It may be cold out there, but this is fake » « Minor Christian nightmare

The Christmas season is officially here

The War on Christmas is heating up, I guess.

This was an incredibly stupid act. It accomplishes nothing, advances no cause, sends no useful message. All it does is fuel the persecution complex of conservatives.

“I don’t want to hear anything about how radical some of you believe republicans to be when there are lunatics running around New York City setting Fox News Christmas tree on fire,” tweeted conservative commentator Meghan McCain, who has frequently appeared on the cable channel.

So the Republican assault on democracy, the poisoning of minds all across the country, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans by disease, the censorship of history, generations of discrimination…all that is to be swept under the rug because one guy set a fake Christmas tree on fire? A man has been charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and arson for it, which is entirely appropriate, and he’s going to get the book thrown at him, as you might assume. If only we could charge the entire Republican party, or at least Fox News, for the crimes against civilization they have perpetrated.

The one person dumber than the idiot who lit a tree on fire might just be Meghan McCain.

It may be cold out there, but this is fake » « Minor Christian nightmare

Comments

  1. hemidactylus says

    Fox News itself has been stoking a dumpster fire for years. Who will be charged for that societal arson?

  2. Susan Montgomery says

    Finally coming around to the idea that senseless provocation is useless at best and counterproductive at worst?

    Better late than never.

  3. Akira MacKenzie says

    So the Republican assault on democracy, the poisoning of minds all across the country, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans by disease, the censorship of history, generations of discrimination…all that is to be swept under the rug because one guy set a fake Christmas tree on fire?

    Score another one for the first amendment and the end of media gatekeepers! /s

  4. says

    “When we walk in at 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning, weekdays, to go to work, the music is so orchestral and so dramatic and so big, it just puts you in the Christmas spirit,” he (Doecy) said.

    Maybe he was just sick of hearing X-mas music at 3AM? Seriously, does New Your have a noise ordinance?

  5. R. L. Foster says

    I wouldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t urge anyone to do it, but, that said, I do understand the motivation. After years of being the subject of Fox’s figurative firebombs I can see how someone might see the need to fight fire with fire. But, as you say, it is counterproductive. You just know that Fox’s writers will craft scripts that portray secularists and non-believers as radical arsonists out to ruin their capitalistic holiday.

  7. says

    There is an insurance company in my little home town of Van Wert that used to have a beautiful Fur tree in their front entrance way. It had to be 50 feet tall. At some point someone cut it down. I always figured that someone who got screwed by the insurance company did it. I assumed that it bothered the people who owned the company, but it really harmed everybody who lived there and who loved to look at it.

  8. larpar says

    Not condoning this, but with all the copper wires and plastics on the tree, I bet the flames had some really cool colors.

  9. says

    Latest news is that the perpetrator is a homeless, mentally ill K2 smoker. So no political motive, just an unfortunate man with terrible problems. Don’t overinterpret, and have empathy for the guy.

  11. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 6

    I doubt it. The punishment for the charges are nothing to sneeze at. I don’t think they could find a willing fall guy to do this unless they offered some serious compensation.

  12. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 9

    So no political motive…

    Oh! Trust me, they’ll make one up. Either the arsonist is a Christianity-hating dope-smoking follower of BLM and Antifa, or the fact that this person was allowed to walk the streets is inductive of the degenerate, permissive society the left has supposedly created.

  14. says

    And, naturally, we assume this homeless guy was the one who did it (*) because tYPD has such a good track record on arresting the right people.

    (*) (i.e., assuming it was a Thing That Was Done as opposed to, say, the lights getting hot and catching fire spontaneously)

  15. unclefrogy says

    @13
    you put me in mind a remembrance of ‘Red Skelton doing a skit on that very theme

  16. raven says

    The War on Xmas is definitely on this year.

    I’m meeting up with my elite combat unit in a few days.
    We always go out to lunch and then do some shopping.
    Didn’t do it last year because of the pandemic but this year we are all heavily armed with vaccinations, masks, and the magic incantation “Happy Holidays” , so why not?

  17. crimsonsage says

    As always in the bourgeois state damage to things is of infinite greater importance than damage to people. The fact that shelters are overflowing and food pantries are empty preturbs the ruling class not even a bit. Break a window of some Corp or set fire to a Christmas tree though and it means complete anarchy.

  19. Walter Solomon says

    Should’ve had a Festivus Pole installed instead a tree; aluminum poles aren’t flammable.

    Oh, fuck Fox Noise.

  20. Alverant says

    Even the cops are saying it’s not politically motivated. It’s not like that time someone knocked over a menorah because it was taller than a tree. Until there’s video of the guy doing it, we should keep in mind this could have been an accident from miswiring.

  21. bcw bcw says

    Apparently the homeless guy was still in the tree when arrested so the case against him is pretty strong. Fire still spread in the tree but was put out before extending elsewhere.

  22. says

    AndrewD @ #6:

    Reichstag fire anyone?

    The evidence, as presented in Robert J. Evans’ 2020 The Hitler Conspiracies, strongly suggests that the Reichstag fire was set by van der Lubbe acting on his own. Of course, the Nazis exploited it and seized more power, as he indicates, “on the basis of a conspiracy theory” – that it was the first act in a Communist takeover.

    (I do have problems with this chapter, but they don’t except in one instance relate directly to the evidence that it wasn’t a Nazi false flag. Anyway, here’s an earlier version of the chapter from 2014 in LRB.)

  23. hemidactylus says

    How much a role has the Fox News conservative agenda set by the evil souls of room temperature corpse Roger Ailes and his hellfire suffering companion Rush Limbaugh played in this homeless person or others like him finding themselves where they are at in life? He may have accidentally made a symbolically meaningful mistake. The psychopathic network will spin the event to their own ends though.

    They should reboot The Prophecy with the angels fighting over the evil souls of Ailes and Limbaugh.

  26. kayf says

    If you asked Chaplin to parody the Reichstag fire this is exactly what he’s have done. It even has the tramp

  27. kayf says

    If you asked Chaplin to parody the Reichstag fire this is exactly what he’s have done. It even has the tramp.

  28. stroppy says

    Late night talk.

    Trevor Noah

    “It could be an accident, could be arson, could be Santifa!”

    …
    Stephen Colbert responding to Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt saying that their tree represented Christmas and Hanukkah:

    “I’m gonna go out on a burning limb and say this is not about Hanukkah,…On the other hand, maybe it is about Hanukkah, because I have a feeling that Fox will miraculously make this story last for eight days.”

    …
    Jimmy Kimmel (Fox News Christmas tree wasn’t even really a tree.)

    “This is a hollow structure that sort of resembles a tree, in the same way Tucker Carlson is a hollow structure that sort of resembles a human.”

    …
    CNN rips Fox