-By Warner Todd Huston
Never has so few words been so wrong until the the Christmas Day Chicago Sun-Times Daily Rant came along. Not only does it unreasonably call the mean, pre-ghosted version of the Scrooge character a “traditional, conservative Republican” but it then goes on to swerve to the opposite — and equally wrong — conclusion that the post-ghostie Scrooge is a “bleeding-heart liberal.” In truth BOTH claims are quite wide of the mark in analogy. In fact, not only did the Sun-times miss a true reading of the characters, they got them juxtaposed!
Here is the short, and woefully wrong Christmas Day Daily Rant:
I can’t understand why people are so in love with Charles Dickens’ story ”A Christmas Carol.”
Let me see if I understand the story right: Scrooge starts out as a traditional, conservative Republican, and because of the interference of three, uh, ghosts, he ends up a bleeding-heart liberal. Why is this such a good thing?
Erroneous Claim One: the eeevil Republican Scrooge
The fact is, that Republicans are not only happier, but they also give more to charity than do Democrats and liberals. This being true, calling the sour, mean-spirited, miserly pre-ghosted Ebenezer Scrooge a “traditional, conservative Republican” is an absurd claim. Republicans are neither miserly nor mean as a general rule by the facts we have at our fingertips.
So, the mean Scrooge being a typical GOPer is absurd and insulting.
Erroneous Claim Two: the bleeding-heart liberal Scrooge
Similarly, the post-ghostie Scrooge is not a typical liberal at all. The Scrooge that is so happy to give his fortune away does not match the actions of a liberal. You see, a liberal doesn’t want to give his own money away, he wants to give every one else’s money away. As noted above the proof of that is the fact that they don’t give to charity, but support nanny state government programs and confiscatory taxes. Since we saw above that Republicans are more happy, and more charitable it is far less likely that a Scrooge that is deliriously happy to be helping others with his own fortune could be in any way a “bleeding-heart liberal”!
And last but not least, in the original book the post-ghostie Scrooge attends church after his ghostly visits. This in and of itself disqualifies Scrooge as being a Democrat OR a liberal!
So, whoever wrote this Chicago Sun-Times Daily Rant didn’t “understand the story right.”
Nope, not at all. So a big BAH! HUMBUG! to you Sun-Times.
(Yes, I know I said I was taking the day off… but I couldn’t resist this little gem of a story!)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
So you worked on Christmas. And I suppose you made Bob Cratchit come in too!
How come the so called ‘rant’ you linked to at the CST is posted without any attribution?
Are the libs afraid to put their names to articles because they think some gun totin’ redneck is going to take them out?
Inquiring readers want to know.
I think it is not attributed because it is an editorial board editorial. In other words, it comes from the paper itself as opposed to a particular writer.
And, I hope you had a Merry Christmas, Paul.