I have now seen three gags online using that introduction above. All of them were really mean; one made me laugh out loud, and I was sorely tempted to use it. However to do so would be neither ethical nor in the spirit of the season, so I’ll just encourage readers to use their imaginations.
I was especially tempted after hearing President Biden and the First Lady call into the NBC broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—I wasn’t watching at the time, but someone sent me the video yesterday. First, it was an intrusion into what is supposed to be a completely non-political holiday event for the President to try to exploit it. If Biden had even attempted to be the unifying leader he claimed to be while campaigning in 2020, I’d give it a pass, but at this point anything he does or says has to be taken as purely partisan, not to mention calculated and managed by his “handlers,” as in puppeteers. The phone call also went as you might expect: there were about 20 seconds of dead air time, which is an eternity on TV, as the Bidens could be faintly heard speaking incomprehensibly while NBC weather reporter Dylan Dreyer, smiling like a zany, went through a classic “Can you hear me? I can’t hear you…” routine. Finally, after Joe told Dreyer that she was doing a “good job” and giving credit to her for the good weather—she’s the weather girl, see; I think that bit was old by 1964—the First Couple replied to Dreyer’s invitation to say something of substance to the audience,
Mrs. Biden: “We just want to say we’re so grateful for the people, for this opportunity, for the health that we have now in America, and Joe, what do you want to say?”
Joe: “I want to say thanks to the firefighters and police officers, first responders. They never take a break.”
Mrs. Biden: “And God bless our troops for sure.”
Joe: “And by the way, we’re going to be talking to some of our troops later in the day, both here and abroad. I hope everybody remembers. We remember them every single day. God bless our troops for real.”
1. More Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ethics.…On the one parade broadcast I did watch for a while, the commentators used the buzz-word “diversity” three times in less than fifteen minutes, explaining at one point that a marching band was wonderful because it was “diverse.” Bands are good when they look and sound good; it shouldn’t matter what colors it is or whether there is a nonbinary flute player. Then I remembered that Macy’s had just dropped the Salvation Army and will no longer allow its Santas and bell-ringers to solicit seasonal charity contributions, because the conservative religious organization isn’t sufficiently all-in with Macy’s political and social pandering mission to “grant funding to advance human rights, racial justice, workforce development and economic opportunity.” This despite last year’s embarrassing attempt by the Army to jump on the Critical Race Theory bandwagon. The government/media/corporate alliance to mandate beliefs and opinions and punish dissenters brooks no deviation.
The last metaphorical straw was when some female pop star I had never seen, heard or heard of before serenaded the viewers with the brain-numbing Christmas song, “What Christmas Means to Me”:
Oh, yeahCandles burning lowLots of mistletoeLots of snow and iceEverywhere we goChoirs singing carolsRight outside my doorAll these things and more That’s what Christmas means to me my loveAnd you know what I meanI see your smiling faceLike I’ve never seen beforeEven though I love you madlyIt seems I love you moreThe little cards you’ll give meWill touch my heart for sureAll these things and more, darling That’s what Christmas means to me my loveI feel like running wild As anxious as a little childGreet you ‘neath the mistletoeKiss you once and then some moreAnd wish you Merry Christmas baby And such happiness in the coming yearLet’s deck the halls with hollySing sweet silent nightFill the tree with angel hairAnd pretty, pretty lightsGo to sleep and wake upJust before daylightAnd all these things and more, babyThat’s what Christmas means to me my loveCandles burning lowLots and lots of snowChristmas bells are ringingChristmas choirs singingChristmas mistletoe
Wait, what does Christmas mean again? This is lyric incompetence. Mel Torme’s classic “The Christmas Song” lists senses, sounds and trappings of the season, but never suggests that the holiday only “means” chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Mel’s masterpiece is also superior musically, but Macy’s has probably banned it because it uses the racially offensive term “Eskimos.”
2. On the topic of viewpoint censorship and partisan manipulation, independent YouTube auteur Matt Orfalea reports that YouTube (that’s Google) and social media platforms have repeatedly pulled or suspended videos that critique Democratic Party hypocrisy or policy positions, while his videos with content critical of Republicans or conservatives are left alone.
During the 2016 election, for example, he created a video that revealed PBS News’s selective editing of an interview with Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein, including PBS’s censoring of Stein’s entire criticism of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. Published on Facebook, it was deleted with no explanation.This year, Orfalea created two video montages of Democrat politicians and media figures calling the 2016 election “illegitimate,” “rigged,” and “hacked” as the party attacked Donald Trump and others for making similar claims about the 2020 election. YouTube demonetized one video and deleted the other as “advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in US presidential elections.”
3.Somehow, I tend to think that there are more egregious examples of Congressional ethics violations…Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has been in office for 30 years and currently chairs the House Oversight Committee, but she’s out in January, having lost her seat. However, the Office of Congressional Ethics is pursuing charges against Maloney because an investigation indicates that she “may have solicited or accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala,” a violation of House rules and ethics standards. You see, while a member of Congress can accept an invitation to such an event, it is forbidden to ask for an invitation, which is apparently what Maloney did six years ago, in 2016.
By publicizing enforcement of ethics relatively trivial rules like this, Congress misleads the public into believing its ethics rules and principles are strictly enforced. This is not the case. The episode does demonstrate how efficient the current ethics oversight system is, however.
4. Indians? What Indians? More than two decades ago, a New York commissioner of education issued a memorandum forbidding schools from using Native American mascots, team names or logos. That was around the time when the political correctness mob decided to flex its muscles and wipe Native Americans from the popular culture landscape, even though such items were honorific in nature and effect. An estimated 60 school districts in the state still use a Native American mascot or logo however, so now the state’s education department, laser-focused on what really matters in education, has announced that any school that does not eliminate any references to America’s original occupants by the end of the school year risks losing state aid and having its administrators fired.
“Schools are learning environments; students learn as much through observation of their surroundings as they do from direct instruction,” senior deputy commissioner James N. Baldwin wrote in his memo. What students learn from this move is that their surroundings are rigid indoctrination machines, and that bureaucrats are cowardly pushovers for woke mobs pretending to represent minority interests when they really are trying to increase their own power.
5. Heroes, villains, an priorities. Our Thanksgiving was “Genghis Khan Day” in Mongolia, a national holiday. American culture represents Khan as an irredeemable villain. In Mongolia, as I quickly learned when I spent time in that fascinating nation, he is revered to a greater extent than any American historical figure is here. In a brutal age, in a savage land, Genghis unified a scattered tribal population, instituted civilizing practices, and came as close to taking over the world as anyone—all while his armies raped and killed with wild abandon. His triumphs constituted Mongolia’s zenith in world prominence, and you can’t find a Mongolian who will say a word against him. Genghis is, by far, the most common male name in the nation.
6. Police don’t help their cause when they do something like this...Security video shows 41-year-old Jarrett Hobbs, a black man who had been arrested for tussling with a police officer, standing alone in his cell before five Camden County (Georgia) sheriff’s deputies entered the cell, surrounded him, and beat him up.
Ethics Alarms 
Marching bands are not supposed to be diverse. When I was in high school, I was in a marching band in the Millenium Rose Bowl Parade and the Inaugural Parade. To be a good marching band, we even worked to get rid of the difference between how boys and girls walk. We practiced walking for hours where girls were taught to walk on either side of a line instead of on the line. To this day, I walk more like a man (and don’t see a problem with it). All hair styles were hidden with our hats. Legs move together, arms move together. There is no place for diversity in a marching band. Skin color does not matter, but all else is in uniformity in a parade. If you are saying a marching band is diverse, you are saying they suck. This is like saying you want a diverse French Horn section, when you really need them to all just play concert F in unison on the off beats. What has happened to this society?
Yep. Marching Band alumnus here, too. We were all trained to march the same way and those uniforms were unflattering to female bodies.
It is not so much the use of the term, “Eskimos,” as it is the “folks” dressing up as them.
Their ethnicity is not a costume and the celebration of cultural appropriation is blatant White Supremacy.
-Jut
This is one of my favorite takes on Christmas carols & hymns:
And yes, “Lutheran Satire” is a thing.