Didja see Jon Stewart taking on Fox News on the war on Christmas and Festivus and beer cans and Santa is white god damn it of course he is?
(Before I get to that though – how not to start a piece. Also how not to continue it and how not to end it. The sfgate piece on the subject:
Hide your kids, hide your wives because the War on Christmas is here and no ugly sweater or racial stereotype is safe.
Don’t do that. Don’t assume only men can read. Don’t assume you’re talking exclusively to men.)
Stewart shows a bit of the “discussion” between Bill “the Catholic League” Donohue and Shmuley Boteach and Dave Silverman. Stewart needs to have Dave on to talk about this nonsense. Stewart’s been a touch Fox Newsy about atheism himself in the past, so he needs to have Dave on.
Pull quote from Fox:
Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.
Eloquent.
Pedantry time, sorry.
Don’t assume only men have wives.
Oh come on. Do you seriously think that unthinking writer was talking to men and married lesbians? Don’t be schewpid. Anyone mindless enough to write “lock up your wives” is not mindful enough to be considering women married to women.
It’s actually a reference to a known Internet video in which someone named Antoine Dodson says,
“We have a rapist in Lincoln Park. He’s climbin’ in your windows, he snatches your people up trying to rape ‘em, so you all need to hide your kids, hide your wife and hide your husband, because they’re rapin’ anybody out here. You don’t have to come and confess that you did it. We’re lookin’ for you. We, we gonna find you. I’m lettin’ you know now. So you can run and tell that – homeboy. ”
So the unthinking writer wasn’t talking specifically to men, ze was referencing a video and omitting the husband bit (not a good thing to do, but not as bad, I’d say, as making up a phrase that excluded we womenfolk).
((Out-of-conversation note: This is my first time really commenting with a point to make, so…could you try to be a bit more nice in pointing out my errors? I don’t mean for you to not point them out, just…try to be gentle, yeah? I’m not very good at taking criticism at this point due to self-esteem issues. Sorry in advance, I guess.))
I should have said “reasonably well-known” instead of known. Urgh.
Yes, I will, sorry. I thought the rather brisk and concise way you put it was intended as slightly snide. Sorry.
Mind you, I still disagree. 🙂
It’s okay. I should have expanded more to make it sound not-snide.
And I wasn’t saying necessarily the author meant for it to apply to non-men married to women, but that you framing your criticism in such a way that it excludes non-men married to women is kind of problematic. That’s why I apologized for pedantry in the beginning of my post: it’s not that your overall message is wrong, it’s that your phrasing has a problem.
The comments at Mediaite make me want to move to Greenland.
I knew there had to be at least one more good one to be gotten out of this and drifted into sleep early this morning fixated on the word “white”. I wasn’t wrong: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=698938310124633&l=9eddd86134
This is the video Kitty was talking about. Probably the most famous of the “Autotune the News” YouTube series. They have a link to the original news report, as well.
Though I agree with you 100%, Ophelia. They omitted the “and hide your husband” part, which is what killed their attempt at a nearly-4-year-old pop culture reference… 😀
There’s more: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=698977416787389&l=90513f037f
And more: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=698983140120150&l=53b721bd59