Liberals at the Washington Post didn't seem to have a merry Christmas this year. They were seriously unhappy about the fact that anyone would utter the "lie" about President Trump making it safe to say "merry Christmas" after eight years of the Obamas sending out White House cards wishing "happy holidays."
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple unleashed an unhappy rant about "Fox & Friends" praising Trump in a Christmas-morning segment. He said: "The segment ... sat at the crux of an obsession -- and a lie -- that both Fox News and President Trump hold dear: The idea that under President Barack Obama, Christmas was somehow under siege. And thus, that it somehow needed to be revived."
To be sure, it's not just Obama. It's his acolytes on the left, and that includes Erik Wemple and the Washington Post.
Ask any man of the cloth whether there's a war on Christmas. Ask The Salvation Army. Ask the Family Research Council. But if these sources are too controversial for him, Wemple ought to spend a few moments clicking through the Washington Post website.
The war begins with taking the baby Jesus out of the equation.
On Dec. 18, the Post published an editorial titled "Did Historical Jesus Really Exist? The Evidence Just Doesn't Add Up." The author, Raphael Lataster, is a lecturer in "religious studies" at the University of Sydney and the author of "There Was No Jesus, There Is No God."
And, therefore, there is no Christmas. It is fantasy.
Lataster thinks Christians shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an academic debate about whether Christ is real or a fictional character. "Believers, who uphold the implausible and more easily-dismissed 'Christ of Faith' (the divine Jesus who walked on water), ought not to get involved," he writes.
Now, ask yourself this: Can you search through the last five years of the Washington Post and find a dismissive criticism of the "Historical Muhammad"? In 2012, Robert Spencer, a prominent Islamophobe, wrote the book "Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins." Did the Post notice that tome? It wanted nothing to do with it. Peter Hannaford reviewed it for the Washington Times and argued: "He has engaged in concerted detective work of a scholarly nature. His book is no polemic. It is a serious quest for facts. The ones wrapped up in the Muslim canon are, alas, elusive."
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The Post wouldn't be caught dead publishing an op-ed on Spencer's theory at the end of Ramadan, just to bring some journalistic "balance" to the celebrations. But it insists that Christians should be mocked as gullible believers in myths at Christmastime.
On Christmas Day, Post blogger Eugene Scott reported the ongoing (media-encouraged) trend that observes Christmas as more of a crass commercial event than a religious celebration. Pew Research Center polls he cited found that only 46 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas "primarily" as a religious holiday, five points less than in 2013. Scott emphasized what the Post considers a hopeful harbinger: "millennials are even less likely than older adults to include a religious component in their Christmas celebration."
Scott underlined the Post's opposition position to Trump voters who think "America won't truly be great again until Christianity regains its central position in this increasingly multifaith and secular society." For "most Americans, what would make the nation great is acknowledging the diversity of its citizens' values."
That's bunk. The Post doesn't acknowledge any "diversity" of values. It pushes "diversity" to deconstruct religion. In 2016, it published a story promoting transgender students in divinity schools and how the Wake Forest University School of Divinity would, as the school's language code suggests, "embody hospitality" with an effort to "seek balance when using pronouns to refer to God, for example, alternating between gendered pronouns."
But it's a "lie" that Obama-loving liberals offer a pushback to Christ and Christmas. Perish the thought.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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