Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

 A friend of mine recently took exception when I mocked people (mostly conservative) who tossed around the term "Cancel Culture." It seems in the opinions of many some (mostly conservative), it's a freedom of speech issue. Not really. And it's not a First Amendment issue either, when Facebook or Twitter cancels your account for praising white supremacists, or neo-fascists, or other right-wing dickheads. " Cancel Culture ," which, according to Wikipedia, was originally an outgrowth of the "MeToo" movement, (so not so much about speech as calling out behavior - specifically against women) has morphed now into the latest right-wing NewSpeak  term for "I'm being punished for expressing my opinion."  Dig a little deeper though and you'll find the issue is not so much about "free speech," as "consequence-free speech." I mean...if you are going to be an opinionated ass, at least have enough self-respect not to be a w...

The whole culture war over Christmas can be neatly illustrated by the running edit battles going on in the Wikipedia entry for " Christmas Tree " where one side writes about the pagan origins of the Christmas tree, and the other immediately edits them out. This has been going on for weeks . Check for all the edits labeled for "Pre-Christian roots." This is a little like how Winston Smith spent his days in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Don't like the truth? Edit it. Then your truth is the truth. I came about this because I'd researched the history of the Christmas Tree and found reference to the pagan origins in Wikipedia, then went back a week later only to find them gone. The hand of God may be invisible but some of his/her bone-headed followers are leaving fingerprints behind.

For some years I worked in advertising. Among the many blots on my soul was the fact that I pimped Christmas and the Baby Jesus to sell worthless shit. Now I discover, thanks to Bill O'Reilly, I was doing the Lord's Work. Now that it's December, Fox News and its various reptilian talking heads are once again hard at work promoting the War On Christmas . Bill O'Reilly kicked off this holiday tradition a few years back. It's like the Right Wing's Charlie Brown Christmas -- they trot it out every year since they know it's a surefire ratings booster. It's most visible form is flogging various retailers who choose to say "Holiday Sale" instead of "Christmas Sale." This strikes me as odd. I have a hard time seeing how using the label "Christmas" as a marketing tie-in is promoting the beliefs of Christendom. If anything, it serves to further secularize a Holiday/HolyDay already weighted down with a vast collection of warmed over ...

The holidays are upon us. Actually they were upon us sometime before Halloween: Santa now mingles freely with Dracula and Naughty Nurse, and visions of sugar plums are replaced by 20 count bags of mini-Snickers bars. I'm bracing myself for our latest holiday tradition, the bombastic pronouncements about the " War on Christmas ." For the past several years, self-anointed protectors of Christmas  have been creating lists of which retailers are naughty or nice. This seems to boil down to who says "Holiday" in their advertising instead of "Christmas." On the Naughty list have been such Satanic organizations as Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, The Gap, Banana Republic, Home Depot. This year's Naughty and Nice list has been helpfully compiled by the American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi. You may recall the American Family Association , led by the Reverand Donald Wildmon, from their previous name, the National Federation for Decency . The...