Every year around the Holidays the radical religious right and their minions attack Barack Obama and his family, claiming the President is waging a war on Christmas. Since 2009, there’s even been a false email chain claiming there will be no Christmas at the White House this year. Of course, President Obama has never waged a war on Christmas, but the Right conveniently forget that — along with the fact that Obama is an American citizen not born in Kenya, a Democrat not a Socialist, Marxist, Leninist, or whatever — and freaks out.
First reports came around Thanksgiving, when Obama didn’t “thank God” but merely used the word “blessings” in his Thanksgiving Day message, and said America was “lucky.” Bryan Fischer, the public face of the certified anti-gay hate group, American Family Association, said that it was the worst thing he has ever heard in his life. The worst thing ever!
And a month ago, there was the Heritage Foundation’s ludicrous David Addington who was absolutely incensed that President Obama has implemented a “Christmas tree taxâ€! It’s an outrage! But, of course, he hadn’t, and it wasn’t.
Then there was the shocking revelation from the family value front that the Obama family was going to spend Christmas together — horrors! Obama was going to take some time off — a vacation! — in Hawaii! and spend time with his family. Obama cancelled the trip — for him — and now he’ll be without his family at Christmas.
But now, President Obama and his family are being attacked for not being austere enough this Holiday Season.
As Eric Boehlert at Media Matters asked, “what happens when the First Family opens the White House for the season to thousands of visitors and the residence resembles a Hollywood-like Christmas wonderland?,” well, just picture this.
Conservative blogger Andrew Malcolm at the right-wing Investor’s Business Daily (IBD, according to The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, has lied,) and writes:
The economy may be weak, unemployment strong and the first family soon to vacate the White House for another half-month of vacation in Hawaii.
But the Obamas have gone all out in decorating their house this year, including a nearly quarter-ton gingerbread White House.
They have also installed 37 different Christmas trees. Thirty of the trees are live, or were, including one nearly 19-feet tall from Wisconsin. Seven of the three dozen Christmas trees are artificial or homemade including, of course, one from recyclables.
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So abundant are the decorations for visitors to the Obama White House to view that the first family needed more than 100 volunteers to fly in from all over the country to help set up the numerous displays, including photos and letters from military families and even some aluminum cans.
The theme the first lady chose for the decorations was “Share, Give, Shine.”
Of course, every administration decorates the White House in some way for holidays, from green fountain water in mid-March to evergreen wreaths come December.
The extravagance of 2011’s decorations, however, are striking given the widespread joblessness, pale economic growth, home foreclosures and grim outlook for 2012, not to mention the incumbent president’s historically low approval rating heading into his reelection bid.
How simple, politically astute, symbolically helpful and cost-effective it would have been for the Obamas this year to say that in sympathy with so many struggling countrymen, they were curtailing holiday decorations to match the sacrifices of others.
Mrs. Obama took another tack, however. She said the massive holiday displays in her White House are designed to make others feel better, especially military families.
“I know for some of you, this holiday season will be tough,” she told some visitors. “But hopefully, it’s times like this that make you know that you live in a grateful nation, and that we are just so inspired by your sacrifice. And hopefully, this is a memory that will stay with you every holiday season.”
Boehlert at Media Matters adds,
See, forget all those claims about trying to rub out Christmas all together. According to the new fevered spin, the Obamas are actually rubbing people’s faces in the Christmas season and flaunting the decorations.
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Now imagine the seismic eruption that would have occurred if the Obamas announced they were curtailing (banning!!) Christmas decorations in the White House this year. Talk about a five-alarm fire for Fox News. The First Family would have been denounced as Grinch-like heathens.
The comedy, of course, is that Obama’s restless critics can’t even decide if the president is guilty of ignoring Christmas, or guilty of exploiting it.
And of course, Mrs. Obama’s attempts to support military families is just so terribly un-American. Considering how the Right treats military families, Mrs. Obama is Mother Teresa.
Of course, Obama’s war on the war on Christmas is now a “capitol crime” for the right wing nuts.
Image:Â President Barack Obama shows military officials the White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room following a meeting, Dec. 1, 2011. The 18-foot-6 inch balsam fir is decorated with holiday cards created by military children and ornaments featuring medals, badges, and patches from all of the military branches. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)