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BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA DECLARES WAR ON CHRISTMAS

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NAO Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-14-05 01:04 PM
Original message
BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA DECLARES WAR ON CHRISTMAS
FIRST OFFENSIVE FEATURES NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY ADS, DVD “GUERILLA GIVEAWAYS”

excerpt from press release/declaration of war:

Los Angeles, December 5, 2005 -- Beyond Belief Media has formally declared war on Christmas, the December 25 holiday in which Christians celebrate the birth of the mythical figure Jesus Christ, the company announced today.

“Christian conservatives complain nonstop about the ‘War on Christmas,’ but there really isn’t any such war,” said Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming , a former fundamentalist Christian who is now an atheist activist. “So we have decided to wage one, to demonstrate what it would look like if Jesus’ birthday were truly attacked.”

As its opening salvo, Beyond Belief Media has purchased advertisements this week in the New York Times , USA Today and the New Yorker magazine. The company’s 300-member volunteer “street team” is also descending on Christmas-themed public events with random “guerilla giveaways” of Beyond Belief’s acclaimed DVD THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE .

“No Christmas pageant or Nativity display is safe from our troops,” said Flemming. “Wherever the mythical figure Jesus is celebrated as if he were real, we will be there with an information barrage. We will undercut the idea that there is any point at all to celebrating the ‘birth’ of a character in a fairy tale.”

Read the full press release of the Declaration of War on Christmas by Beyond Belief Media here:

http://www.thegodmovie.com/press/releases/waronchristmas.html

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! This is exactly the kind of approach that superstition debunkers need to take. Instead of conferences in ivory towers, they need to be running ads in NYT, USA Today, etc. and taking it to the streets!

"The God Who Wasn't There' is an engrossing, entertaining, short, powerful film that makes a strong case that a person named Jesus never existed, but was merely a mythical character whose worshippers later tried to insert into a historical timeline.

The God Who Wasn't There
http://www.thegodmovie.com
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Moochy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-14-05 01:10 PM
Response to Original message
1. I for one love it
Edited on Wed Dec-14-05 01:11 PM by Moochy
Now I'm off to celebrate the birth of Mother Goose!
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tsuki Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-14-05 01:12 PM
Response to Original message
2. Well, Saudstrailan News Corp wanted a war, they've got one.
Everyone worry about the fallen in the War on Khristmas, never mind Iraq. Move along, nothing to see there.
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dutchdemocrat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-14-05 01:41 PM
Response to Original message
3. Here's some talking points...
Not mine.... but it sure sounds like someone who's pissed off. And I keep hearing a Joisey accent when I read it.

http://www.fuckchristmas.org/


Oh man, fuck Christmas.

Seriously – are you kidding me with this “There’s a Kill ‘em All Barbie[/i> and Girls Gone Wild Brand Toddler Gear? They had to start publishing books about some bogus attack on Christianity?

And who did they pick to lead this particular charge?

John fucking Gibson.

This guy has wiener written all over him.

Bill O’Reilly gets all the credit as the biggest nutcase in FOXville, but Gibson really deserves his own special wing in the happy house. This motherfucker’s embedded assignment reads “Up Karl Rove’s ass.”

What makes him such a dick? I mean, besides making a fortune by screaming hysterically about how oppressed Christians are by the other twenty percent?

How about advocating bombing countries that don’t vote the way we want in their own elections? Way to encourage democracy, fuckhead.

And maybe he was kidding when he wished, on air, that the French had gotten the 2012 Olympics instead of the Brits so the terrorists would “blow up Paris,” but it might have been just a touch over the top to call for it again on the day of the London train bombings. Classy move, asshole.

And really? That’s just scratching the fucking surface. Anyone remember who was responsible for the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City?

John does: Iraq. And speaking of Iraq, Gibson thinks Rove deserves a fucking medal for outing that CIA agent. And, like any good reporter, he wanted to burn the Florida ballots after his buddy Bush got “elected” rather than, I don’t know, count them?

Is this a case where knowing the facts actually would be worse than not knowing?” That right there is why sometimes it’s useful for journalists to go to, what do you call that fucking place?

Oh yeah, journalism school.

And now he’s all worked up about Christmas being stolen. What is this, the fucking Fairytale Network?

It’s a national fucking holiday and we’re spending gobs of our hard-earned tax dollars on wreaths and lights for your special Santa day. But these bastards are all “But they call them Holiday trees!” Here’s a clue: no, they fucking don’t. Ok, maybe in a couple places, like on FOXNews.com and at the White House, but if Christmas is under attack, I’m Kris fucking Kringle.

And guess who’s stealing Christmas, according to Gibson. Go on — guess. “A cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians — not just Jewish people.” (Emphasis mine. Pure, unadulterated anti-semitism, his.) A cabal?

Are you fucking kidding me? Could we try to be a little more fucking original with our Jew-hating?

Speaking of Jew-hating, Pat Buchanan has joined the hype-a-thon of the supposed Attack on Christmas, too. Or, as he put it, “What we’re witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity.” Sorry? We’re not so hot on paying for an inflatable camel for your goddamn nativity scene and suddenly we’re Slobodan fucking Milosevic?

Fuck you.

Get some goddamn perspective, you little prick. When they start hunting Christians in the streets, it’ll be time to start yelling “Hate crime.” And no, it won’t count when they start chasing you with the torches. That’ll be called “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

And Bill O’Reilly, Gibson’s cellmate in the silly shack, is doing his part to save Christmas, too. He’s been going after New York’s Mayor Bloomberg (that Commie) because he says the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center has been renamed a “Holiday Tree,” and “No Christian Christmas symbols are allowed in the public schools.” The only problem?

Neither of those things is even remotely fucking true.

It takes some super-sized balls for O’Reilly to get all lathered up about sinners and their fictional anti-Christian crusade. Every fucking person on the planet has hard and fast evidence that Bill is a world-class pervert, but still he feels totally justified lecturing the rest of us on our moral inferiority.

How fucked up is Bill O’Reilly?

Pretty fucked up. Everyone got so crazyfaced about him confusing a sponge and a Middle Eastern snackcake (pretty fucking funny, mind you), that they missed the scary bit: what he meant to say.

Old Bill wanted to get all funky on his intern like this: (you’ll excuse my foul language, I’m quoting an award-winning newscaster here) “I’d take the other hand with the thing and put it on your pussy.”

loofah (lu’f?) noun. A natural exfoliating sponge.

exfoliate (eks-fo’le-at’) verb. To remove (a layer of bark or skin, for example) in flakes or scales; peel.
That’s right. Bill O’Rielly, fount of morals, is super familiar with the female anatomy. So much so, that he knows how good it feels to have one’s pussy exfoliated.

We’re talking h – o – t, Hot. That’s exactly who I’m going to for my life lessons.

Sorry, where were we? Oh yeah, fuck Christmas.

Can we back up just a couple steps here?

At what point did a basic understanding of the separation of church and state become a fucking war on religion? And how did we get to the point where you can call an organization set up to defend our civil liberties “Terrorists” on national television and no one fires your ass? Enough.

Fuck all of you lying little shitheads who wish the world was out to get you so you could play the poor oppressed victims.

Wake up assholes — you’re the cowboys, not the fucking Indians.

“But we want to display our Christmas tree on city property!” You can, go right ahead.

“They’re stopping us from praying in school!” They’re not, so fuck off.

“We’re not allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore!” Are you fucking kidding me? Knock yourself out. Say it at work, scream it in your high school lunch room, hell, tattoo it on your fucking forehead for all we care.

Guess who’s gonna be there defending your right to do every one of those things?

The fucking ACLU. One of these days you bastards are going to drive those fuckers out of business, and then you’ll see some actual attacks on your religious liberties.

I thought conservatives were supposed to be all proud and independent? When did they turn into a bunch of fucking crybabies?
Let’s back up even fucking further, shall we? Can anyone tell me how old Christmas is? Anyone?

Two thousand years, give or take, right?

Gee, who’s been reading their No Child Left Behind History Textbooks?

Try fucking four thousand years. Huh.

Twice as fucking long as your little baby king has been around. How could that possibly be, unless. . . waitaminute. . .

Christmas isn’t fucking Christian. Ok, now we’re talking.
That’s right, that Yuletide cheer you’re spreading?

What exactly do you think Yule is?

It's the fucking Pagan celebration of solstice.

And those “Christmas” traditions? They’re not just like Pagan rituals, they fucking are Pagan rituals.

Way before your Jesus got all magical with the bread and fishes, the Romans were celebrating the birth of Mithra on . . . guess?

Go on – guess. December fucking twenty fifth.

What a weird coincidence.

Practically the whole thing is ripped off from the fucking Druids and the Romans.

Twelve days? Check.

Exchanging gifts? Check.

Mistletoe? Check.

And you’d better fucking believe that those decorated trees that Gibson and Co. are so bent out of shape over are as Pagan as the Rune and Crystal Shack at Pentagramfest 2005.

You might as well be building miniature fucking Stonehenges in your den.

And don’t you read your own goddamn Bibles? Jesus was born when? In the middle of winter?

Lot of Shepherds out watching their flocks around that time of year in Bethlehem? No, because they’d be freezing their fucking asses off.

Tell you what – y’all go figure out which one of the different Bible stories about the birth of Baby Jesus® you want to believe, and then we’ll argue about whether it fucking happened like that or not.

Christians just stole a bunch of traditions from other cultures, slapped them together, stuck a fucking tinfoil star on top and called it the Most Important Holiday of the Year. Modern American Christmas makes Michael Jackson look positively organic.

But you boys at FOX still freak out every year about how everyone's out to get your special trees. This is really the most important thing you have to talk about?

Whether Target says Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas?

Here’s a brainstorm: there’s a fucking war on. Our soldiers are out there dying while you guys do your 14th live feed of the day from WalMart to show us what good little consumers we are.

What Would Jesus Do? He’d jump over that newsdesk and kick your ass for that shit. Are you sure you want to hang your journalism credentials on a story about what some guy calls a tree?

Well we’ve fucking had it.

You want to play bullshit games and scream about how God’s fucking judgment is gonna come raining down on us if we don't start watching our vocabulary?

Go right the fuck ahead. But let me clue you in on something: fire and brimstone ain’t no deterrent for us. We’re not going to hell, assholes, we’re fucking in hell.

We live with you.

And fuck Easter too, you fertility–rite–celebrating, whiny, self-righteous, don’t–know–the– history–of–your–own–religion assholes. Fuck off.
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sui generis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-14-05 01:43 PM
Response to Original message
4. I actually watched the whole movie
While I enjoy that they presented real historical context and I liked how the movie was wrapped up, it did get a little irritating at times. I'm an atheist but I'm also fairly respectful of wherever other people are in their lives and worldviews, and some of the movie was a bit "gloating".

There are more productive ways to talk about these things - maybe I'm just older and wiser (or else more treacherous) than these guys.

It's funny, on both sides of the faith fence - people who are offended by believers/non-believers somewhere else come here to express their hurt feelings or their insecurities or their anger or their disgust to other people who mostly are willing to hear it, but then it turns into those things here.

If everyone on both sides would just stop being persecuted or carrying chips on shoulders, we could all at least just learn ABOUT each other without judgement.

I personally like the lesson of Dogma when it turned out that god was a "she" and not a "he" -- it's not the fact of god's maleness or femaleness that should matter to someone of faith - it's the "idea" of god that should matter. And likewise to atheists it's not the fact of god's existence or nonexistence that should matter either. It's the ideas that matter, because that is all we ever use to justify what we do anyway.
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grumpy old fart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-15-05 04:24 PM
Response to Original message
5. Bad Idea, IMHO
Edited on Thu Dec-15-05 04:25 PM by grumpy old fart
There is nothing wrong with celebrations of mythical persons or events, as long as it isn't used as a weapon. Going on the attack merely gives traction to those who use the myth for evil.

Concentrate on finding the common ground that all humans should have, of feeding, clothing and helping the less fortunate. Religious organizations, by and large, do a wonderful job of this.

Attacking religious symbols and groups at random just gives atheism and rationality a bad name, and reinforces stereotypes.
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jabeguy Donating Member (19 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-16-05 04:42 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. AGREED!
Edited on Fri Dec-16-05 04:43 PM by jabeguy
Completely and utterly correct. Look at how Fox projects their content. How attacking (and usually hateful) they can be. Let's all remember how we see things once their attacking comes out against us/left-sided issues. Pretty interesting to think of the psychology of it all....
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