Tony Perkins has always been a douche bag.

That guy on the right is Tony Perkins.  He is the president of the Family Research Council, a right-wing, religious fascist organization that promotes hate, bigotry, and discrimination against homosexuals and women.   

This picture was taken sometime during the school year 1980-81 and was published in the Cleveland High School yearbook in Cleveland, Oklahoma.  Sure, it is a funny picture.  Two guys wearing a huge pair of football pants.  But those pants were made especially for someone and everyone in the school knew it.  The person those pants were made for, who is now deceased, was overweight and gay.  That person endured the taunting, jokes, and bullying that was all too common in those days. 

The truth is kids are cruel and don’t often consider the repercussions of their acts.  So why single out Tony for a youthful indiscretion?  Because almost 30 years later Tony thinks this kind of thing is just fine.  In an NPR online article about bullying and homosexuality Tony suggests that it is not bullying that is causing gay and lesbian youths to commit suicide but because, "These young people who identify as gay or lesbian, we know from the social science that they have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict."

Wow, he actually used the word science.

Now, I don’t know if this is true or not but his Wikipedia page does suggest that Tony Perkins has ties to David Duke.  Yes, I know that’s dirty pool.  At least I didn’t say he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 like Glenn Beck did, or so I’ve heard.

For the record, douche bag Tony only lived in Cleveland for 4 years and hopefully he doesn’t represent the people there. 

I really fucking hate Christmas

For years the rampant commercialism behind the celebration of the birth of Christ was enough to turn me against this holiday.  How many people go in debt every year because of this?  Buy, buy, buy!  It's a capitalist's dream come true.  Tie the biggest holiday to ever increasing gift giving.  It starts earlier every year.  Remember when there wasn't any mention of Christmas until after Thanksgiving?  I'm not sure when I first heard the term "Black Friday".  I don't think it was more than 20 years ago.  I never really thought about what it meant until the other day when I asked my wife.  She said it had something to do with business being in the black that day because of the sells.  WTF?  Do our kids really need all the shit that we buy them?  We can't pay our fucking taxes but we got enough fucking money to have a television in every room, a cell phone in every pocket, and a new Lexus in the drive with a fucking bow on top.

There was, however, still a little bit of the meaning of Christmas.  Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men.  That was until a few years ago Bill O'Reilly decided to come up with the term, "the war on Christmas".  So now the right-wing douche bags have done to Christmas what they did to patriotism.

When I was in the first grade back in 1971 my first grade teacher explained to the class that "Happy Holidays" was synonymous with "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year".  And why wouldn't it mean that?  None of new about Hanukkah or Kwanzaa and Fetivus hadn't even been invented.  So Bill O'Reilly comes along and says that happy holidays is meant to include all holidays around this time of year and, of course, all the ignorant pin heads who watch Fox picked up on this and in their simple minds decided that Christmas was a republican holiday and that anyone who didn't celebrate it was unamerican.

So, you pretty much fucked up anything good that was left of this pagan holiday that was stolen by the church and renamed for your deity.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Let's face it, if you want to find people who are christ-like the last place you want to look is in a church.  Maybe I'm being a little too harsh and maybe I'm generalizing too much and stereotyping too much but come on, isn't being Christ-like being inclusive?  Do you numb-nuts not comprehend what you read in the new testiment?  Love your neighbor as yourself?  How can you love your neighbor if you boycott his store because he has a Happy Holidays sign in the window instead of Merry Christmas?

This is what has become of Christmas, commercialism and religious fascism.  That is why I'm not celebrating it anymore.  Oh, I'll still buy presents and cook the Christmas dinner and sing Christmas songs and wish everyone a Happy Holiday but in my heart and in my secret fantisies I'm kicking ole St. Nick in the balls until his red checks turn blue.