Remember, we have to learn to walk before we can learn to run
Thanks and a hat tip to OT reader Kristie, who sent me a link to Aisha Harris’s Slate post on Santa, and to Megyn Kelly’s response to Harris on Fox News – which turned out to be not what I expected.
Harris is an African American, and her essay talks about her dual relationships with the two Santa Clauses she grew up with: the ubiquitous white Santa, and the black Santa she saw in pictures and ornaments in her own house. It’s a thoughtful essay, and I find her solution to reconciling this dichotomy creative and clever even as I resist endorsing it. (You should read the post yourself to see what Harris’s unorthodox dual-Santa solution is, but here’s a hint.)
After reading Harris’s essay, I clicked on the link to Fox’s Fair & Balanced Folk expecting to see faux outrage regarding Harris’s evil War on Christmas — and was quite pleasantly surprised.
Fox host Megyn Kelly starts out the segment saying she was prepared to use Harris’s piece as WOC fodder, but then – I can’t believe this is Fox news saying this – took the time to actually read it, and found she could empathize with where Harris is coming from.
On the one hand, this seems such a little thing. But for Fox to take a lobbed softball like this and let it go over the plate without swinging is actually kind of heartening. Coming the day after the Ryan-Murray budget compromise press conference (made weeks before a potential forced shutdown!), I kind feel like someone should pinch me. And if you throw in Boehner’s angry take down of the pseudo-conservative fundraisers, I begin to wonder if I really am dreaming.
I know it’s way too early to tell, and I certainly don’t want to get my hopes up. Helll, we still have an election coming up in eleven months, and we know how out of hand those things can get. Still, I find myself asking if I’m witnessing the ultimate Christmas miracle. As I watch this clip, and I think about the budget agreement and Boehner’s newly acquired spine, I am daring to ask the question…
Is the GOP finally coming around?
If so, there’s still a long way to go. Ryan and Boehner are each, after all, under fire from the conservative factions in their party for daring to be adults. Disentangling itself from the same nut jobs that gave them years of ratings bonanza certainly won’t be easy, if it’s possible at all at this point. And to circle back to the start of the post, there is the end of Kelly’s commentary on the Harris piece:
Santa just is white… Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.
Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure, that is a verifiable fact.”
Yeah, you know how historians go on and on about the historical figure of Jesus, who was born in, um… let’s say Norway, and who lived his adult years in Edinburgh. And of course, the all-white Fox commentariate smiled and nodded as she was saying it.
Sigh.
Still… baby steps, right?
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Yeah, I’m sick of those filthy Arabs claiming Jesus looked like them.Report
He probably looked more like Dan Ariely. Probably not so much like Woody Allen.Report
“No man cometh unto the Father, but through me. Or you could try taking the subway.”Report
Baby Steps, I suppose it is.Report
This was of course preceded by the whole “Santa is White, that is a fact” and “Jesus was white, that’s a historical fact” type statements.Report
Let’s be fair, Kelly said that Jesus was a historical figure just like Santa; there’s a few ways that can be parsed.
But yeah, it’s an awful lot of throat-clearing just to admit that sometimes minorities feel left out.Report
I’m surprised she didn’t bring up Black Pete from Holland as a way of saying “See? Black people can be part of Christmas, too”.Report
Kelly must really have internalized the idea that black kids might be put off by a white Santa Claus. Why else would she feel it necessary to reassure the white kids every 30 seconds that Santa’s still white?Report
She’s dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones she used to know.Report
Years ago, I had a very good friend from Tobago. Though the nation itself is “Trinidad and Tobago,” and we tend to think of them as being much the same, the people of that place view the two as markedly different.
I think that’s a lot how FOX news is to people of the other side of the aisle, or to non-viewers generally.
Kelly can be really cool at times.
I also tend to like O’Reilly.
I don’t have much use for the rest of them.Report
RE: “Trinidad AND Tobago” – my wife and I were recently debating the difference on this in a quasi-Seinfeldian manner (having just met a family from there).Report
It’s all quite stupid (and damned offensive), but I hope you all remember that Santa is Canadian.Report
@jonathan-mcleod – OT, but when I was compiling tracks for my shoegaze post, I think I stumbled across your YouTube channel or some playlists or whatever.
You’re slightly less furry than I was expecting.Report
Yes, my Youtube profile has my “I’m a serious person” picture because that’s attached to my gmail and Google+ accounts.
I’m thinking of putting together a drone post for you/Chris, but I’m not sure I can listen to that much drone to pick out the best stuff. That’s a rabbit hole I may never escape from.Report
DO IT!Report
Oh jeez. I may as well let the cat out of the bag.
There’s a now-sort-of-mythical first post I wanted to do at MD, that was all about the concept/meaning of “repetition”. And it incorporated, as part of it, a music section that incorporated drone (among other genres, and additionally examining the concept in philosophy, literature, visual arts, mental health, and other tangents).
Perhaps appropriately, I have never been able to wrangle the thing into publishable shape. At one point it was a three-parter. Every once in a while I return to it, only to lose my way again.
So…yeah. That’s potentially a black rabbit hole, from which no post may escape.Report
I assume it has some Deleuze in it? And Kierkegaard? And Deleuze?Report
No, but it did have Nietzche (well, Eternal Return) Sorites paradox, and Quine.
And Spacemen 3, of course.Report
Ah, then I have some required reading for you:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Concept_of_Irony_with_Continual_Refe.html?id=XZd7QgAACAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=CqGaVuSXKbEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=kierkegaard+repetition&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pS-rUombEOqK2gXv5IHACQ&ved=0CEoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=kierkegaard%20repetition&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=xoHsexDBgmEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=deleuze+difference+and+repetition&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uy-rUrnCOajq2AWK7oDQCQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=deleuze%20difference%20and%20repetition&f=false
Kierkegaard’s “repetition” (particularly as detailed in the first linked book) is a sort of proto-Nietzschean “recollecting forward,” which seems like perfect description of some music.Report
Dude, needing additional material is NOT my problem here.Report
Just sayin’.Report
OK, that IS pretty killer. Is that Kierkegaard?
Dammit, I may have to return to that piece again.
But when I do, you just signed up for editing duties, sucker!Report
Yeah, that’s from a few passages in Repetition.Report
It’s all quite stupid (and damned offensive), but I hope you all remember that Santa is Canadian.
What are you talking about, Santa is Indian!
Report
Dammnit here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&gl=SG&v=-fQrY1r5OD4Report
Wait, am I supposed to feel irritation when Jennifer Lawrence is cast as Katniss or not?Report
I think that one depends a lot on the special effects.Report
My friend’s girlfriend is an aspiring actress and recently took a gig as an elf. The casting call for Santa said he absolutely, positively could not have an accent. This in spite of the fact that the area they were working was predominantly Hispanic immigrants. Now, I get that it is probably important that Santa be able to communicate in a manner which is clear to children and that certain accents could impede this, but she was pretty bothered by it.
This was the same woman I mentioned a while back who got a casting call for the Mulan musical which said that people need not be Asian to apply for Asian character roles.
Gooses and ganders and stuff.Report
Kelly now insists that she was joking. If that’s your idea of comedy, kid, don’t quit your day job.Report
To be fair, it does have the form of a joke (particularly the mentioning of Jesus, and calling them both “real life” people).
It almost has the sound of a joke tuned to a liberal audience. Odd for someone working a foxnews gig.Report
I don’t know why she just didn’t come clean and explain that her claim “Santa is white” relies on the historical conception of a culturally constructed contemporary myth deriving from traditional white European origins and then apologize for not making that clear during the discussion regarding the political aspects of the current dispute because she assumed – incorrectly, unfortunately – that viewers were intelligent enough to understand the distinction her comment relied on, a mistake she’s very apologetic about.
That would have been so much easier.Report
Because that doesn’t translate into “liberals are the real racists.”Report
Saint Nicholas, upon whom Santa Claus is based, was a Greek, so he was probably white. But given Greece’s proximity to Turkey and the Levant presumably meant there were a number of people from those regions in Greece, and possibly a number of intermarriages, so there’s no real certainty that he was white. Personally, I find Santa as a product of miscegenation to be most satisfying.Report
James, he was born in Greek-occupied Turkey.Report
As God is my witness, I thought Turkish reindeer could fly.Report
Also, SNL set the record straight.Report
@chris
Ah, even better. Thanks. So both Baby Jesus and Jolly Old St. Nick were probably dark-skinned. I want someone to tell Megyn Kelly this on live TV so I can watch her head explode.Report