WWCJD (What would Commie Jesus Do?)
Christmas shopper sees red at star in the eastTue Dec 20, 2005 10:34 AM ET
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Stars may seem like a harmless symbol of Christmas goodwill -- but in eastern Europe, if they're red, they may be anything but.
Hungarian shopper Istvan Hamza made a formal complaint to police that the star decorations in a record shop in the town of Szombathely were too much like the communist red star -- banned by law as a symbol of decades of dictatorship.
But the police let Christmas charity prevail.
"The shop's red stars are an irregular shape and their branches are not pointed but rounded, so they do not meet the specification set out in the law," spokesman Peter Kovacs said Monday, according to the local news agency MTI.
Oddly enough news
posted by mkchicago at 9:18 AM
11 Comments:
hmm, well if Christ were reincarnated into the contemporary world (as if that is possible), but anyway, if JC was here he would most definitely be a Sympathizer to the IDEALS of communism. Christ was and would be a Marxist.
What would the Free Market Savior think?
I like your emphasis on the word IDEALS. Hell, even I sympathize with them. I just have a hard time getting beyond the fact that it always seems to degenerate into murderous thugery when the ideals itercede with human foibles.
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I wouldn't deny that, seriously though, murderous thugery transcends the political spectrum. Sadly, it seems to be human nature when power becomes involved.
It's because even "Hungarian shopper Istvan Hamza" can make the "news" that I have to question the validity of those results of the media bias study from a few posts back. Their excruciating mathematical and statistical methodology seems to obscure the real issue of the crap that passes for news, and therefore media bias. Where does this article, for example, and therefore the outlets that publish it, fall on the spectrum?
It's not sour grapes; even if these UCLA scientists "found" that the media was biased to the right, it'd still strike me as specious.
The star on our Christmas tree looks exactly like the ones mounted on the cupolas of Soviet buildings, and if Germanicus thinks that's not news, then he'd better ride his high horse down the steps of his ivory tower and figure out what real working people find newsworthy.
And as I ascend this crystal staircase, I say to you: avert your gaze!
I find some irony in a totalitarian ban on certain symbols, because they represented something totalitarian.
Now, I am overstating the case, because banning a symbol does not a dictatorship make. But, I still see a little hypocrisy there.
Of course, we're banning "words" here on public school calendars and changing the words to Christmas Carols.
As for Jesus and communism, as He hasn't forced anyone to do right evern, I would say He would favor voluntary communism, which is quite a different breed from enforced communism. The early Christians lived in community and shared all they had (a couple didn't and died--I might suppose this unlikely to happen today). That is different than telling unbelievers to pay 80% of their income so MK can get the high score on Internet Jeopardy.
Truth be told I wasn't that sure that this post was all that interesting, but I thought it was the perfect article to trot out my commie-Jesus pic. glad it got a reaction. With regard to the media angle , I would point out that oddly enough stories ain't exactly hard journalism.
Speaking of doppelgangers (we were last night @ pub quiz), that pic is a more sallow-eyed version of our friend Tef in his younger, hairier days.
"oddly enough stories ain't exactly hard journalism"
That's sort of my point. There ain't much journalism out there that is hard, and the stuff that is, often just pretends to be (see: Jeff's previous post regarding Hard Journalist Sam "Plastic Lego Hair" Donaldson). All those fancy formulas using derivatives and whatnot to determine the media bias - do they take the "oddly enough" factor and the "Sam Donaldson" factor into account? If so, how?
I'm not sure this is what you're getting at, but I am often bothered by the media "reporting" hours of inanity while ignoring how we might avoid cancer, or pay less to heat our houses, or which cars have the most consumer complaints. Instead, we hear how many Marines were killed, and then some soundbytes from the idiots in charge and the even bigger idiots who oppose them.
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