As it did with Thanksgiving, the Media Research Center spent the Christmas season lashing out at anyone who wouldn’t adhere to right-wing holiday orthodoxy. Alex Christy spent a Dec. 12 post being mad at it being pointed out that there might be something less than fully heterosexual about the Christmas season, in the wake of Fox News Jesse Watters having a meltdown over a gay-themed nutcracker at Target:
Fox News’s Jesse Watters did not appreciate that Target is selling a LGBTQ-flag waving nutcracker, so The Daily Show sent correspondent Grace Kuhlenschmidt out on the streets to interview ordinary people in an attempt to show Watters was out of touch. However, she took the segment from the realm of the troll to the realm of the cringe and even the disrespectful as she declared Christmas to be “the queerest holiday of all” because Mary was a virgin and certain classic songs have the word “gay” in them, amongst other things.
Kuhlenschmidt began by showing a man the nutcracker in question, “I’m going to show you something and I want you to try not to lose your shit, okay?”
After revealing the toy, the man almost sounded like Watters, “Well, it’s definitely just not the classic because its choice in clothing is a little suspect,” to which Kuhlenschmidt replied, “You almost lost your shit.”
A few interviews later, Kuhlenschmidt was talking to a second man when she tried to make a sex joke, “It’s crazy that they’re doing this, right? Like, they’re taking this manly Christmas icon, who puts nuts in its mouth, typically dancing with sugar plum fairies, and they’re making this gay?
After the man claimed he “never associated the nutcracker with manliness,” Kuhlenschmidt moved to a discussion with a woman and decided to go after the Nativity Story, “Christmas has never been gay at all. It’s always been about a beautiful straight couple, a virgin and her husband who have never had sex and he’s just remarkably chill when she gets pregnant.”
[…]Meanwhile, in a different interview, Kuhlenschmidt sarcastically lamented, “Looking at this, you can’t tell me that they’re not sexualizing Christmas,” to which another woman proclaimed, “Yeah, maybe, but also, Christmas is full of sparkle, so I feel like—”
That led Kuhlenschmidt to declare in a voiceover, “How have I been so blind? It’s the queerest holiday of all.”
Christy returned the next day to complain another person on TV called out Watters’ meltdown:
On Monday, The Daily Show proclaimed that Christmas was the “queerest holiday of all,” on Tuesday it was ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel’s turn as he “interviewed” Sean Hayes, who was playing the role of a gay nutcracker. Hayes claimed that “pretty much every Christmas character is gay” and like The Daily Show, he including Joseph from the Nativity.
After playing a montage of conservative media personalities denouncing the wokification of Christmas, including the gay nutcrackers, Kimmel introduced Hayes’s character, “Okay, fingers on the pulse, you know. Obviously they’re making a big deal out of nothing. But I wanted to go to the source to find out how they see this. So joining us now live from the holiday aisle at Kohl’s is a gay nutcracker. Hello, Mr. Nutcracker.”
Kimmel wondered, “I guess my first question is, are gay nutcrackers, like yourself, bothered by what Fox News and this right-wing outrage media have been saying?”
Hayes responded, “I mean, not really. I’d say we’re more confused than anything. I mean, first off, “gay nutcracker” is redundant. All nutcrackers are gay… We’re a bunch of fit older men with perfect posture wearing bedazzled uniforms and knee-high boots.”
[…]It is one thing to fail at troll humor because you project 2023 trends onto classic stories, but the inclusion of Joseph is not only disrespectful, it is not even original disrespect.
As if Watters wasn’t behaving as a troll by injecting right-wing homophobia into the holiday. Nevertheless, Tim Graham rehashed all this in his Dec. 13 podcast:
Comedians wouldn’t cast a shadow on a single page of the Koran, but it’s always fair game to mock the marriage of Mary and Joseph, and joke that Joseph was gay. Christians and their New Testament stories are irresistible grist for mockery. But mock Hillary Clinton, and there’s hell to pay on the Jimmy Kimmel set.
There are really two kinds of Christmas. There’s the winter festival, and there’s the Christian Christmas, the birth of the Christ. There’s “Let It Snow” and there’s “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” So when comedians joke that everything about Christmas is gay, it’s not as outrageous to suggest that Rudolph or Frosty or the Grinch are on the rainbow spectrum. It’s another to kick over the Nativity set and mock the triune God.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live, they turned to gay comic actor Sean Hayes for the mockery: “And then there’s Joseph…Why do you think they needed an immaculate conception? Joseph was the only guy in Bethlehem with two beards. The one on his face, and Mary.” Kimmel and Hayes were both “raised Catholic,” which sometimes can predict they’ll be first in line to mock their upbringing.
And just as at Thanksgiving, Mark Finkelstein freaked out over a Boston Globe editorial cartoon that made a political statement related to the holiday. He actually spent part of his Christmas day to grumble that the cartoon committed the sin of showing how right-wingers are talking down the economy:
Those ungrateful white Americans! Why don’t they appreciate all the wonderful things that Joe Biden has bestowed upon them?
That was the Boston Globe‘s message via its cartoonist Ward Sutton on this Christmas Day.
As you see, a svelte Santa Biden points to the gifts he’s left under the tree for the family: low unemployment, inflation down, recession averted.
And Biden says to them: “Look what I brought you folks — this oughta make things merry and bright!”
So how how do those ingrates react? The father of the family, motioning Biden to speak to the hand, says, “Not feeling it. Worst Christmas ever.”
Mom, a ginger, adds, “Worst Santa ever.”
And the ginger boy lets his tongue do the talking, sticking it out as he spews spit in Biden’s direction.
What is WRONG with these people? Why don’t Americans reward Biden for the wonders with which he has gifted them? Lying on the floor is a newspaper—which could well be the Globe itself—echoing the argument for Biden: “Historic Gap Between Strength of Economy, Public Perception.”
Somehow, the cartoon fails to depict the lumps of coal that Santa Biden has left for the American family: prices still way higher than when Biden took office. Sky-high interest rates that make the dream of home ownership impossible for millions of Americans. And then there’s the flood of illegal immigrants across the border that has even Democrat mayors screaming for it to stop. Oh, and let’s not forget rampant crime, public drug use, and the fouling of streets that have rendered large parts of American cities no-go zones for law-abiding people.
In fact, the crime rate is dropping — but Finkelstein and the MRC don’t want you to know about it because it’s an election year.