**LINK FIXED**

The war on Christmas music has taken a strange turn, with the mainstream media finally up in arms at the overly PC handling of the holiday’s song lyrics.  But it isn’t the constant barrage from uber-sensitive atheists trying to eliminate every reference to Christmas from our schools and public places that has them fired up.

No, it’s an elementary teacher in Michigan that has raised their ire.

The flurry of controversy arose when the teacher, weary of hearing her students giggling every time they had to sing the words ‘gay apparel’ during their rendition of “Deck The Halls,” decided to replace the word ‘gay’ with ‘bright’.

The reception from the media, as you may have heard, was rather chilly.

What you may not have heard covered in the MSM was an essay penned by one Colin Curran, a 16-year-old high school junior from New Jersey.  Taking to the Huffington Post during this same time period, Colin told a story about a high school assignment which involved creating a music playlist for a young children’s holiday breakfast.  There was one catch – none of the songs could contain a certain set of offending words, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Jesus, God, or Santa Claus.  The reason, Colin explains, is that the “principal does not want to offend anyone with belief-specific music.”

Google Colin’s name under the news section and it reveals a single hit, having nothing to do with the student from New Jersey.  Google ‘bright apparel’ and it’s a whole different ballgame.

Here is a sampling of some of the coverage:

The Daily Mail

“Parents thought the Cherry Knoll teacher had been naughty and not so nice when the elementary instructor replaced ‘gay’ with ‘bright’ after her students wouldn’t stop laughing when they sang the word.”

MSNBC

“Use it as a teaching moment or just tell the kids to pipe down and sing the song as written.”

Dan Savage

“Someone had to straighten out that carol – can’t have children donning gay apparel.”

Huffington Post

“A Michigan music teacher’s decision to censor the word ‘gay’ from a traditional Christmas carol is being met with a frosty response.”

Fox Nation

“A traditional Christmas carol is at the center of controversy at a TCAPS elementary school.”

Of course, the school’s principal, Chris Parker, didn’t miss an opportunity to crank the PC up a notch by calling this a ‘teachable moment’ for student and teacher alike.

In a report for ABC 57 News, Parker doubles down on his overreaction saying:

“We have an anti-bullying and discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and so going forward, the teacher will be addressing ‘this is how we’re supposed to be reacting.  This is the way to be respectful about this.’”

The amount of attention being heaped upon the “Deck the Halls” nontroversy and the lack of attention being paid to the omission of Christmas altogether from a music playlist in New Jersey are striking.

(more…)

In a recent column I wrote for Irish Examiner USA, I mentioned an email I received that was politically correct but that I thought was very funny. I debated including it in the column but decided against it for the sake of my publisher.

Apparently we’re no longer allowed to laugh at anything remotely unflattering to ourselves or certain minorities, and that’s not only a shame, it’s downright dangerous.

Joan Rivers used to tell jokes about Italians; Don Rickles insulted everybody, and Jackie Mason still tells jokes about Jews. Now it seems as if some Hispanics are now being encouraged to be as testy over slights as are certain Muslims over perceived disses of the prophet Mohammed.

Here at Big Journalism, however, the mission should be to write about things too edgy for the MSM so here it is and if you’re black or Hispanic and get offended, you need to check your humor level. You may be a few quarts low. (more…)

Well, surprise, surprise. The Media Research Center released a study yesterday that says by a margin of twelve to one, the coverage has been heavily negative: ABC, CBS, and NBC all are ripping Arizona’s immigration law.  Anyone who follows this site or others like it won’t find this figure shocking, but it does illustrate how a law in one individual state (remember that Federalism thing?) that’s quite popular with the American people can create such controversy. Guess  it doesn’t really matter what the people think when the media is a subsidiary of Big Brother.

So here’s how it works: the media takes a popular law that doesn’t fit perfectly with their PC mindset, they lie about it, rinse and repeat, get The Man himself to weigh in, and presto!  The law suddenly becomes “controversial.”

Now, there is a debate to be had on this law, and there is some inherent controversy in it to be sure, but the media hysteria certainly makes for a teachable moment in just how biased the media can be when they put their minds to it.

From the article: (more…)