F--k the Birthers! (seriously, I've been reduced to such profanity)

I’ve been reading a lot about birthers lately… you know, the folks who can’t find it in their white conservative hearts to believe our black president could have possibly been born in this country. Oh, and of course there’s the small wing that accepts that sure he might possibly have maybe been born here but that doesn’t matter because by Emer de Vattel’s Law of Nations (which, even if it inspired our Constitution, does not dictate the terms of said Constitution until the Supreme Court says it does) says Obama still isn’t a “natural born citizen” because his father was not a US citizen. I’ve put together an ADS (after dinner speech) about the whole thing—and once I’ve run the thing at a few speech tournaments in the next couple months, I’m sure I’ll post the text of it here, but for now, a more angry rant

See, here’s the thing. Get past (or, literally, before) the whole mess of whether or not the Hawaiian governor can “find” Obama’s original birth certificate (the latest headline on the subject), get past military-involved court attacks like those filed by Orly Taitz, get past the kind of people who post stuff like the following: “I'll bet the only proof he was ever born sits in the mud hut of the VooDoo Doctor that conjured him.” That one just came up on a facebook group called Americans Who Are Sick and Tired of Obama (aka AWASATOO). Get past all that and see what Brian Montopoli mentiond in “Who Are the Birthers?” (CBS News): as soon as Obama seemed like a viable candidate for President (maybe even before that), rumors got going about him not being an American. There was no reason for these rumors. No Kenyan birth certificate had come out yet (and the two of those that have gotten around online are both fake (at least one of them (used by Orly Taitz, actually) has been proven a forgery)). His old grandmother hadn’t said in passing that she was there for his birth. Kenya hadn’t really started claiming him as one of their own. So, the only reason anyone had to distrust Obama’s Americanness was, well, racism, with maybe a little hint of Conservatives being insane bastards who get frightened if anyone drifts too far left. Obama was black

There was a fake dollar bill image going around with Obama on it a couple years back (during the campaign season) that had a bucket of chicken and watermelon on it, two staples of anti-black racist imagery (you can see the dollar here). Not sure of the exact quote, but what the person who made it said when questioned about it was that he just wanted to show how different looking Obama was from what was usually on our money… in other words, all those other money guys were old and white and Obama was not quite so old and, more importantly, black. Our first black president—obviously that would be a scary thought for racist right wingers. People hadn’t gotten started on him supposedly being a Muslim just yet—they were too busy commenting on his Christian minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, probably. But, what they could do was poke at his birth. His opponent, McCain was born in Panama, technically US soil at the time, so while his birth was maybe a little iffy compared to previous candidates, he was fine… plus, bonus, he was white. Gotta love that

But, Obama. He was born in one of our fringe states; actually, Hawaii wasn’t even officially a state yet, so that just makes it a little more suspicious. But, still, no fake Kenyan birth certificate had shown up yet. That Indonesian school application hadn’t even shown up yet, and already people were questioning whether or not Obama was born in America… or more importantly, if he was “American.” His ideology certainly had a hand here, as conservatives are so very afraid of socialists and communists and Marxist, so afraid that they can rarely tell the difference between the three. Here was this guy who didn’t look right for the job he was applying for, and who was sounding even more left than his fellow Democrats. Not to mention that name (a little too close to both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein for comfort). What to do?

Lynching him was probably an option before he was running for President, but you lynch a Presidential candidate and the liberal authorities are sure to crack down and throw you in prison if they don’t just shoot you on sight, ‘cause we all know its liberal police that are the most triggerhappy

Anyway, no fake Kenyan birth certificate yet meant there was really only one fuel that would lead anyone to question Obama’s Americanness: hatred. Well, hatred and fear. And, we Americans are so good at fear. It’s driven numerous “scares” as new waves of immigrants came to our shores. It fueled the Cold War. It’s fueled the War on Terror. And, now it’s fueled the War on Obama

And, hatred is self perpetuating. You hate Obama then you hear a speech of his, all you hear is self-serving liberal bullshit; of course, on the other side, you like Obama and all you hear is hope and change and maybe some promise of release from the grips of the Right. After a while, if you’re able, you get sick of both sides and it’s a lot of the same rhetoric you hear from any President... well, any liberal President, anyway, plus the all-American extension of war, even if not to the proper cheerleading level. He wants to get healthcare to millions who don’t have it, when medical bills are said to be the biggest reason people go into debt and our economy’s shit, but it’s socialist and we ain’t havin any of that commie bullshit in this country, no sir

It’s pro guns, pro war, anti universal healthcare, anti abortion and all the other right wing extremes we’ve got in America or obviously YOU ARE NOT POSSIBLY AMERICAN

Well, here’s what I have to say to that: FUCK YOU, you ignorant, racist pigs. Get the fuck over your paranoia and move the fuck on

cultural artifact speech - "a fake, real tree"

Christmas season, 2007, Seattle resident Art Conrad, fed up with the commercialization of Christmas, erects Santa-on-the-cross in his yard to protest.

Ten years earlier, Robert Cenedella paints Santa on a crucifix. In Catholics decry crucified Santa, Bangor Daily News, 23 December 1997, Cenedella says, he was not responsible for replacing Christ with Santa Claus. You can point the finger at capitalism.

Afterall, Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big eastern syndicate, ya know, as Lucy Van Pelt says in the 1965 classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

In the special, Lucy gets Charlie, depressed by the commercialization of Christmas, to direct the school play. When it’s time to get a tree, Lucy suggests he get a great big shiny aluminum Christmas tree, the biggest aluminum tree you can find. He instead finds a pathetic, real tree, prompting Linus to ask, do they still make wooden Christmas trees?

Today I will be talking about that tree, what it was, what it has become, and why.

First, let’s look at that tree, and how the Christmas special was conceived.

As Robert Wilonsky recounts in Bless the Blockhead, Dallas Observer, 7 December 2000, given the task of making a Christmas special for Coca-Cola, Charles Schulz told his producer, I want this show to express what I think is the true meaning of Christmas.

According to Joseph B Perry in Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday, Journal of Social History, Fall 2002, once a year, hegemonic American institutions, including church, state, the media, and commercial interests, line up to produce a discourse about what Christmas means.

Schulz thought about what was the opposite of the true meaning of Christmas and that was commercialism.

As Charlie Brown says, I won’t let all this commercialism ruin my Christmas. And neither would Schulz. He made something that decries commercialism, ultimately, in favor of a lesson about goodness, when the children get together, decorate Charlie’s sad little tree and dance around it.

Of course, a Herald Bulletin editorial, 9 December 2009, says in one of the great ironies, that year’s airing of the show was edited so ABC could fit in four blocks of advertising, which overcommercialized a show whose theme was overcommercialization.

This brings me to how that tree was transformed from an innocent symbol of something real to a commodity.

According to Squidoo.com’s History of the Christmas Tree, 1950s America saw the advent of the first artificial Christmas trees. This event, it says, was celebrated by Charles M. Schulz’ famous fable about the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Except, his fable didn’t celebrate the artificial tree. While Lucy wanted one, Charlie’s choice of a real tree instead is what is celebrated.

Perhaps the maker’s of this à are readers of Squidoo.

From the ad text: Want to celebrate the spirit of the Charlie Brown Christmas special? Now you can buy a replica of Charlie Brown’s forlorn little tree that’s machine calibrated to be imperfect.

slowchristmas.org’s review argues: the notion that you can celebrate the spirit of A Charlie Brown Christmas by buying a replica of the imperfect, non-commercial tree that Charlie rescues from the aluminum tree lot is, frankly, nuts. What about buying a cheap knockoff made to mimic the imperfections of the natural world says goodwill toward men and love for the rough majestic beauty of conifers in winter?

But, how did it come to this? According to Leonard Peikoff in Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial, Miami Herald, 23 December 1996, life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate—and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate.

Annie Leonard says, in The Story of Stuff, we seek to meet our emotional and social needs through shopping, a nearly sacred rite in the United States. In fact, in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy President Bush told us to hang out ‘America is open for business’ signs and keep shopping.

Every year, Black Friday to Christmas, we do just that—we shop and we shop. As Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, you can start to see what Art Conrad and Robert Cenedella were getting at. Christmas isn’t about Jesus anymore but about Santa Claus, about buying and getting gifts.

Today, we’ve taken a look at the conception of A Charlie Brown Christmas, we’ve looked at Charlie’s tree and how it turned into this. Finally, we’ve seen why.

The conflict between religion and commercialism goes on. As Joel Waldfogel describes in Scroogenomics: Pope Benedikt XVI chided the increased commercialism surrounding Christmas but Bill O’Reilly and the American Family Association have no quarrel with commercialism in Christmas. Their problem is that religion—Jesus in particular—is absent from the mall.

Godweb.org’s They Tried to Outlaw Christmas suggests that at its best the spirit of Christmas is a mirror in which we see reflected the very best that life can be. We see ourselves moved by generosity, inspired by hope.

We keep coming back to Charlie Brown. Afterall, as Charles Schulz says in Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaels, there will always be a market for innocence in this country… regardless of how far down the capitalist rabbit hole we go—I would add—or perhaps because of it.