Happy Holidays Bill-O

Well, another year has come and almost gone, so it’s time to fire up the traditions that begin with Thanksgiving Day football and end in a puddle of sick on New Year’s Day.

Next week those if us who are still employed and have not lost our homes, get to sit around and enjoy our thankfultude until the end of December, when we get to think about how fattening being thankful is and vow to change our ways until the big block of pseudo-religious holidays returns next year.

I’m not much of a religious person and my holiday celebrations tend toward the secular, sans the Disney-fied, shop-o-rama that has come to mark the American celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus.

There was a day when they were downright hedonistic, but now that I am a college graduate and respectable journalist, I’ve traded in my toga and sandals for an occasional pair of pants and shoes, with a lifestyle to match.

So in the hopeful spirit of the season, I offer a partial list of the things for which I am thankful, in one handy place for ease of ridicule.

First, I’m thankful to live in a country that values education, even though now that I have a degree I’m making less than when I was a truck driver. I managed to get out of SSU just in time for the system of higher education to become a hollow shell of what it once was, thanks to several decades of Reaganomics and trickle-down economic policy.

Looking at it from the outside, one might think that we really don’t value education, what with all the talk about Liberal elites thinking they’re smarter than Joe Sixpack, but we live in America, where innovation and individual effort will pull us out of our impending economic doom. Just as soon as the next season of “American Idol” is over.

I’m also thankful for media bozo Bill O’Reilly who exposed the Liberal “War on X-mas” and gave me a place to focus my righteous secular anger every year.

O’Reilly’s right. We are trying to destroy Christmas. Who really needs time off to hang around with family anyway? Most of them end up getting too drunk and puking on the carpet anyway.

Personally, I’d like to see the holidays turn into a time when we all wear the gray uniforms of the state and celebrate by yelling hateful anti-everything slogans in front of the teevee on X-mas Eve.

Next, I’m thankful to John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, thus proving that the citizens of this great land of ours are not as stupid as the past few decades have led me to believe. Their loss showed me there is still hope that one day we might find our way out of this fog that we’ve allowed ourselves to descend into.

Ms. Palin may prove to be the final nail in the coffin of a wing of Republican Party that has risen to power through a 30-year campaign based on divisive social issues and name calling. Sure we still live in a one-party state, but soon I may no longer have to listen to nasty fundamentalists like Pat Robertson tell me I’m going to hell for not hating the gays enough.

In that vein, I’m also thankful to the Second Bush Administration. Sure, we may be teetering on the brink of financial collapse, and our reputation and moral authority has been shattered the world over. Oh, and environmental policy, scientific research, education and most other measures of civilization may be in tatters, but were it not for Bush II, John Kerry might be president and it would be the Democratic Party on the verge of extinction rather than the Republicans.

I am also thankful for Barack Obama. Despite the fact that I would have much rather voted for Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader, Obama has allowed me a brief respite from the bitter political cynicism that has practically smothered me since the long-gone days of the Dean Campaign.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about how he’s a Socialist and a Muslim — mostly by people who understand neither concept — but to me Barack Obama represents what it means to be an American.

He rose up from his humble beginnings and succeeded despite the odds against him. He was able to do that by working his way through an Ivy League school to become one of the brightest minds on the U.S. Senate.

Finally, I think we can all be thankful that it’s not next year when things are likely to be much worse despite all the change we can believe in.
Black Friday — the real traditional American holiday — has not looked so black in many years.