Driving home from a Christmas party, I flipped over to national public radio and listened to the networks most explicit Christmas tradition – the inevitable airing of the insipid David Sedaris story about being a Santas elf at Macy’s back in the 1970s.
I listened to it, so you don’t have to. but here it is anyway.
It’s a Christmas story for people who hate Christmas. Feel free not to listen. I certainly couldn’t -. I flipped it off after about five minutes. God only knows how many times I’ve sat through the whole thing. 20? No – twice.
Anyway, it filled me with an urge to hear a Christmas story that didn’t fill me with rage.
So I thought I would switch to a different, much better Christmas story.
I’ve written about it in the space before; the dark, scary winter of 1981, when the communists shut down the Solidarity, labor movement in Poland. Poland’s ambassador, a lifelong communist atheist converted to Catholicism by his devout wife, had an attack of conscience and patriotism, just before Christmas of 1981, and defected to the United States.
One hesitates to think how the Biden administration would react.
But the president was Ronald Reagan. And his reaction was one for the ages.
I was still a couple years away from being a conservative. But I remember Reagan’s speech that night.
Since NPR will never replay it – mustn’t divert airtime from David F****ng Sedaris – I will:
Anyway, – Christmas greetings, from a time when the president was on America’s side.
Listening to Reagan, it’s shocking how badly politicians’ speaking skills have declined over the years. Probably a lot of it is because most of them are–ironically unlike Reagan–acting instead of speaking from their hearts.
David Sedaris = pissy little poofter whose sense of entitlement far outstrips his “talent”
Santaland Diaries = Mr Sedaris personal manifesto of envy and resentment.
Never heard of Sedaris but when I listened to his screed I understood who he was, what he likes to do for fun, and why urban progs love him so much.
I’ve never heard/read Santaland Diaries (and now I don’t have much interest either), but fwiw, Sedaris’ description of Christmas in Holland, “Six to Eight Black Men” is dead on and pretty interesting. I guarantee you have no idea how, um, unique the Dutch Christmas is.
Sedaris is a manic depressive sodomite, who, during a brief pause in feeding his lifelong drug addiction wrote a miserable recitation of a particularly bleak Christmas he managed to survive.
Although first represented as a biographical essay, the tale has since been proved to be a mendacious fever dream.
The degenerates at NPR know a good propaganda tool when they see it, and after admitting it really isn’t factual, has made it their annual ode to demoralised, lifeless existence.
BN,
Your last paragraph really does sum it up.
I listened to an interview with Sidaris the other day. He discussed his “elf story,” but let us in on some of his background. Upper middle class family, all neurotics, substance abusers, suicides, all genuinely insane people.
The perfect hero for our times, or at least the kind of person who appeals to self-important metropolitan intellectuals. There is not a sincere bone in his body, Sidaris is incapable of looking at anything without irony, which defeats the purpose of irony, doesn’t it?
I didn’t listen to the Sedaris story, but thanks for the Reagan clip.
Well UMMP, he’s a happy homo so there’s a 9/10 chance his daddy abused him physically, emotionally or both. His brother killed himself, and his sister is a train wreck, too.
They were tailor made for the left.
Sedaris has positioned himself as the Shane MacGowan of literary Christmas fuckwads.
“We will never starve for wonders, but from the want of wonders”
The fucking degenerates were taking notes, lads….That is exactly and precisely what they’ve taken from us….
We don’t have a government. We have a national crime syndicate.
oops, wrong thread…although this fits anywhere