you know, i wasn't going to post about the ridiculous "war on christmas" meme spearheaded by bill o'reilly and john gibson because i thought that more people discussing it (even derisively) gave it more seeming validity, and it was too absurd to waste my breath on. the whole idea that there is some "war" on christmas, that non-christians get offended when someone says "merry christmas" (or worse, that christians honestly get offended when someone says "happy holidays") is so completely asinine that it's hard to believe anyone, even foxnews pundits, could take it seriously.

but then i saw this on atrios and i had to share.

sam seder is the co-host of air america's show the majority report (hosted by janeane garofalo). and if you couldn't tell from the fact that his name is sam seder, he's jewish. normally, i wouldn't feel the need to mention something like that, but it's somewhat relevant considering that the subject is christmas. and sam seder is possibly the most jewish-sounding name i've ever heard in my life. his last name is seder, for solomon's sake!

sam seder was on cnn debating someone named bob knight (no, not the basketball coach, though it does seem that people named "bob knight" have a propensity to go off their rockers) about the war on christmas, and advocates immediate military action:

SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don't think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it's actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.

later on, knight got desperate enough to bring in the references to the nazis. being compared to nazis tends to piss off jews, for reasons that should be obvious, but sam was prepared and mentioned that puritans banned celebrating christmas, etc.

see the video on crooks & liars or think progress.¶

What's even more absurd about the Nazi reference is that not only were the Nazis Christians who certainly didn't ban Christmas (my German friends are freaking out at that allegation right now on their blogs), the Nazis were killing Jews because they blamed Jews for the death of Jesus and for "trying to eliminate Christ" from public discourse, which was as bogus a charge back then as it is now. ¶

indeed. here are nazi christmas seals!

this page has a couple articles by goebbels about christmas, and how you shouldn't buy your christmas presents from jews.

some interesting nazi christmas pictures here.

and i found all these easily just by typing "nazi christmas" into google, so it's not like the info isn't out there... ¶