{"id":84131,"date":"2022-12-25T18:19:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T00:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84131"},"modified":"2022-12-25T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T00:19:51","slug":"tradition-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84131","title":{"rendered":"Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Driving home from a Christmas party, I flipped over to national public radio and listened to the networks most explicit Christmas tradition \u2013 the inevitable airing of the insipid David Sedaris story about being a Santas elf at Macy\u2019s back in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I listened to it, so you don\u2019t have to. but here it is anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/u5XLjG_S6eE\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a Christmas story for people who hate Christmas. Feel free not to listen. I certainly couldn\u2019t -. I flipped it off after about five minutes.  God only knows how many times I\u2019ve sat through the whole thing.   20? No \u2013 twice.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, it filled me with an urge to hear a Christmas story that didn\u2019t fill me with rage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I thought I would switch to a different, much better Christmas story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7369\">written about it in the space before; the dark, scary winter of 1981<\/a>, when the communists shut down the Solidarity, labor movement in Poland.   Poland\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One hesitates to think how the Biden administration would react.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the president was Ronald Reagan. And his reaction was one for the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was still a couple years away from being a conservative. But I remember Reagan\u2019s speech that night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since NPR will never replay it &#8211; mustn\u2019t divert airtime from David F****ng Sedaris &#8211; I will:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"President Reagan&#039;s Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland \u2014 12\/23\/81\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9kiFK6xxE08?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, &#8211; Christmas greetings, from a time when the president was on America\u2019s side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Driving home from a Christmas party, I flipped over to national public radio and listened to the networks most explicit Christmas tradition \u2013 the inevitable airing of the insipid David Sedaris story about being a Santas elf at Macy\u2019s back in the 1970s. I listened to it, so you don\u2019t have to. but here it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84132,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84131\/revisions\/84132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}