{"id":18566,"date":"2015-12-24T14:02:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T22:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=18566"},"modified":"2015-12-24T15:03:34","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T23:03:34","slug":"the-rights-pathetic-paranoia-the-8-worst-war-on-christmas-stories-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/24\/the-rights-pathetic-paranoia-the-8-worst-war-on-christmas-stories-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right&#8217;s Pathetic Paranoia: The 8 Worst &#8216;War-on-Christmas&#8217; Stories This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">The War on Christmas is a right wing conspiracy being played out for political reasons, in my opinion. &nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Every holiday season, the right-wing outrage machine fires up the masses by feeding them misleading, anecdotal stories about a &quot;war on Christmas.&quot; The typical war on Christmas story follows a simple pattern: a small town or an obscure group of people make a tiny, harmless gesture toward secularism; local media gets a hold of it; and an echo chamber of outrage, from The Blaze to AM radio to Fox News escalates the situation to a fever pitch, making villains of the secular scrooges and heroes of the persecuted Christians.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bill-oreilly-christmas.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-18567\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"bill oreilly christmas\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-18567\" height=\"173\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bill-oreilly-christmas-300x173.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>3. O&rsquo;Reilly flunkie Jesse Watters harrases mayor in grocery story parking lot over alleged Christmas crimes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Every year in the town of Plantation, Florida, Mark and Kathy Hyatt string 200,000 lights in their&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/12\/18\/florida_mayor_has_had_enough_of_jesse_watters_war_on_christmas_nonsense_you_shouldnt_be_voicing_your_opinion_on_what_santa_does_and_doesnt_want\/\">front yard<\/a>&nbsp;and install a 20-foot ferris wheel as part of the &ldquo;Hyatt Extreme Christmas&rdquo; that draws thousands of spectators. This year, the town&#39;s mayor, Diane Veltri Bendekovic, sued the Hyatts to recoup the added cost to the city for hiring policemen and traffic cops to manage the spectacle, and lo and behold, the dogs of Christmas war were unleashed.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/09\/22\/jesse_watters_is_the_lowest_of_the_low_7_times_fox_news_biggest_creep_crossed_the_line_partner\/\">Noted stalker<\/a>&nbsp;and Long Island fratboy&nbsp;Jesse Watters quickly descended on Plantation, hunting down the demure mayor in a grocery store parking lot where he berated her with his patented line of loaded and bad faith questions. Watch watch the shameful episode below if you can stomach it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Click through on <\/span><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/media\/right-its-most-pathetic\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Alternet<\/span><\/a><\/strong><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"> for the other 7&nbsp;Worst &#39;War-on-Christmas&#39; Stories. &nbsp; Yes, Christmas is a Christian observance, but many people of many faiths also celebrate Christmas, not as a religious observance, but as a time of compassion, love, unity and hope. &nbsp;To celebrate these qualities requires the actions of good people, nothing more.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The War on Christmas is a right wing conspiracy being played out for political reasons, in my opinion. &nbsp; Every holiday season, the right-wing outrage machine fires up the masses by feeding them misleading, anecdotal stories about a &quot;war on Christmas.&quot; The typical war on Christmas story follows a simple pattern: a small town or <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/24\/the-rights-pathetic-paranoia-the-8-worst-war-on-christmas-stories-this-year\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}