Stealing Christmas

If you believe the conservative media, a war began in the early weeks of December. It was a war, they said, led by liberals -- secular humanists all, they warned us in dark, ominous tones -- against Christmas.

It was a war waged in their imaginations, focused on a few anecdotal examples of people acting without any apparent malice towards Christianity -- a high school principal who canceled a planned performance of A Christmas Carol because, contrary to school rules, students would have been charged to see it; Target not allowing the Salvation Army to collect money outside it stores, supposedly because it was faith-based, though in reality it allowed no organizations to do so -- and centered around something so innocuous as to be laughable. Liberals, they said, were forcing the American public to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" in a move calculated to end all religious belief in this country.

Unfortunately, it was a theme quickly picked up by the conservative media's echo chamber. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly took his megalomania to new heights, stepping out of his "no-spin zone" long enough to declare that "nobody sticks up for Christmas except me." On his radio show, he told Jews that "if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel." More respectable news outlets, of late too budget-conscious and lazy to seek out real stories, picked up the ball and ran. The Wall Street Journal ran four separate pieces touching on the controversy in its Dec. 24 issue. O'Reilly, the Journal and the other media figures commenting on the matter were all unwilling to note that it was not actual religion being "threatened," but the secular expression of it.

This manufactured controversy is but one example in a larger and more disturbing trend. Increasingly, a vocal minority's evangelical Christian views are being shoved down the majority of Americans' throats at the expense of our freedom to see, say and hear what we want.

After last year's election, we were told that we would feel an increasing pressure from President Bush's evangelical base, which, the media incorrectly told us, had been responsible for his victory. The same exit poll numbers which proved so unreliable in predicting a victor were cited: of the people who had voted for President Bush, 22 percent of them had identified "moral values" as their reason. Virtually no one admitted the fact that it was less than the number of people who have pointed to "moral values" as their motivating force in past elections.

Only in the world of conservative media can the Christian right have it both ways. On the one hand, they cry persecution. On the other, they revel in their control of the presidency, Congress and, increasingly, entertainment and news.

That control was never more evident than when, shortly after the election, Congress -- and make no mistake, Democrats are most assuredly willing to join their Republican colleagues in selling our freedom in exchange for some limited political gain -- held a hearing on the potentially addictive effects of pornography. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, an activist for the conservative Family Institute of Connecticut and an adviser to gay-conversion organization Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality declared, according to transcripts, that pornography "does what heroin can't do, in effect." Satinover has done no research in or writing on pornography. Also testifying was Judith Reisman, a similarly unqualified activist who, as The New Yorker reported, believes that the Nazi Party and the Holocaust sprung from "the German homosexual movement."

To be sure, pornography is not mainstream speech. But there is an unmistakable climate of fear which has descended over media as a whole. Sixty-five ABC affiliates, fearing the recent increase in viewer complaints and record, often-arbitrary FCC obscenity fines, canceled plans to show realistically violent Oscar-winning movie Saving Private Ryan on Veteran's Day though it had run complaint-free in previous years.

It was only later that the truth came out. Of the 240,000 indecency complaints which FCC Chairman Michael Powell, whose agenda is similar to that of the evangelical organizations, boasted of receiving in 2003, 99.8 percent came from the Parents Television Council's form letters. Out of the mere 159 complaints it took for Fox's "Married by America" to earn a record $1.2 million fine, only three were from distinct individuals.

That's the heart of the matter. A minority is working overtime in the interest of robbing the rest of us of our freedoms. If the majority doesn't stand up and do something soon, they will be gone before we realize it.

Alex Koppelman is a senior individualized major in the College from Baltimore. Rock the Casbah appears on Thursdays.

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