I Hope We Find God Again by Ben Stein

Many people fence that Thanksgiving is the official starting time of the vacation season. Others believe that it commences with the first spins of the Phil Spector Christmas album. Some initiate the countdown when the massive tree arrives at Rockefeller Center. More recently, people have started thinking of Yuletide when Starbucks brews Gingerbread Lattes.

I at present take my own Christmas alert: a steady trickle of emails such every bit this:

Mr. Levy: I want to personally give thanks you for having the courage to share this with the earth. Outstanding commentary so true. Y'all hit information technology correct on the money. . . I give thanks Jesus every twenty-four hour period for my life. Thanks once more. We demand more than loving and thoughtful people in this world such every bit you.

These have been popping up with increasing frequency in my end-of-year inbox. Some are brief thank-yous. Others come on as if their writers have known me all my life, better than the people who actually do know me. All of them are appreciative.

And a few wonder whether I am actually the real author of "My Confession," a deranged rant near the "State of war on Christmas" widely circulated on electronic mail chains and websites including "Anglican Mainstream," "Box of Chocolates," and "Celebrities for Christ."

The answer is no. Even though the message describes the writer equally the tech journalist Steven Levy. Even though untold thousands have shared a version via email that is accompanied by my old Wikipedia picture. Fifty-fifty though ane of the more pop websites that carries the screed — and there are a agglomeration of them—describes itself equally "providing y'all with trustworthy news and information."

No. I did not go on CBS Sunday Morning to express my rage at the White House for calling its almanac fir a "holiday tree." I did not say, "I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians similar getting pushed effectually for being Christians."

I did not contend that the Founding Fathers embraced the concept of Christian doctrine in public schools. I did not launch an attack on Madeline Murray O'Hair in detail, and atheists in general, for opposing prayer in schools. Nor did I imply that she had what was coming to her when she was murdered.

I did not impugn Doctor Spock for telling people non to spank their children, and I certainly don't remember that his son committed suicide because of insufficient corporal penalisation. Nor practice I retrieve that if we hit our kids more ofttimes and more than lustily, the murder rate would drop.

In short, I had nothing to practice with this, although in the minds of I don't know how many people — and I suspect it's a lot — I take everything to exercise with it. The list apparently included my stepfather-in-law, who once forwarded me an e-mail in the chain without comment. Judging from the subject line he too forwarded it to a bunch of his friends. This was one of the versions with my picture on it.

I have get somewhat of a scholar regarding the various versions of "My Confession."

Serial circulators take seen fit to alter information technology to their tastes, excising or appending certain passage, evolving it in the mode of an Appalachian ballad or a Greek epic poem. There are probably more variations to it than the text of one of Shakespeare's tragedies.

When I sought to detect the origin of this missive, the answer came unexpectedly rapidly. "My Confession" has been sufficiently circulated to become its own vetting by self-appointed referees of digital hogwash like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. It was at Snopes that I learned a scrap almost the tiny germ of truth that grew out of control on the Cyberspace.

It began, indeed, on CBS Sunday Morning News on the 18th of December in 2005. The guest was not yours truly but actor Ben Stein, plain occupying the Andy Rooney "get-off-my-lawn" chair. Host Charles Osgood teed him up by offer him a take a chance to share some holiday thoughts, and Stein launched into a heated invective nigh a seasonally themed People magazine cover with Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. Really, he didn't know their last names, but he was outraged that People magazine thought he should. He didn't care about Nick and Jessica, he exclaimed, nor did he intendance nigh Tom Cruise's baby. Even if he were hauled before a Congressional subcommittee and called a destructive, he wouldn't back downward on this.

Now that Stein had a caput of steam, he uttered the word that would later exist circulated under my name, virtually non liking being pushed around equally a Jew and not liking Christians being pushed effectually.

He volunteered that, despite his religion, he didn't listen people referring to their bejeweled firs as Christmas trees, nor did he mind a manger on public display nigh his beach dwelling in Malibu. He also gave a mention that the Constitution didn't favor atheists (skating past that part near "no establishment of religion"), and announced that he was sick of atheists being shoved down his pharynx — simply like People mag was shoving Nick and Jessica downward his throat? And why are we allowed to worship Nick and Jessica in America and not God? What's happened to America?

I'one thousand non exaggerating. The erstwhile Nixon speechwriter who played the boring teacher in F erris Bueller's Day Off really said that stuff on national television, before cable news made such rants commonplace. You can read the transcript in the Snopes account.

At ane point in history outbursts such as this were viewed and quickly forgotten. But Stein's bluster was transcribed and circulated, at to the lowest degree as widely as possible before Facebook's News Feed appeared. And thus people began to tinker with it. The Snopes investigation (why oasis't those people won a Pulitzer?) discovered that some additional textile — the O'Hare and Spock stuff — came from a TV appearance on the CBS Early Show by Billy Graham's daughter, virtually Hurricane Katrina. When the host asked her, "How could this happen?" she attributed the weather disaster to atheists opposing school prayer and Dr. Spock's communication non to striking our kids.

Naturally, this was a perfect addition to the Stein bluster. Kudos to the anonymous genius who figured that out. Later, after reports (inaccurate, every bit it turns out) that in 2009 the Obamas eschewed the term "Christmas tree," that nonexistent insult was cited equally the impetus for the confession.

What I cannot rail is but where and when Ben Stein'due south name dropped out and mine replaced it. All I know is that at some more recent point — probably at the tail stop of last flavor— I started getting emails from grateful readers of something I never wrote, and when I Google my name and "War on Christmas," weird things show up. And that the e-mail concatenation is unbroken. Probably as you lot read this some number of people are clicking on it and vowing to pass information technology on to their friends.

What tin I do about information technology? Basically, nil. The Net is a vast lawn with billions of mole-holes. You lot can't whack a trouble similar this away.

This year has been a tough one for the Internet. We haven't recovered from the Snowden revelations. Some truly odious computer malefactors have stolen all of Sony's corporate files — perhaps in an try to kill a cinematic satire of 1 of the globe's most dreadful despots? — and have enlisted willing journalists to trumpet the gaffes and intrigues within. The lesson is that probably every undercover nosotros express on the Internet — and some secrets we don't — is decumbent to exposure. Simply enquire Jennifer Lawrence. And the shameful hazing of simply about whatever female who dares express an opinion on Twitter continues.

In comparison, my own lilliputian gripe is inconsequential. Even kind of funny. A little.

I exercise try to dispel the myth, with pocket-size and futile gestures. When people write to thank me for eloquently expressing a sentiment they believe in, I politely allow them know it wasn't me. I refrain from letting them know the extent to which my own heart and mind differs from theirs. Sometimes I slip; when they conflate the message I did not deliver with an animus towards our president, I let them know I voted for the guy and don't regret information technology.

And then sometimes there are letters like the one I got today. A self-described "old" woman wrote that she appreciated my comments, save for one signal — my insistence (which I never insisted on, but she didn't know) that religion be reintroduced in schools. She was orphaned as a child, she explained, and placed in a Catholic institution where nuns forced a strict doctrine on her and forced her to pray in words that meant very little to her. It was painful to be told that the teachings of her parents and other adults in her culture were wrong. She well-nigh came to hate religion. Later, however, she did adopt a Christian cadre of belief. This, she explained, was confirmed by an experience she had afterwards in life as a professional person:

I was stationed solitary in a country where Christianity is forbidden and punishable. I was a petty sad simply was used to that. On Christmas Eve someone knocked and when I opened the door a high level official from that land stood in that location with his manus behind his back. Later on the usual formal greetings, I waited with a questioning look and he produced a lovely miniature Christmas tree. My reflex was to step dorsum. I guess he expected this because he smiled and reassured me information technology was non a trap. He know I was alone while working his country and he felt I deserved this small souvenir on my special day.

I might have been lone in the house that Christmas but I did not feel lonely. I followed my star and had go a citizen of the world. Information technology was a wonderful feeling in a non then wonderful life. I wish this to everyone.

To that email, I did not requite my standard denial. Let the Paris orphan think she had reached a kindred soul. Possibly more kindred than she knew. My own holiday souvenir to her — directly from my little Jewish enclave in Greenwich Hamlet — is silence.

Happy holiday, everyone!

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Source: https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-i-became-an-unwilling-conscript-in-the-war-on-christmas/

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