Mark Steyn noticed the flap at a Riverside, California skating rink over the silencing of a high school choir. And that is enough to fire up Steyn for a memorable column on the dangerous foolishness that is engulfing America.
"A city staff member, accompanied by a police officer, approached the Rubidoux High School Madrigals at the Riverside Outdoor Ice Skating Rink just as they launched into 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen' and requested that the troupe stop singing . . . "
The cop and the staffer — "special-events employee Michelle Baldwin" — were not acting on a complaint from the celebrity skater. They were just taking offense on her behalf, no doubt deriving a kinky vicarious thrill at preventing a hypothetical "hate crime." The young miss is Jewish, and so they assumed that the strains of "Merry Gentlemen" wafting across the air must be an abomination to her. In fact, if you go to sashacohen.com, you'll see the headline: "Join Sasha On Her Christmas Tree Lighting Tour." That's right, she's going round the country skating at Christmas tree lighting ceremonies. Christmas tree lighting ceremonies accompanied by singers singing Christmas music that uses the C word itself — just like Sasha does on her Web site.
Nonetheless, the Special Events Commissar and her Carol Cop swung into action and decided to act in loco Cohenis and go loco. Many of my fellow pundits find themselves fighting vainly the old ennui when it comes to the whole John Gibson "War On Christmas" shtick, but I think they're missing something: The idea of calling a cop to break up the singing of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" would strike most of the planet as insane. The Rubidoux High School Madrigals should have riposted by serenading the officer with the beloved Neal Sedaka classic, "Oh, Fool, I Am But A Carol" (I quote from memory).
Steyn goes on to describe the ruckus that occurred up in Seattle when the airport management hastily took down Christmas trees after a single local rabbi threatened legal action unless a menorah was also displayed. As Steyn points out, the management actually came up with exactly the right response and forced the issue back onto the rabbi, who had to backpedal furiously. But it is what ties these two events together that gets Steyn going.
What, after all, is the rabbi objecting to? There were no bauble-dripping conifers in the stable in Bethlehem. They didn't sing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," either. That's, in effect, an ancient pop song that alludes to the birth of the Savior as a call to communal merry-making: No wonder it falls afoul of an overpoliced overlitigated "diversity" regime. Speaking of communal songs, they didn't sing "White Christmas" round the manger. A Jew wrote that. It's part of the vast Jewish contribution to America's common culture.
Seattle Airport could certainly put up a menorah. And maybe a commemoration of Eid, and Kwanzaa, and something for solstice worshippers, and perhaps something for litigious atheists. But to do that is to turn society into a kind of greater airport departure lounge — to say it's no more than an assemblage of whoever happens to be in it at any particular time. Successful societies (unlike plastic trees) have deep roots: Nobody should be obliged to believe Jesus is the son of God, but likewise nobody should take such umbrage at trees and tinsel and instrumental versions of "Silent Night" that he would deny the reality of the land he lives in to the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Because the logic of that leads not to a diverse secular society but to an atomized ersatz non-society. And, as those other touchy types the Islamists well understand, once you put reality up for grabs, all kinds of pathologies suddenly become viable.
The atomization of the culture that is America. The Balkanization born of a fatuous obeisance to multiculturalism. A dangerous lack of perspective that encourages a rabbi to go after Christmas trees at the same time Ahmadinejad is joining his fellow cheerleaders for a new holocaust to eliminate Israel. Comforting tidings, indeed. Bring a lawyer.
I sincerely hope that somehow Ms. Baldwin, the “special-events employee” who ruined at least a high school madrigal group’s Christmas offering in her petty-functionary zeal, is held accountable.
Southern California, alas, is a “Sargasso of the imagination” and subject to paralysis of will.
Also, another reason I am proud to be Irish. Read the first sentences of the Steyn piece in the link.