Comedy CentralForget the economy. Forget unemployment. Forget political corruption and foreign affairs and civil rights and the Obamacare website. There is only one news topic we should be discussing: The War on Christmas.
Yesterday, Megyn Kelly of Fox News' The Kelly File took a break from reporting the "news" to make some of her own, when she said, "Santa just is white." It was in response to a Slate item by Aisha Harris, a black woman, advocating for a more inclusive depiction of Santa Claus.
She also noted that Jesus is white. He just is.
Now, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has responded to Kelly, as well as Fox New's Gretch Carlson and her hatred of Festivus ("Who gives a s--t?"), in the segment, "War on Christmas - S#@t's Getting Weird Edition." It's everything we wanted it to be and more.
During her rant, Megyn Kelly repeatedly reassured her child viewers that Santa was not only very much real, but also very much white. An aside we pointed out in our original item. But Stewart got even more to the point:
"Who are you actually talking to?" he asked. "Children who are sophisticated enough to be watching a news channel at 10:00 at night, yet innocent enough to still believe Santa Claus is real, yet racist enough to be freaked out if he isn't white? That's such a narrow audience!"
He goes on to address Monica Crowley, who was also on the panel, explaining, "There is so much crazy goin on here...that I don't have time to deal with a Fox News pundit saying, ‘You can't change facts and try to change them to fit some kind of political agenda.' That's how much crazy is going on here!"
He continues, on the subject of St. Nicholas being a historical Greek bishop, "She's suggesting that you can't just arbitrarily change the facts about the real historical St. Nicholas, who was a white man even though he was from Greece, which is actually Turkey today. And that white man lives at the North Pole and drives a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. But you can't change the facts about it."
And the facts, as provided by Vatican-funded study, show that St. Nicholas was—spoiler alert—not white! So Stewart turns to Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams to clarify Crowley's comments.
"If white people feel uncomfortable, we have to change it. And then pretend that's the way it's always been," she explains. "First you fix history, then you lock that s--t down. Forever."
Aisha Harris, the writer of the original Slate op-ed, wrote a follow up on the site titled, "What Fox News Doesn't Understand About Santa Claus." In short, what it appears Megyn Kelly doesn't understand is that Santa isn't real.
"Santa as we know him today is the result of wild imaginations and creative input from many people across centuries...He's utterly divorced from his religious and historical roots," Harris writes, noting that Fox News "didn't bother" to reach out to her.
She concludes, "If you're seriously emphatic that he is white and must remain white, there's a good chance that your view of the rest of the world is just as limited and unimaginative."