Huff Post, the internet’s most homogeneous enclave of “opinion,” whose thought police, thought judges, and thought jury overlords hand down verdicts for those of us NORMAL enough to watch nostalgic Christmas specials on TV, announced felt compelled to label the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special “problematic” last week.

 

 

Really? Problematic? Now, I’ve worked for a few big corporations in my time, and their HR Department’s favorite thing to do is tweak words and flip verb tense to make new and different meanings. Something (read: someone) isn’t just a problem, requiring a solution, something is “problematic.” Salient points in a discussion become “take-aways.” A raise becomes a “merit adjustment.” Justifications for not giving someone a raise are “constructive criticism.” Thinly veiled insults become “feedback.” (Note: feedback, by definition, is the horrifically painful-to-hear jarring noise of a microphone doing its impression of a battery being run up and down a cheese grater through the loudest speaker possible. But but but, “here’s some feedback! To help your growth!” Uhhh, no thanks, sadist. Have a really awesome day though!)

 

 

Words have meaning. Yes, I know my fellow Trump supporters have known this for some time. And we can tell that the thought police (a very small group of people who are incredibly loud, who are by no means the majority) are now saying “problematic” instead of “offensive.” If I came over to your house and you fed me a meal and I criticized your cooking, that would be rude. Impolite. Offensive. Mean! “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” is none of those things. Not even remotely.

 

And here is the best part: the more these mentally ill people attack obviously fun, spirited, joyful, happy moral stories, good vs evil fables, if you will, the more they alienate the masses. Even the left-leaning Democrat masses. For example, I consider myself to have mostly libertarian views with a few exceptions (yes, I was a Bernie supporter before I flipped to Trump) but I have long agreed that calling gay men the f word or black people the n word or women the c word is offensive. Mean. Rude! And most of my conservative friends agree! They — we — aren’t out using those words (that have meanings!) in the HR or leftist fashion, in ways that don’t make sense, to twist their meanings and use the words to control the speech and thought patterns of others. A woman I met at a women’s college once told me that her calling me a c–t is a compliment: that we have to usurp the patriarchy’s power to oppress women by taking the power of that word back, and by using it in empowering ways. I said, wrong. Whether a woman or a man calls me the c word, I am going to walk away from them and avoid seeing them ever again. She wanted to argue. Guess what I did. I cut her off. I literally said to her, “I don’t give my consent to be called a c—.” Yep, I used her consent language! (lol) And I saw a flicker in her eyes — for a just a split second, there was brief awareness that her reasoning was far from logical.

 

The more these mentally ill people attack obviously fun, spirited, joyful, happy moral stories — good vs evil fables — the more they alienate the masses.

 

Coincidentally, the very first clip Huff Post “exposes” in their anti-Christmas propaganda is Rudolph being bullied by the other reindeer. They call him horrible names. You know what he says? “Stop calling me names.” That in and of itself is incredibly brave. Most of us probably witnessed bullying at school on the playground as kids. The person being bullied just sits there and waits till it’s over. Teachers might intervene. They might not. Never did I observe anyone who was being bullied say — courageously — “Stop bullying me.” What a great movie for kids to watch: Rudolph protests the injustice as it’s happening to him. Nip it in the bud. Stand up for yourself.  Stand up for those weaker than you. That’s what my parents taught me. And the message in the Christmas special gets even better!

 

Now, the wackjobs on Twitter want to call Rudolph’s dad saying, “There are more important things than comfort: self-respect” verbal abuse. Nope. We should all be so lucky as to have a strong father figure growing up who teaches us that temporary discomfort is worth it if it leads to an accomplishment we can be proud of down the line.

 

Yes, the basketball coach leading the gang-up on Rudolph is shitty and horrible. And we all knew a bad guy like that as kids. Stories like these teach us about the nature of good and evil. That sometimes evil is an adult who abuses power over kids. It’s usually NOT a horned devil. Kids need to know this. Show your kids this excellent TV special/parable today! Spoiler alert: Rudolph is vindicated in the end. And what does that teach kids? That there are good adults in a position of power as well, generous kind benevolent adults (Santa). That children have a choice regarding which path they’ll go down as they grow up.

 

Ok, Huffpost, you’re right: it’s mean that the dad of Clarice (the pretty girl reindeer that Rudolph likes) says he wouldn’t allow any daughter of his to be seen with a red-nosed reindeer. People are mean. Parents can be too. The whole point of the show is to teach kids that in the end, good leaders (Santa) identify what it is that each member of the tribe has to contribute to the overall happiness of the family/tribe.

 

And the young elf who wants to be a dentist who is berated for not wanting to be one, by his dad? Again, the lesson is that Santa (the good guy/alpha tribal leader in this context) sees that even if your whole family has been making toys for generations, you might be better off being the first dentist and helping the other members of the tribe in a way that more fully expresses your talents. Huff Post ridiculously analyzes this wonderful tale of love, acceptance and victory over bullies through a lens of PC purgatory. The note they insidiously end on? As Santa is flying though the sky to deliver toys, Rudolph proudly leading the entire herd, what suggestion do they implant in the viewer’s mind?

 

“Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable.”

 

Give me a break. A literal break.

 

Deviant behavior and traits can and should be punished. But Rudolph isn’t a deviant. His nose isn’t a deviation. It’s not a flaw. It’s a gift. Santa is the strong leader who recognizes strengths. Guess what, Huff Post? Exploiting strengths is awesome. Otherwise, the strength the elf had, the skill of cavity filling, would have been lost in a sea of toy-making. Rudolph’s brilliant nose would have been wasted if he’d been forced to cover it up.

 

Words matter. Exploiting people — forcing them into unpaid labor — is bad. Exploiting strengths, valuing them, and rewarding the person who uses them in constructive ways, is good! If Huff Post weren’t so full of actual feces, they would be talking about how Rudolph covering his red nose with a fake brown prosthetic so it looks brown could be seen as a metaphor for the niqab or burka which force a woman to veil her strengths and hide her very existence to the point of near invisibility, and this propaganda outlet could instead spark a discussion of how some religions value women only for their reproductive organs.

 

But they don’t. Because the point of this video is not really to expose anything sinister. Huff Post’s goal isn’t to shine the light of truth onto any darkness (Santa does that!). Huff Post’s goal is to fill people who watch their micro documentary with hate. To fill people who watch it with hate for those who looooooove Christmas. Trump supporters.

 

What Huff Post wants the most is to normalize hate. But especially to hate anything that promotes happiness and national unity. Remember when everyone loved holiday specials no matter what their political background was? These fun TV specials that air this time of year were loved by everyone. They’re fun! Hilarious sometimes. My Jewish friend in grade school watched them with her family! Christians don’t have a monopoly on Santa. It’s a fun character! You’ll find out soon enough that it’s your parents. But that too is fun because then you know that you get to grow up one day and “be Santa” for your kids!

 

The good news is that Huff Post and their cronies are losing the culture war. People are sick of this B.S. They just want to focus on their families and have money and a good job. They don’t want to talk politics! The more Santa — who is obviously a “good guy” — is villainized in this absurd (almost laughable) way, the more the entire overt operation to mainstream hate and normalize tension between family members and polarization between the two political parties, backfires.

 

And they are such a hate-filled tiny percentage of the population, screaming into a hate-filled echo chamber, that they have no idea. So let’s not tell them to put down their shovels. Let’s celebrate family, tradition, and the spirit of giving that inspires us to be generous and creative all December long!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!