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Surprise! “Traditions Are Important”

by Rush Limbaugh - May 19,2011

RUSH: Remember, yesterday, the last hour of the program, we featured a stack of Christmas stories from the Associated Press that were designed to convince everybody that everybody’s miserable and angry, and that there’s nothing happy about the holiday season is it has unfolded, and we’ve got some similarly troubling news to report to you as well today. We want to try to have fun, lighthearted and take ourselves into the Christmas weekend in the best possible spirit. In that light, the stories that the Drive-By Media run continue to make me chuckle. AP has a story called, “Traditions are Important.” Now, this sort of like reminds me of the TIME Magazine cover back in the nineties. It was a cover. News: “Studies indicate that men and women are actually born different!” Now, for somebody to consider that to be news, cover story news, what must they have thought before they read the study?

Along comes this story from the Associated Press: “Traditions are Important.” That must shock them enough that they think it’s worth doing a fairly long story about. “Tradition often trumps the trendy during the Christmas season. People send traditional Christmas cards through the mail far more than they send greeting cards by e-mail. Most people think it’s OK to have Christmas decorations at public buildings, even though it occasionally draws protests and lawsuits.” See? “Most people think it’s OK to have Christmas decorations at public buildings, even though it occasionally draws protests and lawsuits,” from The Offended. But clearly even though “most people” think it’s okay. So we’ve got the tyranny of the minority that’s being acknowledged here, and I detect — you gotta read between the lines here. I know how to read the stitches on a fastball, and this little paragraph here that is the lede of the story: “Most people think it’s OK to have Christmas decorations at public buildings,” that shocks them.

They’re obviously people in the Drive-By Media, the left obviously think that most Americans don’t want to offend anybody with their “traditional” Christmas behaviors, characteristics, celebrations, decorations and so forth. It just means they’re going to be working harder on this in ensuing years. “[M]any people long for the days when businesses routinely told customers ‘Merry Christmas’ rather than the more politically correct, ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Season’s Greetings.’ But nearly half are not bothered by the broader greeting. Yes, my friends, it’s a poll! “These are among the findings of an AP-AOL News poll. ‘I think we should stick with the traditional things we were raised with,’ said Melody Sadler, 31, who is bringing up her family in Livingston, Tenn. ‘I think we’re getting away from what’s important in life. We forget why we have Christmas. When people say “Happy Holidays,” it turns the season more commercial.'”

Here’s some of the interesting things. “The poll found: People were four times as likely to send traditional Christmas cards, 64 percent, as opposed to send greeting cards by e-mail, 16 percent. They were twice as likely to call someone on the phone with holiday greetings, 64 percent, as to send an e-mail, 33 percent. People are divided on whether it’s a good thing or bad thing that businesses often greet their customers by saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of Merry Christmas. About half, 48 percent, said it is good and almost that many, 42 percent, said it is bad.” Now, why is that so high? Why are 42% think it’s not good to be greeted with merry Christmas in a business? Well, obviously these are very sensitive people: the new pacifists among us who think that it might offend somebody, might hurt somebody’s feelings.

You gotta learn to accommodate everybody which means we have to learn to accommodate various minorities, and I’m talking about numerical minorities here, not racial or ethnic. “Seven in 10 say they will use the Internet for Christmas shopping as much or more as in past years… Nine in 10 people say it’s appropriate for public buildings to have Christmas decorations.” Nine in ten, and yet we can’t do it without a whole lot of hassle and argument and lawsuits. “The poll of 1,000 adults was taken Dec. 12-14 and has a margin of…” Who cares what the margin of error is? “The growing popularity of the Internet is not keeping shoppers away from the stores, the poll suggested… Mailing traditional Christmas cards remains very popular, though not as much among young people. Those over 50 were much more likely to have sent traditional Christmas cards, than those in the 18-to-29 year age group.” The bottom line: AP Sunday here that so much tradition thrives and lives at Christmastime, so much so that they felt the need to do a story about it.