via Instapundit.com
December 18, 2009
PROGRESSIVE! Garrison Keillor Doesn’t Like Jews Writing Christmas Songs.
Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas. After lambasting a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism”—tweaking the lyrics of “Silent Night” for a singalong, in layman’s terms—he turned his ire in a different direction:
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday—if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.
Does this mean my Eid carols don’t have a future?
Posted at Instapundit.com by Glenn Reynolds
And from Power Line:
We’ve written many times about the strangely angry humorist Garrison Keillor. In his column this week, Keillor unleashed a torrent of angry humor directed at those who are spoiling his apparently devout celebration of Christmas. Foremost among the villains of Keillor’s column are Jewish composers of Christmas songs…
…JOHN adds: I don’t know how to read those paragraphs either, but they’re appalling even if intended to be taken humorously. Is Keillor a devout Christian? Maybe so; it’s the first I’ve heard of it. In any event, I can’t imagine that he speaks for a single Christian other than himself if he seriously thinks that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “White Christmas” and so on have somehow ruined Christmas. And why anyone would view the fact that these wonderful contributions to our culture were penned by Jews in anything but a positive light is inexplicable.
H/T BigHollywood.com
“White Christmas,” written by Irving Berlin, won him the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original Song, one of seven Oscar nominations he received during his career. The song has only eight sentences and yet has sold over 100 million copies.
