The Dastardly IOZ on the underlying tension between the Free Market apostle wing of the GOP and its band of useful religidiots religuloids*. In particular, IOZ discusses the recent attempt by conservatives to scapegoat the financial crisis on the fact that Happy Holidays has replaced Merry Christmas by mandate of the atheists and mult-culti kids:
It takes no particular perspicacity to note that our holidays-without-the-holy came about not through the secularizing efforts of “Northerners and atheists,” the gangs of post-doctoral post-modernists slavering to gnaw on the soft edges of Christendom, but through the commercializing efforts of the various and sundry pillars, columns, flutes, and scrolls of American state capitalism. The gradual erosion of “Merry Christmas” in favor of “Happy Holidays” doesn’t mark a moral retreat in the face of religious multiculturalism or anti-Christian laïcité. It marks the commerce-driven extension of a shopping season, one that now extends from before Halloween to the post-New Year sales. “Happy Holidays” isn’t culturally inclusive; it’s commercially inclusive.
Kind of reminds me of the high moral dudgeon masters railing about the decay of good old fashioned values on Fox News (and in other Rupert outlets) while Fox Broadcasting (and other Rupert outlets) pushes the envelope in terms of trashy, salacious and debauched programming. Because, you know, sex sells and the infallible prerogative of the free market is sacrosanct. Bigger than Jesus.
But that doesn’t mean that the same purveyors of sex and violence in the name of the almight dollar can’t blame the sex and violence they use on the libertine liberals. Hell, if Fox News’ ratings are any indicator**, the blame game itself is a marketable commodity.
Nice racket if you can keep the natives in the dark in perpetuity: Sell your wares with scantily clad women, then sell your news product by blaming your marketing techniques on the socialst enemies of the Free Market. Who want to make the Baby Jesus cry by giving poor American health insurance.
Round and round it goes.
(**though there are chinks in the armor of late)
November 25, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Since the Great Google finds no use of it, I propose religuloids.
November 25, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Fuckhead Grover Norquist was on CNBC today blaming the current financial meltdown on the election of a Dem congress in 2006. It was so preposterous that Krystia “How’s My Hair” Freeland of the Financial Times kicked his ass while the CNBC muppets mocked him.
As a brand new addition to the unemployment statistics, it gave me bitter comfort.
November 25, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I don’t want any ‘poor American health insurance,’ thank you very much. Also, I think we should replace ‘Happy Holidays’ with this:
http://www.cthulhulives.org/solsticecarol.html
November 25, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Look, I’ll say “Merry Christmas” and “Praise Be The Baby Jesus” if it’ll keep these whiny, perpetually kvetching fucktards quiet for just one Christmas season. Personally, I’ll miss the eminently useful “Happy Holidays”, since that always covered all the bases, even if you only want to include the Christian ones, but whatever. Free me from these simpering professional victims, no matter what it takes.
November 25, 2008 at 8:19 pm
io Saturnalia!
If we don’t shop and spend this year enough money that we don’t have, Xmas will die.
Also, rumor has it that Somalian pirates hijacked an entire tanker of Tickle-Me Elmoes and BRATS.
Jesus is PISSED.
“This time it’s personal,” he told me as he climbed in Santa’s sleigh to ride shotgun on a drive-by.
November 25, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Lots of bathtubs are plenty large to drown Grover in. Let’s get Kwanzaa-bot on it.
November 25, 2008 at 8:38 pm
All I wanr for Xmas is Ann Coulter’s hot shot.
Well, actually, no. But I’d love to take a Percocet and smoke some ganj and watch the video.
“‘Harder!’ she begged, ‘Harder!! Tell me what you think of Chomsky!’
‘I..think..he’s..brill..iant..but..I..don’t really agree with much of his stance on Israel, and–’
‘You’re slowing down!’ she snapped. ‘DON’T SLOW DOWN!’”
Until the bondage scenes with her and Palin come out, it’ll do.
November 26, 2008 at 2:29 am
Someone should show Grover that in light of Katrina, the drowning metaphor was in extremely bad taste.
November 26, 2008 at 7:46 am
They learned it all from the junk food/diet food scams.
November 26, 2008 at 8:32 am
So true. The disgusting pervert O’Reilly railed about those photos of Myley Cyrus in Vanity Fair while showing them throughout the rant.
His war on the War on Christmas began with Macy’s in NYC. Merry Christmas, Mrs. Goldstein!
November 26, 2008 at 8:45 am
And here I was thinking that, by Grover, you meant cute lovable furry little monster, G-r-r-over.
Fucking Xmas killers.
As for Mr. Norquist: what parents with any sense of humanity would name their child Grover Norquist? With a name like that, he can’t help it. Water-tubbing would be a blessing.
‘The last thing I saw as I faded away was a rubber duckie peering at me curiously through the unfocused water.’
November 26, 2008 at 10:53 am
The Great Google is really fast. It now finds one use of religuloids.
November 26, 2008 at 4:08 pm
“Dudgeon Master’s Guide”
This is why I get up in the morning.
Early afternoon, anyway.
November 26, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Important, thoroughly well-researched, ground-breaking excerpt from my upcoming book, Stalin Klaus: a Secret History of the Elfen Left:
Roman culture was a kind of Ellis Island of the Gods, immigrating the ancient gods of their neighbors into the modern ken, often corrupting the good name of a perfectly good theos into a “Theo”. Thus Zeus became Jove, and Zrvan Akarana became Saturn, as theogony gave way to neology.
There is more here than scholastic word games. The neologistic theo-jizms of divine nomenclature have served the politics of empire handily, from ancient tribal theocracy on through the divine right of kings (a right usually expressed as the power of kings to be right even or especially when they were wrong), to the modern American’s pledge of allegiance to “One nation under God”. This may help to explain how, for example, the old Grecian name, Theodore, meaning ‘gift of God’, became the Teutonic name, Theodoric, meaning ‘ruler of the people’, eventually becoming today’s Theodore, meaning ‘god of TV characters based upon rodents’. (See: Theodore Cleaver of Leave It To Beaver and Theodore Seville of Alvin & The Chipmunks.)
Anyway, it is quite clear that, originally, December 25th had nothing to do with Christ’s actual birthdate, which is unknown to current history. December 25th as J.C.’s birthdate is strictly a mythopolitical borrowing. For that matter, Saturnalia was not entirely nor originally Saturn’s festival. The earlier Greeks paid tribute during solstice to Cronus, big daddy of all their earthly deities and father, in fact, of Zeus (or Jove or Jupiter or, perhaps, Theodore, Simon and Alvin, Holy Trinity of the ancient Monks of Chip).
Cross-culturally associated with Saturn, Cronus was falsely identified by mythologians as the father of time. “Falsely identified”, says my copy of the 1947 Encyclopaedia Britannica. A teste paternity suit which, we shall see, was resolved only by the removal of its two key witnesses.
Associated with agriculture, Cronus was known for swallowing His children and, for some reason, not much worshipped. Cronus was represented by the image of an old man carrying a sickle and still seems to hang on in our winter festivities as Father Time (apparently He wasn’t totally successful in contesting that temporal paternity suit). He has become the Grim Reaper, traditional New Year’s master of ceremonies, carrying the sickle which represents not only the hoped-for harvest and ultimate triumph of Death but also the curved sword with which He removed His father’s testicles at the request of His mother, Ge or Gaea (Earth), who was titanically tired of being kept barefoot and pregnant. (Thus resolving the paternity suit; “testicles” is a Latin word meaning “little witnesses”.) EB’47 states that “among Her offspring by Uranus”(Her now-neutered husband) “were the Cyclopes, the Hundred-Handed Ones[the Hecatoncheires] and the Titans, along with five sea-deities by Her other husband, Pontus, the sea-god”… she’d had enough.
To clarify this trailer park mytholineage: Cronus was the avenging son who sliced the family jewels; Uranus was His daddy; Gaea was Cronus’s overbred mother. Ancient mythology often degenerates into a senile evocation of an antebellum Mississippi plantationer’s family tree (see: McCain, John). Modern Christianity has clarified divine lineage for the most part, shuffling the whole mess into poor Mary’s lap with the Immaculate Conception (or, as the Babylonians termed it: ‘Kindasorta Didbutdidn’t’).
Uranus was dethroned by the very same avenging son who detesticalized Him, and currently lives out of state, about 1,800,000,000 miles from Sol. Having let Himself grow soft, He is now an immense gasbag some 32,00 miles wide, a planetary couch potato whose rotational axis lounges horizontally (as opposed to all the other planets’ ‘upright’ position of a north /south rotational axis).
Cronus’s daddy Uranus may have been an old hillbilly peckerwood but Cronus was even worse than His old man. Attempting to evade a prophecy stating that one of His offspring would dethrone Him, Cronus ate His offspring at birth. I remind you here that, to Cronus, dethronement was synonymous with visceral demasculation. Of course, if He had only applied His sickle to His own ‘little witnesses’, He could have circumvented the prophecy altogether. Apparently the gods too have difficulty seeing past the ends of their totem poles. Either way, Cronus was more than a little insecure about His masculinity. His wife, Rhea, was His sister before Their marriage. (One begins to see the difficulty of establishing paternity short of eliminating witnesses.) Rhea tricked Him at last by substituting a stone in a blanket in place of Their newborn, Zeus. A palate accustomed to the tender flesh of one’s children would not, of course, be fooled by such crude fare. Suffering indigestion, Cronus hurled and spewed mighty chunks. Gods do not merely vomit. They hurl, titanically, upchucking great volcanic cuds of primaeval nausea. In so doing, old Cronus inadvertently disgorged his previously cannibalized children. And you think you have a hard time raising your kids, or explaining why Mom’s third husband is younger than your big sister…
November 26, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I think this is correct. I remember from early childhood, raised in what I gradually learned was a pretty anti-consumerist hard-left family hidden in the sunbelt suburbs of the 1990s, that Happy Holidays was not what we should be saying. The word was a tendril of the Grocery Store and the Hallmark Channel. It was not what I should say as a precocious child interested in History and Geography. Instead we should say Christmas, which was an ancient holiday, celebrated by our great-grandparents in the Old World…
November 27, 2008 at 1:04 am
I’m pretty sure that, “The neologistic theo-jizms of divine nomenclature”, is the name of the unreleased Genesis E.P. wrongly labeled, “Spot the Pigeon.”
If I tell my Nana that her beliefs are just misappropriated Sumerian, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian beliefs during the Holidays I’d seem like a real Black Jack. I like to pass around select episodes of “Nova” and “The God Who Wasn’t There” but it’s often noted that I was funny before I became so shrill.
November 27, 2008 at 1:07 am
Instead of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays I usually just say, “Ahhhh Fuck You! Barack Obama is President now Bitch!” In a very merry, jolly way of course.
November 27, 2008 at 2:07 am
More long comments that I don’t care to read (moderate {i.e. bring to middle} comments I don’t care to read), point is; Dontcha care dontcha no…
Fairness doctrine NOW!
WOW!
November 27, 2008 at 2:19 am
Forgive me if I misqoute; “…Circumventinal.?.?.?.”
Await MY moderation. Or would you prefer some since?
I am what U am…
November 27, 2008 at 3:59 am
It’s what you’d call a religusoidal tirade…
If this were Xmas Eve, it would be wrapped in the Shroud of Turin tied with glittering Cthulhuian tentacles.
November 27, 2008 at 4:24 am
Also Jon Favreau a 26-27 year-old who gave a good speech at Holy Cross writes what Barack Obama says.
You would think Favreau would be one of the most famous people in the world, that Obama has integral support that is so ego-free, a political infrastructure that is not only willing to remain anonymous and forgoing the fame and fortune that comes with being public, at least not pointedly creating their own “brand” like Noonan, Rove, Frum, Carville, etc.
Obama’s group seems ego free, and that’s his advantage. So far his appointments seem dedicated to getting shit done, rather then political maneuvering. With a dedication to the Democratic Platform and a means to an ends esthetic, this group have dedicated their lives to their individual fields. Hell, they’ve been vetted so much I can’t believe half of them are Earthlings. This is a great benefit to Obama, and he’s done a very thoughtful job of picking his cabinet. He has a report with Austan Goolsby who must be a great communicator and playground fighter. There is freedom in advisory roles that secretaries who must execute a department. I rather think the special advisor jobs by any other name, is one of the best jobs you could ever have. No restraints, direct access, little accountability. These are the people who run the country.
November 27, 2008 at 6:54 am
I gotta admit, I was put off when Pittsburgh started doing Sparkle Season.
Happy Holidays is fine, as is Merry Christmas, Happy Ḥanukkah, or Happy Newtonmas, but when you start coming up with fake holidays dedicated to spending in order to assuage your guilt, just give it up.
November 27, 2008 at 9:25 am
During solsticial Saturnalia, a temporary Golden Age was enacted. (It is only fair to mention that Cronus’s reign was also considered a Golden Age for mankind – if not for His kids.) Again quoting EB’47 :
“All business, public and private, was at a standstill; schools were closed, executions and military operations did not take place, slaves were temporarily free, feasting with and even waited on by their masters and saying what they chose. All and sundry were greeted with ‘io Saturnalia’ (or ‘yo Saturn!’), and presents were freely exchanged, the traditional ones being wax candles and little clay dolls.
“Concerning those quaint gifts, the antiquaries had a story telling that an old prophecy bade the earliest inhabitants of Latium send lights to Saturn and heads to Pluto”…”that they interpreted this as meaning human sacrifices, but that Hercules advised them to use lights and not human heads” (apparently the words for ‘head’ and ‘light’ were separated only by a twist of pronunciative inflection).
What can we make of gifts of luminous decapitations to Pluto (the god of Hades) and light to Saturnus? On such Dark Nights, candles would be appropriate, of course, but “little clay dolls”? If candles replaced heads, what would dolls replace? Specifically little clay ones? Baked in ovens? Little terra cotta gingerbread people? The suggestions are grisly but the truth is unknown to me today and I have a point to make before I finish this paragraph.
I have a theory regarding gifts of candles and little clay dolls. May I suggest that this marks the start of the tradition of senseless Christmas gifts?
One can envision false gratitude as the father of all irrational gift-giving, observing how one display of false enthusiasm (“I LOVE it!”) begets more of the same. Eventually, entire industries would be built around the mandatory giving of the unnecessary. Greeting cards, pet rocks, fruitcakes, Tickle-Me Elmoes… no wonder Cronus ate His kids.
November 27, 2008 at 10:49 am
The wonder, the horror, the wonder, the horror:
Xmas IS the Tool of the Metatransformatron
The schematics of the Transforming Metatron:
Cube This, Hopeless Earthlings!
The final ten seconds provide what we all want in a goofy online family home video: a succinct deconstruction.
November 28, 2008 at 8:01 am
As for me, I think we have had enough neolo-jism goin’ on. Where’s Doughpants SquareBon when you need him?
And right about now the Dudgeon Masters should start rolling their dice for Wandering Monsters of the Id.
November 28, 2008 at 11:03 am
Porn & immoral shows on the TeeVee are the fault of liberals! Since they don’t make it illegal for us to show those money-making shows, society is going to hell in a handbasket!
November 28, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Personally I’d like to see great Dragon Porn.
November 28, 2008 at 3:10 pm
How could I possibly have missed the Dudgeon Master’s Guide! Okay, okay, I’ve missed out on quite a few since the Gygax & Arneson 1st ed., but still.
Roll the percentile dice! zot-zot! A balrog!
It looks just like O’Reilly, and is wielding a +8 Falafel of Harassment! Run or fight?
Okay, your mage is starting to cast a spell, but the O’Reilly has initiative…
Ayyyiiieee! The O’Reilly casts a “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! CUT HIS MIC!” on your mage!
Okay, your cleric zaps O’Reilly with his wand of Obanation! Roll for it…A HIT! Lessee, that’s 20D8.. 83 points! The balrog is banished to the nether regions of the fauxosphere.
All gain 200 experience points, as you descend to level 2009..
November 28, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Nice to see folks enjoying their Thanksgiving holidays in traditional pastimes. There’s ookies and espresso in the great hall!
November 28, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Snarki,
I put my new level skills into Kwnowledge (Wingnut Lore).
November 29, 2008 at 10:50 am
Whew! That Jon Favreau thing threw me for a minute. “‘Crumford Lorak’ is Obama’s new speechwriter??!!!”.
You’d think with a handle like that there wouldn’t be two of ‘em.
November 30, 2008 at 8:36 am
“You’d think with a handle like that there wouldn’t be two of ‘em.”
It’s the neolo-jizm shortage.
December 1, 2008 at 8:37 am
The Lorak HITS! Ooooh 5d6+3, That’s gotta hurt.
December 1, 2008 at 8:43 am
I’m trying to think of a way to work the D&D angle into a stinging comment about how the Stillers (from IOZ’s town) beat the crap out of the illegal-video-less and Brady-less Pats, but I just can’t think of one. Too bad. Would’ve been funny, I’m sure.
December 1, 2008 at 9:18 am
Some Nat.Rev. types think ‘high dudgeon’ refers to player levels, although those among them who do carefully researched, um, research, note it’s medieval reference to a kind of wood used for dagger hilts.
The dagger being a kind of, you know, small sword. It’s use has specific instructions:
In that age, books offering instruction on the use of weapons prescribed that the dagger be held in the hand with the blade pointing from the heel of the hand, and used by making downward jabs.
This reference to centuries old etymology might resemble paleologism, but is really a reference to oleo-jizm.
December 1, 2008 at 10:59 am
Where can I get the Players Handbook?
December 1, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I lost mine. I kept it inside a vintage 1980 Hustler but my son found it and used the pictures to make a collage for his junior high Health and Hygiene class STD Awareness Report.
He swears he didn’t see no handbook.
December 1, 2008 at 1:35 pm
So when you are going all ‘high dudgeon’ with your bilbo, you’re basically doing it wrong? You’re acting like a feelthy little assassin and not like a warrior?
December 1, 2008 at 3:11 pm
The Loofah of O’Rielly is a lawful-evil artifact, whose powers include Confusion 1/day, Silence Microphone at will, and Detect Meal and Kind 3/day.
December 1, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Steve,
you forgot the Feeblemind at will, and Psionic blast 10/day.
December 2, 2008 at 3:37 am
I cannot wait for Barack Obama’s first inaugural address first entitled, “Don’t Call Me B.O.” but subsequently changed to, “You’re so fucking money USA, and you don’t even know it.” It will touch on the usual themes of Swing Dancing and NHL 95 on the Sega Genesis, Red Wings vs. Canucks, that sort of thing.
December 2, 2008 at 4:01 am
@ #3 of course by ‘poor’ you meant ‘sub-standard?’ Dumbass…
December 2, 2008 at 4:09 am
NEWSFLASH: Brown People attack Brown People (and us [CAPITALize that if you musn't...] perhaps a story about the Purple Dragon is in order?)
via: three weeks (months/days) later. WE WIN!!!
December 2, 2008 at 4:09 am
YAY!
December 2, 2008 at 8:03 am
Purle Pain
December 2, 2008 at 10:19 am
“Instead of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays I usually just say, “Ahhhh Fuck You! Barack Obama is President now Bitch!” In a very merry, jolly way of course.”
The Period of Officially Required pre-Solstice Dissent having been met, it is now official:
“Ahhhh Fuck You! Barack Obama is President now Bitch!”
Break out the glog, charge up the credit cards, and let’s roast us some third world children over this here Yule log!
I can’t wait for Doughbob to realize that isn’t a pillow in his Santa suit…
December 2, 2008 at 11:00 am
Nice racket if you can keep the natives in the dark in perpetuity: Sell your wares with scantily clad women, then sell your news product by blaming your marketing techniques on the socialst enemies of the Free Market.
Isn’t that the exact racket used by the Rev. Jonathan Whirley in the (comedy) movie version of Dragnet?
December 2, 2008 at 2:05 pm
That reminds me of a flow chart involving how Frank Zappa wrote new tunes, by reacting to the rantings of evangelists against his tunes about sleazy sex, after doing the sleazy sex and reporting on it in tunes.
It was a great positive feedback loop.
December 2, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I loved his song ‘Fuck Those Fucking Fuckers’.