A Pre-emptive Strike In The Christmas War: AFA's List Of "Anti-Christmas" Companies. Guess Who Made It!

Banana Republic is doomed. So is The Gap, L.L. Bean, Foot Looker, Office Depot, Old Navy, Radio Shack, Barnes & Noble and... Victoria's Secret!! They're all doomed to perdition by the American Family Association (spearheaded, of course, by the ever-righteous Bryan Fischer) because they've been deemed to be AGAINST "Christmas." (Their emphasis, not mine)


The AFA hardly waited until the first "Happy Holidays" after Thanksgiving was uttered to deem these retailers unfit to carry the "true" Christmas spirit. Like some angry neighbor in a property dispute, it has fired a warning shot over an imaginary fence, telling people that their wrath will be appeased sooner or later. Their "criteria" for "good"  "marginal" and "bad" retailers is supposedly based on "print media (newspaper inserts), broadcast media (radio/television), website and/or personal visits to the store." But a closer examination to the "naughty" list produces another criteria: "gay friendly."
For example, Old Navy launched a "gay-friendly" line of clothing for Gay Pride and teamed up with It Gets Better for a t-shirt promotion. Banana Republic and The Gap (all owned by Gap, Inc.) are all considered to be "gay friendly." So is Barnes and Noble. And we all know what Bryan Fischer thinks of Home Depot ("Homo Depot"). And with the exception of Walgreens, Best Buy and Macy's, the "nice" retailers aren't too overtly pro-gay. If they were, they wouldn't be given the Bryan Fischer/AFA stamp of Christmas approval.


So if you're gay-friendly and don't say "Merry Christmas" in your ads and to every man, woman, child, dog and cockroach that comes into the store, you're going to hell. Well, maybe YOU won't go to hell, but your company will, because the tone of the AFA's ongoing articles on the subject is a loud whisper: "boycott."


On the other hand, maybe you WILL go to hell... after standing in the unemployment line.


Who will be on THE LIST in any of the three columns is anyone's guess - depending upon who encounters "friendly" or "unfriendly" retailers and reports them to the AFA. Will the Scottsdale Gun Club be on it? Hard to say since it depends on who the guns are pointed at when they say "Merry Christmas."


OWNING CHRISTMAS


Each year, the "War on Christmas" brings up one salient point: who owns Christmas? The Christian Right hammers away at the CHRIST part of the holiday name as proof that they and only they can lay claim to it. And any misuse or omission is a sign of sacrilege or worse ... persecution. There will be a three-part series on the subject for OpEdNews readers within the coming weeks, but for now, we can safely say that the Christian Right refuses to regard the Spirit of Christmas as transcending the holiday: Christmas, in all its goodness and holiness and charity is theirs and theirs alone. Righteous arrogance rears its ugly head during the season, overshadowing the essence of humanity that the season tries to embody.


And speaking of bodies...Victoria's Secret DOES mention Christmas in its ad - just not in the convention way that Bryan Fischer wants (see below) because it also says Happy Hannukah and Kwanza and all those other sacrilegious things that the AFA doesn't want you to know about. 


While the link to the list is HERE, it's just too good to pass up reprinting it along with this article.
Here is the actual list updated as of 11/30 (from the AFA website)


AFA's 2011 listing of top retailers and how they recognize Christmas


Color Code:
GREEN: Company uses the term "Christmas" on a regular basis, we consider that company Christmas-friendly.

YELLOW: Company refers to Christmas infrequently, or in a single advertising medium, but not in others.
RED: Company may use "Christmas" sparingly in a single or unique product description, but as a company, does not recognize it.   

 List updated on 11-30-11

Companies FOR "Christmas"  AFA Online Store ACE Hardware Amazon.com Bass Pro Shops Bed Bath & Beyond Belk Best Buy Big Lots Books-A-Million Cabella's Collective Brands Costco CVS Pharmacy Dick's Sporting Goods Dilliards Dollar General Dollar Tree H.E.B. Stores HSN.com Hallmark Hancock Fabrics Harris Teeter Stores Hobby Lobby Home Shopping Network JC Penney JoAnn Fabrics & Crafts Stores Kmart Kohl's Kroger Lowe's Macy's Marshals Meijer Menard's Michael's Stores Neiman Marcus Nordstrom Office Max Petsmart Pier One Imports ProFlowers.com Publix QVC.com Rite Aid Sears Scheels Sporting Goods Super D Drug Stores Target TJ Maxx Toys R Us True Value Walgreens Wal-Mart/Sam's Club Zappos.com

Companies marginal on "Christmas"  1-800-Flowers.com Bath & Body Works Cooking.com Dollar Tree Hy-Vee Stores Limited Brands Safeway Starbucks UncommonGoods.com Whole Foods

Companies AGAINST "Christmas"  Banana Republic Barnes & Noble Family Dollar Foot Locker Gap Stores L.L. Bean Limited Brands Office Depot Old Navy Radio Shack Staples Supervalu Victoria's Secret

Can We Stop Laughing Now? GOP Hypocrisy Campaign Hits New High With Herman Cain and His Campaign Manager Mark Block

The stupidity goes on ...and on...and on... and on...

"No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life." - Herman Cain campaign spokeperson (who was presumably sober when he made the statement)

Thumbing your nose at the American public is extremely stupid if you're running for office, and the GOP presidential candidate lineup has been doing just that. 

The primary debates - if you can call them that - have brought out idiocies and ineptitudes to such a degree that the entire GOP looks to be populated with clowns. And not very good clowns either. Oh, they've made us laugh, but along with the laughter, they provoke resentment at being so oblivious to public sensibilities and intelligence. For example, did Rick Perry never think that someone would uncover his "n*ggerhead camp"?* Did Michele Bachmann never put two and two together when it came to one nellie husband running an unlicensed pray-away-the-gay clinic? True, these two candidates are fairly stupid to begin with, but to have their campaigns dole out the stupidity as if it were candy is an insult to Americans.


Then there's Herman Cain, who looks to be the dumbest of the dumb: a corporate Uncle Tom who has frequent lapses of memory and doesn't seem to know anything about countries east, west, north or south of Sandy Springs, Georgia. He's a would-be politician who relies on America's trust: a man who can turn around giant corporations can certainly help the country out of its economic woes, can't he?


The problem with the above idea: America is not a corporation to be trimmed and re-packaged: it's very diverse and has more goals than just making a profit.** It's team of workers has to multi-focus or whole segments of its population will suffer.


So now that fragile trust in Herman Cain has been overshadowed by his pride, his arrogance and ... his stupidity: as he saw opponents like Perry and Bachmann falter by not covering their lives up sufficiently, he should have taken stock of his own life and covered up the accusations of harassment or dealt with them head on. But now that Ginger White has come forth with allegations of a long term affair, dealing with it all has been rendered moot: it's all over but the spin from a campaign that was built on sheer hubris.


And the spin will continue to include inane comments like the one above. Bill Clinton, stop laughing now or you'll hurt yourself!


Mark Block, The Funniest Man In America


Herman Cain's campaign manager is Mark Block, a man whose ineptitude in managing Cain's campaign is matched only by his arrogance: he is the one person responsible for the awful "Libya interview" that Cain painfully plowed through, admitting lack of focus. He did not insist on a strategy session with the Milwaukee Sentinel outlining what topics could and could not be covered (which is normal in professional promotion and publicity), but instead threw Cain under the bus and, from all accounts, thought that the interview went well! He also went on to Sean Hannity's FOX news show claiming that the second harassment accuser, Karen Kraushaar, was in cahoots with POLITICO (not true).


For arguably the best laugh anyone can have over the disastrous Cain campaign, I've presented its most hilarious video below. It's talking points:


"Tomorrow, he's one day closer to the White House"- or an outhouse
"We will put "United" back in the United States of America" - united for what - pizza?
"We've run a campaign like no one's ever seen." - thank God for that!
"But then, America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain."- let's hope not!


Block then finishes by blowing a puff of cigarette smoke into America's face. Has SNL done a sketch on this insipid wreck yet?


So can we stop laughing now? Have we been insulted with ineptitude and mindlessness enough to get back to Mitt Romney's flip-flopping or Newt Gingrich's sudden compassion for illegal immigrants? For the sake of the country's health, can we refrain from the pathological laughter brought on by the likes of Cain and Block? 


Because this campaign is no longer a fun-filled pizza...


...it's toast.

* So prevalent is the American philosophy that politicians always have something to hide - especially sexually, porn king Larry Flynt is willing to pay $1 million to the person who proves that Rick Perry has had an extramarital affair - gay or straight. We're waiting.


**Or at least it's supposed to have more goals.

Yes, This Ad About Equality Says It All

Skeptical at first, when I saw so many people who lauded this as a wonderful, sightful ad on marriage equality, but it really DOES say it all, because it brings in all of life's emotions and doesn't sugar-coat same-sex relationships. The young man is stunning, but not in a drop-dead gorgeous way. He's funny and sensitive and, most of all ... 


LOVING.

Life Begins After Thanksgiving

Yes, it does. 


Life does not, as many think, come to a grinding halt after eating too much turkey. In fact, whether you eat turkey at all has nothing to do with your life's continuance: it's a fact that life continues. Especially after you eat something.


It continues...and continues. 


And so has mine. 


That's why I'm continuing to write.


Continuing to have faith in humanity.
Continuing to help people out of the morass of a Christian Right-dominated country.
Continuing to look for a job. Writing.  Because I want one. Because I need one. 


Really.


Actually, life begins each time we think it might likely end. It surprises us by continuing and in continuing from a moribund state, it begins anew. It's rather insidious that way, life is. 


But I'm not complaining: I love life as long as it gives me purpose, which is, right now, kicking the Christian Right's ass every second it breathes and makes precious life so miserable for everyone with its righteous arrogance. 


Ah, there's an apt phrase: righteous arrogance. It connotes total sin, or rather the cause of so much sin. It has been the cause of wars, genocide and suicide. It founded the Ku Klux Klan. It furrowed the Trail of Tears. It decimated Meso America. It caused a young man to leap from a bridge after his sexual encounter with another man was posted on YouTube.


It started Hell Houses. 


So I've begun, after Thanksgiving, to restore my crusade (ok, wrong word) against righteous arrogance and its perpetual perpetrator the Christian Right. Oh, I may get strident enough to call it the Christofascist Right, such is my abhorrence of the group, but I vow not to become so strident that I lose sight of my second goal: humor. For we are at war, the Christian Right and I, and I have chosen one of the best weapons of modern man: laughter. For as Mark Twain put it:

"Against the assault of laughter, 

nothing can stand."

Dumb and Dumber...and Dumbest: FOX News Creates America's Only Journalistic Black Hole

WE ALWAYS KNEW...

"Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

A scathing report by Fairleigh Dickinson University - a PublicMind Poll - discloses the fact that not only have FOX viewers been LESS informed about national and international events than other news viewers, but  they have also have been MADE less informed than others who do not even follow the news via broadcast "journalism." It seems that in its driving force to keep people misinformed - "fairly unbalanced" - FOX has actually made its viewers dumber.

A BENEFICIAL BLACK HOLE

Of course, for most of the politicians who frequent FOX, this may not be a bad thing: "analysts" like Mike Huckabee feel safer in their niches than they would be at, say MSNBC: at FOX, they're never really questioned nor are their "analyses" really scrutinized. 

FOX's jumble of misinformation and no information has actually been beneficial to some people: while the general public suffers from current affairs blindness, pundits, politicians and religious leaders of the Right have benefited. Overly supportive attitudes and softball interviews have been the boon to the likes of Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Ann Coulter. 

To be fair, it would be unwise for these same people to court, say, Anderson Cooper or Lawrence O'Donnell. Honest analysis with hardball questions are too tough for them unless, like Ann Coulter, one has an overabundance of self-esteem and thinks that there is no such thing as bad publicity. FOX always avoids the most detrimental subjects or frames them in the manner of an attack from the other side ("why do you think you were so viciously attacked about ____by____?"). 

Jon Stewart Was Right

So, let me tell you what's going on. So, two Sundays ago, I do an interview on Chris Wallace’s show, and along with some really salient, dynamic points that I made, I mentioned Fox News viewers were the most consistently misinformed viewers in every poll. PolitiFact took issue with that, and said I really shouldn't have said every poll. Just most. So, I accepted it, I then I brought up a 21 lie salute of PolitiFact Fox fact-checking. So I assume that Chris Wallace now begins the work of apologizing for Fox's many false and misleading statements. They’ll probably do a few per show and carry us into the 2014 midterms with a clear conscience.

UPDATE:

As is usual with FOX, there has been no response as to the FD report. 

Truly The Sign Of Senility: Pat Robertson and Mac N' Cheese

"It's A Black Thing"


Poor, deprived Pat Robertson: his mother never served him macaroni and cheese - ever. Then again, since it's a "black thing" the son of quintessential Dixiecrat father Senator Absolom Willis Robertson would have been shielded from such fare. 


The problem with chalking up his ignorance to senility is that he's been senile for the last 40 years. 


Go figure.

Using Prayer As Pepper Spray: How Cindy Jacobs and The Christian Right Hope To Wipe Out The Evil OWS Movement

Inflicting On People: Imprecatory Prayer, Lunatic Prophecy and a God-Awful Fashion Sense.

In light of recent developments in New York City as it relates to the Occupy Wall Street Movement—particularly the November 17 ‘Day of Action,’ which drew upwards of 30,000 protesters into the streets—we are calling believers nationwide to help raise up a wall of intercession for peace and safety in the streets of New York City.

I guess it's time we stopped laughing at Cindy "Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon" Jacobs, because this woman epitomizes the Christian Right's demonizing of the OWS movement. In a very real sense, Jacobs brings about the schism that has happened in America's Christianity concerning social justice: morally, you're either with the 99%, or the 1%; with the people who have sided with social justice or the people who abhor it. 

And there are Christians who are struggling in their support of OWS. Why? Probably because the movement is suspicious of most overt Christians these days. The face of American Christianity has too long been dominated by the likes of Focus On The Family, the Family Research Council and their political minions like Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann that Americans forget about progressive Christians and their advocacy of social justice. What America has seen from its religious community is a group purporting that "personhood" comes in the form of a corporation as well as a zygote. Pundit (and part-time historian/rodeo clown) Glenn Beck spearheaded the crusade of the Christian Right when he made "social justice"* pejorative in the minds of conservatives and Tea-Partiers everywhere. 

The ever-righteous Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association went so far as to sick his Rambo Jesus on the OWS protestors by having Him come down from heaven and whip everyone at Zuccotti Park. And one erstwhile pundit posited that the OWS had an "unbiblical fetish for equality." 

Yet there are socially responsible Christians out there who are not afraid of voicing support of OWS:

When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand with the hungry, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand for those without a job or a home, they stand with Jesus.

- Jim Wallis of Sojourners (Huffington Post)

Last week, Christian churches in New York offered shelter for OWC protesters and demanded that Bloomberg re-establish their camp in Zuccotti Park. And "protest chaplains" have been established across the country. (facebook link HERE). But more than sanctuary and chaplains, the fact that Christian communities have joined with other faiths in support of the movement is probably the most galling of all the latest events to the Christian Right: Christians have been joined by Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and (shudder!) Muslims (see video below). Even the Vatican came out with a statement supporting the ideology of OWS while not exactly siding with the protestors.


Desperate Prayers

Intercessors throughout New York City have teamed up to provide round the clock prayer and fasting coverage for New York City as we see a surge of the Occupy Wall Street Movement....These intercessors report that they have made some ground in uprooting the spirit of anarchy that has been birthed through this movement, but they need more intercessory prayer support to complete the mission.

Throughout all of the imprecatory prayers of the Christian Right against the OWS movement, there is a sense of desperation flying against an image it cannot sustain: that of the church that needs to maintain its power base - and that power base has money. Tony Perkins' FRC and Bryan Fischer's AFA must appease their donors. Cindy Jacobs must reach out in solidarity to corporations. Robert Jeffress must adhere to the tenets of his Dallas congregants.** 


So now there is a second Great Schism within Christianity: one of morals versus money, one of "social justice" versus maintenance of wealth. . There is the image of a revolutionary Jesus of the poor and a Rambo Jesus of the establishment.  There is the protester and the prayer monger. There is the Jim Wallis side and the Cindy Jacobs side. 


And for all the silly machinations of people like Cindy Jacobs, the prophecies of anarchy, the prayers against the "witchcraft" of the OWS, (and even the awful outfits), the Christian Right will keep the schism, the pepper-spraying and imprecatory prayers alive because they have a lot to lose.  


*American Thinker calls "social justice" evil.
** There may be an irony in this schism: it (slightly) parallels the break between the Baptist Church and Southern Baptists. One fought for social justice through abolition of slavery, while the other fought to keep slavery - and its donors.