{"id":29188,"date":"2014-12-24T00:02:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T05:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29188"},"modified":"2014-12-13T18:36:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T23:36:51","slug":"jim-geraghty-calls-for-regime-change-in-christmastown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/24\/jim-geraghty-calls-for-regime-change-in-christmastown\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Geraghty calls for &#8220;Regime Change in Christmastown&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Something is rotten in Christmastown, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/campaign-spot\/394546\/its-time-regime-change-christmastown-jim-geraghty\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Geraghty<\/a> demands regime change to fix the problems:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I lament that for all of the warm feelings [the <em>Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer<\/em> Christmas special] stirs &#8230; this children\u2019s classic makes almost no sense.<\/p>\n<p>First, I get that this is a parable about tolerance of those who are different, and appreciating \u201cmisfits\u201d who \u201cdon\u2019t fit in.\u201d Perhaps that was a particularly powerful message in 1964. But the story\u2019s need for an intolerant society to depict means that a lot of previously-beloved characters associated with Christmas get turned into absolute quasi-fascistic villains.<\/p>\n<p>Donner, Rudolph\u2019s dad, is one of the worst. He\u2019s horrified by his son\u2019s shiny nose, literally from the moment of his birth. Everyone just accepts that because of the shiny nose, Rudolph will never be able to pull the sleigh. Nobody ever explains why. They treat this as some sort of horrible genetic mutation. In the entire story, no one in Christmastown other than Clarice and Rudolph\u2019s mother \u2014 who never even gets a name! \u2014 can tolerate it. Everyone else instantly reacts with shock, horror, and disgust.<\/p>\n<p>Santa comes across as even worse. He\u2019s a jerk who doesn\u2019t care about the elves\u2019 musical number. The first sign of snow \u2014 in the North Pole, where he really shouldn\u2019t be that shocked \u2014 and he\u2019s ready to cancel Christmas. He\u2019s got one job!<\/p>\n<p>Finally, when Rudolph is exposed at the reindeer games, Santa tells Donner, Rudolph\u2019s dad, he should be ashamed of himself. For what? His son\u2019s nose? A birth defect? For polluting the gene pool? Is this Nazi Christmastown?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something is rotten in Christmastown, and Jim Geraghty demands regime change to fix the problems: I lament that for all of the warm feelings [the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special] stirs &#8230; this children\u2019s classic makes almost no sense. First, I get that this is a parable about tolerance of those who are different, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[345],"class_list":["post-29188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","tag-christmas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7AM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29189,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29188\/revisions\/29189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}