BartBlog

Polly Toynbee, Alternet, December 21, 2007

My thanks to the kind reader who sent me the program from this year’s Christmas carol service at the Old Royal Naval College chapel in Greenwich. It was written by the Rev Jules Gomes, chaplain of the college, and of Trinity College of Music, and also of the University of Greenwich.

Here is the good chaplain’s Christmas message: “More Christians have been martyred for their faith in the last century than in any other period of church history. Yesterday’s Herod is today’s Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee, seeking the total extermination of all forms of Christianity. The great irony is that the greatest opposition to Christ comes from so-called broad-minded people who seek to ban Christmas so that people of other faiths are not offended.”

Yes, it is that time of year when secularists, atheists and humanists become the Grinches who stole Christmas. As an honorary associate of the National Secular Society and president of the British Humanist Association, here is my cue to offer you all a rattling good Christmas “Bah, humbug!” Except, of course, it’s all utter nonsense. No one is out to ban Christmas or Christianity – not atheists nor other faiths. Yet every year the same urban myths are repeated about the banning of Christmas by some pantomime villain local authority suffering from “political correctness gone mad.” King Rat Christmas wreckers are unearthed, and every year these turn out to be garbage stories, but they are stored in the attic for another airing next December.

I had at least five calls from broadcasters this year inviting me to say it would be a jolly good thing if Christmas were rebranded Winterval. That myth began years ago when Birmingham city council tried to spread the festive season across the long winter – though it never replaced Christmas, which came with official celebrations in the middle of it. But the Winterval myth lives on. This year it was joined by this: “God rest ye merry people all, Let nothing go to waste, So let us all this Decemberval, Recycle now with haste.” Although written by a vicar for Warrington’s Christmas recycling campaign, watch Decemberval enter anti-Christmas demonology.

Read More Here

T.W. Farnam, The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2007

FORT MITCHELL, Ky. — In Norse mythology, trolls steal babies and leave their own shape-shifting offspring behind. On the Internet, they just steal attention.

As candidates increasingly use the Internet to build political bridges, their message boards have become homes for trolls, users of an online community who leave messages that are ideologically opposed, off-topic or off-color.

Brian O’Neill, a 33-year-old part-time bartender and full-time college student, has been marauding on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Web site for the past few months, even though his posts attacking the candidate are frequently scrubbed from the site within hours. Mr. O’Neill turned to Mrs. Clinton’s site after being booted from online forums of former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

Although Mr. O’Neill says he isn’t familiar with the term “troll,” he has been labeled as one — and not just once. “I thought they were calling me like the, you know, little garden trolls,” Mr. O’Neill says, “and I’m, like, ‘I’m not a garden item.’ ”

Mr. O’Neill, who lives in this small town outside Cincinnati, has a “special blogging place” two levels underground at the library on the campus of Northern Kentucky University in nearby Highland Heights. On a break between classes, he sits down at a bank of computers in the back corner of the stacks, places his large cup of nutmeg-seasoned French roast coffee on the table and logs on.

Read More Here

Frank Rich, The New York Times, December 23, 2007

We can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain’s head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can’t be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

“I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy,” Mr. Huckabee joked to Don Imus, “but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.” So much for the gravitas points earned during a five-and-a-half year stay at the Hanoi Hilton.

But if Mr. McCain has so far resisted slapping down the upstart in his party, Bill Clinton has shown no such self-restraint about Barack Obama. Early this month the former president criticized the press for not sufficiently covering the candidates’ “record in public life” and thereby making “people think experience is irrelevant.” His pique boiled over on Charlie Rose’s show on Dec. 14, when he made his now-famous claim that the 2008 election will be a referendum on whether “no experience matters.” He insinuated that Mr. Obama was tantamount to “a gifted television commentator” and likened a potential Obama presidency to a roll of the dice.

Attention Bill Clinton: If that’s what this election is about, it’s already over. No matter how much Hillary Clinton, Mr. McCain or Rudy Giuliani brag about being tested and vetted, it’s not experience that will be decisive in determining the next president.

Read More Here