December 31, 2011 | 12:15 am

Romney’s son makes birther joke

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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With all the self-defeating of Republican presidential candidates, the best thing for Mitt Romney has been to just sit back quietly and let his competitors destroy their own candidacies. Last man standing wins. I guess Romney’s son Matt didn’t get the memo, who had this to say when asked whether Mitt Romney should release his tax returns:

“I heard that someone suggested that as soon as President Obama releases his grades, and birth certificate, and a sort of a long list of things, then maybe he will.”

Brother Tagg Romney jumped in and said, “That was not my dad who said that.”

Matt Romney later tweeted regret that he’d repeated what he called “a dumb joke.”

A dumb joke, indeed. But I don’t think it will cost him as much as anything that Rick Perry said or Herman Cain allegedly did.

December 30, 2011 | 2:39 am

Fox says sorry for poll asking whether Jews killed Jesus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Whoops:

Fox Latin America has apologized for a poll on whether Jews killed Jesus Christ that one of its staffers put on a Facebook page promoting the National Geographic Channel’s Christmas special.

The poll asked readers who they think is responsible for the death of Christ: Pontius Pilate, The Jewish People or the High Priests.

The Simon Weisenthal Center in Buenos Aires calls it a defamatory reference to Vatican propaganda that “resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews for two millennia.”

Read the rest from the AP here.

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December 29, 2011 | 1:45 pm

Angry Christmas tweets from those who didn’t get an iPhone or iPad

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve heard of being disappointed with Christmas—I’m sure most Mavericks and Bears fans were this year. But some of the tweets from ungrateful kids who didn’t get that iPhone or iPad that they wanted are so appalling that I feel like I turned into an old man reading them.

If you thought that the disappointed kids who got a terrible early Christmas present at the direction of Jimmy Kimmel were upset—and some of them threw pretty amazing tantrums (see above video)—you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Gawker explains and provides a telling infographic:

Something Awful’s Jon Hendren, aka @fart, retweeted some of the most egregious examples of gift rage that bubbled up around Dec. 24 and 25th. We’ve compiled the most outrageous examples of Hendren’s outrageous examples in the graphic above (click to enlarge), or you can watch this two-minute music video version (with original music!). Most of the complaints are about iPads, iPhones, cars, and iPods - not getting them as gifts, getting them in the wrong color or version, etc.

Here’s one example:

F*** THIS BLACK IPAD I asked for white

And another:

F*** you santa. I wanted an F***ing IPHONE

And don’t forget:

My mom thinks its funny that I’m yelling at her that she didn’t get me an iphone….f*** you.

Most Americans still get the message of Christmas? Maybe not.

The reactions to these tweets, say to that of @seanmcmaster1 (who claims he was joking), have been just as unbelievable. No wonder Christopher Hitchens was so mad about the true spirit of Christmas.

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December 29, 2011 | 12:50 am

The 8-year-old at the center of recent flare-up in Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The New York Times has an interesting profile of the 8-year-old girl at the center of the recent flare-up in Israel between Ultra Orthodox Jews and secular and other religious Jews. Her name is Naama Margolese, the daughter of American Jews who made aliyah and are observant modern Orthodox.

Here’s a bit of her story:

An Israeli weekend television program told the story of how Naama had become terrified of walking to her elementary school here after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not adhere exactly to their more rigorous dress code.

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Naama’s school, Orot, opened in September in an area with a large community of English-speaking observant Jews that borders on the strictest ultra-orthodox neighborhoods. She quickly found she had to run a miserable gantlet to get to school, even dressed in long sleeves and long skirts.

Riots broke out on Monday when the police accompanied media crews into Hazon Ish Street, the area where Naama’s tormentors are believed to have come from. Hundreds of black-garbed men and boys poured out of the synagogue and an adjacent seminary holding handwritten signs calling for the exclusion of women, illustrated with the male and female symbols used for public washrooms. One policeman was injured after being hit in the head with a rock and several arrests were made before the crowds dispersed at dusk.

Read the rest here.

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December 28, 2011 | 12:08 am

Christmas greetings from the Oval Office

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The LA Times thinks that it was a big deal that in the president’s weekly address, “Obama not only says ‘God,’ but also ‘Christmas,’ ‘Christians’.” That was the headline, which struck me as bizarre. Despite what some have said, President Obama has not been waging a war on Christmas. And Obama and the First Lady were wishing many Americans a warm weekend as they celebrate Christmas—shouldn’t he be able to avoid just beating around the bush?

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December 27, 2011 | 10:40 pm

Peres: ‘fighting for the soul of the nation’ in rift between Ultra Orthodox Jews and other Israelis

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

An ongoing story in Israel is the tension between Ultra Orthodox and secular or more moderate religious Jews. Shmuel Rosner recently called it “Israel’s demographic time bomb”—and I’ve mentioned reports of Ultra Orthodox Jews rallying for racism and trashing an ice cream shop for “promoting promiscuity.”

The issue has come to the fore in the past week because an 8-year-old girl says that Ultra Orthodox men accused her of dressing immodestly and spat on her as she walked to school. It’s bad enough that Israeli President Shimon Peres urged the nation to mobilize against efforts by the Ultra Orthodox in Beit Shemesh.

Reuters reports:

“We are fighting for the soul of the nation and the essence of the state,” Peres said in broadcast remarks at an event at his official residence.

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“Today is a test in which the entire nation will have to mobilise to rescue the majority from the claws of a small minority that is chipping away at our most hallowed values,” Peres said.

“No person has the right to threaten a girl, a woman or any person in any way,” he said. “They are not the lords of this land.”

Read the rest here.

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December 27, 2011 | 1:01 pm

MTV: ‘The After Hours’ Chanukah Special’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon get quizzed by Josh Horowitz. And, yes, gefilte fish is disgusting.

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December 27, 2011 | 10:53 am

Christopher Hitchens’ ghost of Christmas spirit

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Christmas has ended, but it’s still a good time to hear what Christopher Hitchens thought about the “true spirt of Christmas.” And, though Hitchens died earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal had a previously unpublished essay from Hitchens on that exact subject.

An excerpt:

the thing about the annual culture war that would probably most surprise those who want to “keep the Christ in Christmas” is this: The original Puritan Protestants regarded the whole enterprise as blasphemous. Under the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England, Christmas festivities were banned outright. The same was true in some of the early Pilgrim settlements in North America.

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the Christmas cycle imposes a deadening routine and predictability. This is why the accidental genius of Charles Dickens is to have made, of Ebenezer Scrooge, the only character in the story who has any personality to him—and the one whose stoic attempt at a futile resistance is invoked under the breath more than most people care to admit. And when the author of “A Christmas Carol” was writing, the great clanking machinery of a Ramadan-length Christmas had not got into gear, and English people reserved Dec. 26 (“Boxing Day”) for the exchange of tokens.

Much more complaining here. This is not Hitchens’ first reflection on the holiday season. A few years back, he wrote a piece for Slate saying “to Hell with Hanukkah.”

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December 25, 2011 | 9:53 pm

Santa delivers: All she wanted for Christmas was her dad home safely from Iraq

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I hope you had a great Christmas, but it’s difficult to imagine it comparing with this little girl’s. All she wanted for Christmas was for her dad to return safely from Iraq. She asked Santa, and Santa delivered. It was easy: Unbeknownst to the girl, Santa was her dad.

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December 25, 2011 | 4:53 pm

Donald Duck and Christmas in Sweden

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Speaking of bizarre Christmas traditions, in Sweden it’s customary to spend Christmas Eve watching Donald Duck cartoons. No, I didn’t understand the association either.

Jeremy Stahl explains Kalle Anka, which he discovered on a trip to Sweden, for Slate:

The show’s cultural significance cannot be understated. You do not tape or DVR Kalle Anka for later viewing. You do not eat or prepare dinner while watching Kalle Anka. Age does not matter—every member of the family is expected to sit quietly together and watch a program that generations of Swedes have been watching for 50 years. Most families plan their entire Christmas around Kalle Anka, from the Smörgåsbord at lunch to the post-Kalle visit from Jultomten. “At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you can’t to do anything else, because Sweden is closed,” Lena Kättström Höök, a curator at the Nordic Museum who manages the “Traditions” exhibit, told me. “So even if you don’t want to watch it yourself, you can’t call anyone else or do anything else, because no one will do it with you.”

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Over the last half-century, the characters and sketches have become as much a part of the holiday as the Christmas tree, so much so that each time TV1 has suggested modifying the schedule, public outcry has forced the network to back down. In the 1970s, Helena Sandblad, then head of children’s programming, attempted to pull the show off of the air because broadcasting a Disney program didn’t jibe with the prevailing political ethos. “Everything was pretty serious in the ‘70s and anything that was commercial, or considered commercial, was not good, was considered an ugly word,” said SVT publicity officer Ursula Haegerström. After newspapers got wind of the plans to cancel the show, the station was bombarded with letters, phone calls, and negative press. Sandblad received personal threats. “That was one of the worst audience storms in our history,” Haegerström told me.

Me? My Christmas television traditions center more around watching the NFL and the NBA. (Go Clippers.)

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December 24, 2011 | 4:28 pm

Christmas Eve midnight masses canceled in Iraq

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Catholic Church has canceled Christmas Eve midnight masses. I’m not sure how much of a surprise this is or how the Catholic Church avoided doing this in years past, but security risks are too high now.

Vatican Radio reports:

“We have many difficulties because of the situation that there is no peace and no security, permanent security,” said Bishop Mar Shlemon Warduni, Auxiliary Bishop of the Patriarchate of Babylon, Iraq, of the Chaldean Catholic Church. “So for these days of Christmas and the New Year, we hope to celebrate the feast, but not Midnight [Mass], because there are too many difficulties.”

Bishop Warduni said that, despite many difficulties, for Christians in Iraq, “Our duty is to pray for peace.”

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December 24, 2011 | 2:34 pm

Krampus for those who don’t deserve Christmas

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Krampus, via Wikimedia Commons

If you thought that Santa’s naughty-or-nice list was harsh, check out the anti-Santa. His name is Krampus, and he looks like a demon. But he’s just part of the Christmas tradition in Alpine countries.

Krampus is Santa’s evil helper; he stuffs really bad kids in his bag and takes them back to his cave, presumably to eat. NPR calls it “a kind of good cop-bad cop routine” and had this story about an effort to bring Krampus parties to the United States:

There are no Christmas lights up at Janet Finegar’s house in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia. She does not deck her halls with boughs of holly. Instead, hundreds of rib bones leftover from a neighborhood barbecue hang on a clothesline strung across her backyard. They’re bleaching in the sun.

“They have been scraped, boiled, scraped again, bleached and are now strung on strands and hanging out to dry,” she says. “They smell. Rib bones, as it turns out, are incredibly nasty.”

She will drape the bones over herself and wear them like a grisly tunic. It’s her Krampus costume.

Read the rest here.

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