Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus

Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus to all of the wonderful people who have made this blog a success by reading and sharing your thoughts with me. And in the spirit of Seinfeld, a Happy Festivus as well. One of the great Festivus traditions, of course, is an airing of the grievances. Many bloggers have put together some of their grievances and complaints and a lot of them are really brilliant. Here a some of my favorite samples. From John Cole:

The Republican Party- I will never forgive the shameless display during the Schiavo affair, elevating a personal family tragedy into a cruel farce loosely reported to be concern for the 'culture of life.' Hands down the most disappointing thing that happened this year, and the event that finally made me see the current GOP for what they are- shrill opportunists who think divisiveness, intrusion into personal matters, and cheap demagoguery are core leadership principles. And I don't want to get started on the spending.

The Torture Advocates- For taking every opportunity to paint those opposed to state sanctioned torture as little more than terrorist coddlers or people whose position is not one of principle but one of moral preening. You know who you are. You can go to hell...

The Democrats- A full accounting of the gross incompetence of this party would require more bandwidth than I am willing to purchase, but what can be said about a bunch of partisan nitwits so inept that the GOP self-destructs in front of them, and all they can do is triumph the loony views of Cindy Sheehan and advocate for immediate withdrawal from Iraq?

The MSM- Utterly incapable of covering any story with any depth, meaning or insight, the MSM spent the entire year pumping stupid stories like Natalie Holloway and the run-away bride, and continued to portray all political stories in the framework of a horse race. A policy, in the eyes of the MSM, is not wrong because it is wrong or destructive or stupid, but wrong because of the polling data and the possible electoral impact. Add to it their willingness to treat every issue 'fairly,' providing both sides of the story as if they were both legitimate (think the ridiculous ID debate- there are not two legitimate sides), and their total inability to get basic facts right (think of the Katrina coverage, of which basically everything that was reported is now turning out to be wrong), and the MSM has once again been a major disappointment.

From Running Scared, who picks up on many of the same themes:

The Democrats. Finding myself in opposition to the party in power, I was forced to root, in many cases, for the opposition party. What a disappointment you turned out to be. You constantly fracture into single issue, internecine warfare tribes, slitting your own throats when so many opportunities presented themselves. And by the way... while he had a lot of great, revolutionary ideas, Howard Dean is a loon and he's only making you look bad.

Bill O'Reilly. For your phony, society dividing "war on Christmas" while pretending to be a moderate. I'd like to be more charitable, but this is Festivus. So I hope you rot in hell, you bastard.

Some of the commenters at John Cole's place had some interesting ones to add as well:

The State of Texas: You suck. Your politics is attrotious. Your budget is in shambles. Your children are dumb and getting dumber. Your adults are drunken redneck thickheaded hicks proving that the apple and the tree are rarely distant. For the past 165 years you have been a varying degree of embarassment to our nation, but the past five have really taken the cake. Thank you for screwing up our country on the national, state, and local level. You suck.

The onano...oops, I mean blogosphere: Are you a loudmouth jerkoff? Do you have a webpage? Congratulations--you're qualified to be a blogger. Be sure to refer to yourself as "the new media" whenever possible and at the end of the day, always pat yourself on the back for saving the world. (Mercifully, there are some exceptions.)

Binary thinking: "Either you're with us or you're a terrorist." "Either you love life or you think everybody should get abortions at gunpoint." It's hard to believe people really are this stupid that they can't think outside of the most ridiculous either/or statements, and yet here we are. And people wonder why I have such a misanthropic streak.

Talking points: "Culture of life!" "Teach the controversy!" "Up or down vote!" "Filibustering faith!" "Fighting them there so we don't fight them here!" "Freedom is on the march!" Boiling down complicated issues to panderingly insipid sloganeering is an insult.

The anti-Patrick Henry crowd: Give me liberty or give me death has officially been supplanted by "Take all the freedoms daddy, just don't let the bad man scare me again" There's a war on: Man up, bitches.

Gay marriage opponents - You will never meet a more disingenuous, hateful group of parrots in your life. They don't really know how gay marriage supposedly hurts their marriage. All they can do is parrot what their pastor (usually the product of some cheap, creepy "Bible college" with phony credentials) says. Still, they never seem to want to answer this simple question: If gay marriage is such a threat to straight marriage, then why does Massachusettes - a state with gay marriage - have the lowest divorce rate in the nation, while Arizona and Nevada - two states that prohibit gay marriage - have the two highest divorce rates in the country?

My own grievances? I'm too lazy to list them at the moment. Maybe after I take a nap.