curious things were happening in the real world. On the fifth day of Christmas, pollsters were polling and Congress was voting.

  On that day, December 20, 2005, while scores of press people were denying any Christmas controversy even existed, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll was released. The CNN.com article went this way: