The “Is Santa Clause white?” debate is an embarrassment for both sides.
I’m as right-wing as they come, but I grew up seeing non-white Santas on Christmas cards and in commercials — yes, it was the seventies — so I honestly don’t care about this “issue.”
What’s really disturbing?
On his Daily Show segment about the “controversy,” Jon Stewart made a particularly twisted “joke.”
Twisted, that is, because in patented progressive fashion, it turns the meaning of an ordinary yet important word completely inside out.
The far-left blogosphere and the MSM have gleefully high-fived Stewart’s segment, but they don’t tend to highlight his most insidious quip.
Probably because, as far as they’re concerned, he’s just stating received liberal wisdom.
Mocking Megyn Kelly’s statement that “just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change,” Stewart smirked, “Actually, I think that’s the official slogan of oppression.”
Yeah, no. Legislating “change” because some people “feel uncomfortable” is a good working definition of true oppression. He could always read about it in my book — helpfully titled The Tyranny of Nice — which features real-life examples of individuals who’ve been persecuted and prosecuted by the State because they hurt someone’s feelings.
As John O’Sullivan recently put it in National Review:
…there are consequences to forgetting truths. One consequence is that while we instinctively want to preserve the morals and manners of the Christian tradition, we cannot quite explain or defend them intellectually. So we find ourselves seeking more contemporary (i.e., in practice, secular) reasons for preserving them or, when they decay completely, inventing regulations to mimic them. When courtesy is abandoned, we invent speech codes, which are blunter in their impact and repress legitimate disagreement along with insults.
Stewart’s definition of “oppression” is just another way of saying, “Shut up, you right-wing peons.” It is, quite simply, a sentiment that’s toxic to the health of the body politic.
And, I imagine, college kids are printing it onto T-shirts as I type.
Sometimes, the only fact which gives me hope for America’s future is that, despite the hype, The Daily Show draws fewer viewers than its coarse, politically incorrect network rival, Tosh.0.
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