In which Dan Savage attempts a Christmas-time review of Sarah Palin's new book

[villager]

some highlights:

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Turning the page...

Here's a picture of Sarah Palin's grandson—who for a time was the most famous fetus on the planet (2008, Republican National Convention)—and a quote:

"'All this for me? And I wasn't even very good!'

—My grandson, Tripp Easton Mitchell [Johnston], upon seeing the presents beneath the Christmas tree, 2012"

All this for me—and I wasn't even that good. Translate that into Latin and it could be on the Palin family's coat of arms.

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Page 5: Here I learn something I didn't know and, if I were Sarah Palin, something I wouldn't want anyone to know. But Sarah hustles this fact to the front of the book because she sure as hell wants us to know it: Sarah surprised Todd with a "nice, needed, powerful gun" for Christmas in 2012. It was a "small act of civil disobedience," Palin writes, prompted by "the anti-gun chatter coming from Washington."

What was inspiring that anti-gun chatter in Washington in December of 2012? Oh, right: Twenty children and six teachers were shot dead in their classrooms by a deranged asshole with a "powerful gun."

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Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly and Fox News and the Family Research Council and the woman who allegedly punched another woman outside Walmart earlier this week for saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas" managed to break me of the "merry Christmas" habit. I suspect I'm not alone. This constant bitching from the right about "happy holidays"—a perfectly lovely expression that embraces Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Pancha Ganapati, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Hanukkah, the Epiphany, Saint Nicholas's Day, Hogmanay, Twelfth Night, and Kwanzaa—has made one thing clear. Not that there is now, or ever was, a war on Christmas.

But that saying "merry Christmas" is an asshole move. Just as conservatives made patriotism toxic during the Vietnam War by conflating it with blind obedience to authority ("My country, right or wrong!&quot , modern conservatives have made "merry Christmas" toxic by associating it with Christian fundamentalism, religious intolerance, and the politics of imagined persecution.

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so much more at:



http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/good-grief-and-great-tits/Content?oid=18503580