The War on Easter

Remember the War on Christmas, the fake culture war John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly tried to pawn off on the people last holiday season? I thought it would be funny to write a satiric post about the upcoming War on Easter, including the following:

• Random mob peltings with Cadbury Eggs, the sugary insides smeared on people's clothes, faces, and Bibles.
  
• Eyeliner-smeared Goth kids running around yelling, "Vernal Equinox, Vernal Equinox!"
• Sam Walton's kids shushing greeters who said "Easter" and directing them to say "Happy Spring season! Please look for our copious Alban Eilir decorations!"
• The pièce de résistance (yes, the use of a French phrase makes me an America-hating faggot commie who wants to live under the Islamic law, Sharia--can you cut off my hands now for stealing that pack of baseball cards when I was nine?) was to be the crucifixion of the Easter Bunny, in which he wears a crown of thorns on his head and around his bushy tail. He was going to be punished by a toga-adorned Bill Clinton, who would yell "Ecce Bunny!" The Easter Bunny was going to hop down the street, pelted by plastic eggs filled with rocks, easter egg dye bleeding from his skin. Then, on Easter, the Easter Bunny was going to arise from his grave, one ear half torn. He'd meet Ted Kennedy on the road, who would stick his finger into a side wound as Thomas does to Christ in the Caravaggio painting.

So there I was, giggling at myself, when I learned that the goddamn wingnuts beat me to it. What you'll read on WorldNetDaily, perhaps the creepiest non-porn site on the Internet, is that some are trying to "hijack" Easter; there's a "PC Police"; and there was a "national uproar" over Christmas. What world are these people living in? Did they read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" as a primer on how to fuck with people's heads? The "national uproar" over Christmas existed in the echo chamber of the right wing. Fox News, WorldNetDaily.

I'll say it, and I don't even believe in God: Merry Christmas! Happy Easter! Enjoy those times you recognize things that mean a great deal to you. Share them with your family. But you know what? Bill O'Reilly isn't a Christian. Neither is John Gibson. They may claim to be Christians, but their behavior on television demonstrates an understanding of Christ's teachings that couldn't even be called rudimentary. Perhaps it would help them to read the Jefferson Bible, Thomas Jefferson's revision of the Gospels. Jefferson admired Christ's ethical teachings (it's pretty hard not to, I think), and remarkably, the people who claim most rabidly that Christianity is under attack are those who act in accordance the least with that ethical system.

As I read somewhere recently (I can't remember where; sorry not to give credit), a defensive church is a strong church. Convince the congregation your faith is under attack, using the language of physical violence to represent perceived (though in this case, very unreal) non-physical violence, and they will bond together to defend against those attacks. That's what the right-wing echo chamber does: a defensive political party is a strong political party. If you're looking for a culture war, though I loathe that phrase, that's it: the "values" of the right wing are under attack, apparently, so they must defend by attacking these perceived slights. Thus we have Michelle Malkin's paranoid fantasy about Aztlan, the claims and conferences about wars on Christianity (sidebar: thanks to Priceline, my wife and I stayed at the Omni Shoreham, a four-star hotel, the week prior to the conference about the "War on Christianity"; it's a swank, expensive place--the moneychangers in the temple seem to be doing well enough despite the "War"), the fear that teaching evolution will destroy Christianity and moral behavior.

If you think this is all a joke, easy to laugh off and ignore, remember that the party that panders to these people--even that "maverick," John McCain--is the one that controls the government right now. So fill up your supersoakers with holy water and your brain with actual quotes from the Bible, because the "Christians" who think they're under attack are trying to burst out of their echo chamber: an election is coming up.