Tis the season to be pissy

Am I the only one that doesn't take my culture war punditry cues from the post office?


Dateline 2009: A youthful Obama was still being accused of being a foreign-born Communist Jihadi sleeper agent. Nancy Pelosi was enjoying her term as Majority Speaker of the House, and Lady Gaga and Katy Perry had yet to go completely crazy.


And somewhere, in some distant corner of the internet, a conservative crank named Samuel Blumenfeld was getting his undies in a bunch over offensive postage stamps. And by offensive, I mean that they weren't Christian.

They've issued stamps for Secular Humanists, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, two Islamic holidays and, lastly, Christmas. Sorry, Buddhists, no stamps for you, at least not yet. Back in the old days, the Christmas stamp was the only stamp issued for Christmas, the joyous festival that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ all over the globe. 

According to Dr. Sam, postage stamps were one of THE definitive markers of how amorphous and degenerated American society had become. And while he was irked that so many non-Christian holidays had gotten in on the stamp action, he was magnanimous enough to permit Hanukkah stamps. (Given that Blumenfeld is a Jewish convert to Christianity as well as a writer for the John Birch society, I suppose that's rather big of him.) 

Now, of course, Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, just happens to coincide with the Christmas season, so the Hanukkah stamp pictured with a menorah seems appropriate. After all, Jesus was Jewish.

Big sigh of relief, right? Well, not according to Tzvi Fishman, who seems determined to give Blumenfeld a run for his money in the big crank contest this year.

Hoop hoop hurray! America and Canada are putting out postal stamps for Hanukah! Hoop hoop hurray! What a proud day for the Jewish People! What a great achievement! How proud we all should be that our gentile masters have allowed us a miniature stamp commemorating Hanukah! 

...In the tsunami of impurity and spiritual pollution that is Christmas, the Jews have been given a tiny little stamp, much like a rich landlord tosses a scrap of food to his dog. This December, in the sea of Christian symbols, Christian mangers, Christian Santas, Christian bell ringers, Christian advertisements, Christian store windows, Christian floor displays, Christian commercials, Christian TV shows, Christian office parties, and Christian messages of Christian saviors and goodwill to men, the Jews will have a stamp commemorating Hanukah. Halleluyah!

...Wake up, my friends. You may say that all the unholy decorations and stories of Jesus don’t bother you, but it isn’t true – their messages seep in like deadly poisons, reducing Hanukah and the GIANT ETERNAL TRUTHS OF TORAH into a tiny stamp. That’s right, my friends. In the incessant bombardment of Christian culture, Diaspora Judaism is reduced to stamp-size Judaism.

So, the Christian Jew is mad because the multicultural stamps show how dramatically Christmas is being pushed out of American culture. And the Jewy Jew is annoyed because there's so much Christmas in American culture that any dinky Hanukkah stamp is a tiny drop in the bucket.


I love it when crazy conservatives collide.