During the holiday season, most people are filled with
goodwill.
Except for me.
My fellow political aficionados will understand what I mean.
As your family sips eggnog together Christmas Day, it will be
impossible not to rub the recent congressional defeat into your
Republican uncle’s face.
And your vegetarian cousin who insists on wearing clothes made
only of hemp? Let the hippie-liberal jokes roll.
So if making fun of your friends’ and family
members’ political differences sounds like a jollier time
than putting them aside, the following gift guide is for you.
For the Right:
Send your conservative acquaintances a pint of frozen goodies
from the Star Spangled Ice Cream Company.
The enticing flavors, such as “Smaller Governmint”
and “Cherry Falwell,” which you can find at
starspangledicecream.com, will taste even better once you tell the
recipient that 10 percent of the profits are donated to the
troops.
I’m planning to send my uncle some the day before the 2008
presidential election ““ hopefully he’ll go into a sugar
coma and not be able to make it to a polling place.
For the extreme right-wingers on your list, give a subscription
to RUSH 24/7 ““ a feature on Rush Limbaugh’s Web site
that allows the subscriber full access to all of the material
Limbaugh features on his show. It gets better ““ you can even
watch and listen to him live on the Internet as he makes a fool of
himself during his radio broadcasts.
And really, $59.90 for a year’s worth of insightful,
prescription drug-inspired rants is a great bargain. Also, a nice
present for the liberal conspiracy theorist who’d like to get
into the enemy’s head.
For the Left:
Your wild Democratic girlfriends will appreciate the scandalous
and witty lingerie available at cafepress.com.
The “I shave because I don’t like Bush” thong
will be sure to raise eyebrows when it’s unwrapped on
Christmas morning.
And since hating Bush is the only message Dems can seem to agree
upon, it’ll please all of your liberal friends.
For the dreadlocked nature lovers in your life, a gift
certificate to Whole Foods is sure to please.
They’ll feel good about being overcharged for their
purchases as they buy pesticide-free fruits and veggies for the
sake of saving the environment.
Bonus: If they do their shopping in Hollywood, your tree-hugging
friends can admire the two Hummers they parked between as they load
their groceries into the car.
For the children:
It’s never too early to begin inundating your nieces and
nephews with political rhetoric.
If tolerance, gay rights and making the world way more
complicated than it needs to be for a 6-year-old is on your
personal agenda, the 10th-anniversary edition of “Heather Has
Two Mommies” is now available at Amazon.com.
If you’d rather spread paranoia than holiday cheer,
however, you can pick up a copy of, “Help! Mom! There Are
Liberals Under My Bed!,” a heartwarming tale of two kids who
start a lemonade stand. And then the government taxes all their
money away and steals their portrait of Jesus ““ also
conveniently available from Amazon.com.
Reality is harsh ““ but the youngins will have to face it
some time or another.
For those who couldn’t really care less:
We can’t, of course, forget the jaded politicos, the ones
who began as young idealists but now refuse to vote or do their
taxes because it’s the government’s way of controlling
us.
A “Property of Colbert Nation” T-Shirt from
Colbertnation.com will be the only thing he needs to declare his
disinterest and announce his apathy to the world.
Nothing says cynicism like wearing Stephen Colbert’s logo
across your chest.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a good-natured rivalry will
tell you there is never an excuse to give your enemy a break, and
the holidays are no exception.
So the next time a newscaster smiles at you from your television
and declares that it’s time to put all this partisanship
behind us and come together to work toward common grounds,
don’t fall for it.
It’s just the other side trying to throw you off
guard.
Send your holiday tidings or political jabs to Strickland at
kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.