1. Megyn Kelly: This is for all you kids out there: Santa is white! Hear me? He’s white!
One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
It is laughable, yes—and Jon Stewart helped us laugh at it when he asked, “Who is Megyn Kelly talking to? Children who are sophisticated enough to watch the 10 o’clock news, yet naïve enough to believe in Santa, and racist enough to be upset that he might not be white?” That is, as he points out, a fairly narrow segment of viewers.
But what Kelly’s insane rant really shows is just how mean-spirited she really is, that her vaunted empathy extends only to white working women, or rather to white working right-wing women who think like her. Her empathy deficit is front and center in the repetition of the word, “kids,” and the use of the word “just.” When she says, Santa is “just white” to the “kids” out there, and they are just going to have to deal with it, it seems that she is also talking to non-white kids. Just deal with it, you non-white kids. Santa’s not for you.
In the ensuing kerfuffle, she accused her detractors of race-baiting — and claimed it was an off-handed remark, that she was just kidding — and again asserted that Santa is white. In response to a thoughtful article on Slate by Aisha Harris, who chronicles the genuine pain she felt reconciling Santa’s “whiteness” with her African-American family’s Christmas celebration, Kelly ratcheted up the jerkiness. “Just because it makes people uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”
Because you can’t change the facts of a made-up story about a jolly man who flies around and gives children toys. And made-up stories belong on the news, kids.
Kids!? Are you listening?
2. Pat Robertson: Letting lesbians into your house could turn your kids gay.
Patty Robertson slays us. He really does. His delusional view that gayness is a contagious germ was revealed this week when a viewer named Catherine wrote in for some advice. She had recently reconnected with an old best friend who, it turned out, was a lesbian. Catherine had invited her old friend to meet her children, but became concerned when her old friend wanted to bring her life partner along.
Big mistake, the 700 Club host told her. Having lesbian friends in her home could turn her children gay, and “you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians.”
Exactly how this transmission of sexuality would occur, he did not explain. It, like the lord, works in mysterious ways, but suffice it to say, “Danger!”
While Catherine should not risk infecting her children with the acceptance-of-the-lesbian-lifestyle virus, Rev. Pat said nor should she shun her old friend. Because, who knows, maybe Catherine could infect her friend with the good Christian, heterosexual lifestyle, ummm, virus.
Failing that, he counseled: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody, ‘Look, I love you and we’re going to do what we can to be friends if we can, but I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian. And you have yours, it’s not. And so, I’m sorry, we can’t indulge in certain things together.’”
Like lesbian sex, we’re presuming. That’s out.
More from Alternet
Posted by The NON-Conformist