I never watch Fox News but that clip made me realize why I'm always having to answer bizarre questions about how I can cope with living in A DEMOCRAT RUN CITY.
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:29 PM on December 9 [46 favorites]

"It's about the holiday season, it's about Jesus, it's about Hannukah, it's about everything we stand for as a country..."

...and this trigger, and this dog whistle, oh and this one over here too
posted by vverse23 at 6:30 PM on December 9 [37 favorites]

Leave it to Fox to get a fake tree that's at least as flammable as a real one.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:30 PM on December 9 [14 favorites]

"It's about the holiday season, it's about Jesus, it's about Hannukah, it's about everything we stand for as a country..."

this vast fake tree covered in bright sparkly lights
posted by philip-random at 6:32 PM on December 9 [10 favorites]

They're so upset about this "tree" burning, but apparently Oregon and California trees can just burn, burn, burn in the millions of acres. Trees that actually look like they could be giant Christmas trees. Guess it's because there are "Democrat run cities" in those states. Except for the most part, those very wooded, very rural areas are deeply, deeply conservative.
posted by tllaya at 6:33 PM on December 9 [23 favorites]

it's difficult to overimagine the sheer glitter fallout of a war on christmas
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:44 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

Will Fox assign armed security full-time to defend next year's festive display? Only if they find someone else to pay for it.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:00 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

Rhetorically it's a shame that it didn't happen a day earlier, on December 7th, so that some hyperventilating Fox talking head could have tried to pronounce it "Pearl Harbor in the War on Christmas" with a straight face.
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:07 PM on December 9 [3 favorites]

Nerd of the North, you need to have a little more faith about how deep Fox will gladly plunge.
posted by miguelcervantes at 7:12 PM on December 9 [17 favorites]

Fox 0, goat 1
posted by flabdablet at 7:28 PM on December 9 [13 favorites]

To be fair to FOX News, at least it wasn't a burning cross.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:33 PM on December 9 [3 favorites]

So what are the odds the replacement tree also gets torched and that this becomes an annual tradition?
posted by interogative mood at 7:40 PM on December 9 [27 favorites]

please please please
posted by flabdablet at 7:43 PM on December 9 [8 favorites]

i love the optics suggested of a bunch of bearded tacticool volunteer meal-team-6 cultees standing guard around the tree with black rifles but it being nyc or whereever i guess we wont be getting that
posted by glonous keming at 7:48 PM on December 9 [6 favorites]

They should’ve raked more.
posted by panglos at 7:52 PM on December 9 [54 favorites]

Cervantes beat me to it.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:57 PM on December 9 [1 favorite]

Stephen Colbert brings the schadenfreude and also emphasizes that the fire wasn't politically motivated (opening 3:45).
posted by dannyboybell at 8:16 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

Nerd of the North, you need to have a little more faith about how deep Fox will gladly plunge.

Of course I do. What was I thinking?

The best part of that clip is watching the guy mangle his own metaphor in realtime. "80 years ago this week, they tried to extinguish the darkness in a place called Pearl Harbor. We didn’t fold then, and we won't fold now!"
posted by Nerd of the North at 8:38 PM on December 9 [14 favorites]

I love Tucker Carlson so much that it defies belief.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:01 PM on December 9

rarely is the question asked. is our conifers burning
posted by lalochezia at 9:03 PM on December 9 [15 favorites]

needs a Disco inferno arm wavey Flanders .GIF
posted by clavdivs at 9:52 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

So what are the odds the replacement tree also gets torched and that this becomes an annual tradition?

beats having to truck off to the Nevada desert and get bombarded with trance music for a week. And this might actually mean something.
posted by philip-random at 10:04 PM on December 9 [6 favorites]

The Gävle Fox
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:15 PM on December 9 [6 favorites]

Something something crisis arsonist.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:37 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

I'm Jewish and I've seen a kind of backlash-to-rightwing-fuckery response from my fellow Jewish folks sometimes on Twitter about how Judaism and Christianity have absolutely 0% nothing in common and I think that's a little silly.

That said.

FOX NEWS, DO NOT LUMP HANNUKAH IN WITH YOUR BULLSHIT.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 11:54 PM on December 9 [14 favorites]

"Of course, this would never have happened if the tree had a gun." - Stephen Colbert in the clip linked above.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:52 AM on December 10 [19 favorites]

"no one can burn down the spirit of Christmas !"

Heard that, commies ?
posted by nicolin at 2:07 AM on December 10

*wipes sweat off brow* When I posted this I was hoping for funny, but was a bit worried. Honestly I would be angry if this wasn't so amazingly, fantastically stupid, but I'm glad everyone is more or less on my wavelength.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:40 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

Christmas is still winning the war.
posted by coldhotel at 3:50 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

"This city has gone South when it comes to safety. We don't feel safe coming to work in the morning."

Bullshit. You ride to work in your chauffeured SUV and enter your high-rise office building through the parking garage in the basement.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 4:56 AM on December 10 [11 favorites]

Christmas is still winning the war.

Well, they haven’t withdrawn from their illegal occupation of November yet.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:02 AM on December 10 [53 favorites]

You ride to work in your chauffeured SUV and enter your high-rise office building through the parking garage in the basement.

They mean they occasionally see people of color anyway, and their audience no doubt fully gets that message.

The conservative stance for decades has been that people who live in cities -- that is, the vast majority of the US population -- are not Real Americans.
posted by Gelatin at 5:13 AM on December 10 [10 favorites]

...Judaism and Christianity have absolutely 0% nothing in common...

Christianity as practiced in America would be nearly unrecognizable to Jesus himself. So given as it's a radical departure from a religion that itself was a radical departure from Judaism, and then Judaism was given another 2000 years to grow...well maybe it's not 0%, but it's not that silly of a claim.
posted by explosion at 5:33 AM on December 10 [3 favorites]

Hey I noticed they left out an Abrahamic religion, why would they do that.
posted by condour75 at 5:43 AM on December 10 [43 favorites]

Let us never forget the miracle of baby Jesus being born beneath the Douglas fir in the desert.
posted by hwyengr at 6:43 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

Fox News knows real trees don't make for great TV. Conspiracy at 11.
posted by parmanparman at 7:00 AM on December 10

I have been thinking about this for a while, and have come to the conclusion that someone at Fox News egged on a homeless person to burn down the tree so they could have something to be outraged about and something something ratings.

I mean, there really is no anti-Christmas feeling in NYC, ever, and mid-town is full of Christmas decorations and trees and popup markets, and hardly anybody remembers that Fox News HQ is there.
posted by maggiemaggie at 7:00 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

it’s about the holiday season, it’s about Jesus, it’s about Hannukah

Strangely, they forgot to mention شب یلدا.
posted by wachhundfisch at 7:33 AM on December 10 [5 favorites]

In all seriousness, Hanukkah jokes aside, FOX also forgets to mention the roots of tree worship in pagan tradition, some of which now overlaps with white supremacist movements in their current incarnations. It isn't coincidence that pagan symbology was on open display on flags and tattoos by January 6 terrorist branches.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:51 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

I saw mention of "pre-black Friday deals" before Halloween this year, Thanksgiving is no longer holding the line in the War of Christmas Aggression. Let's pray it never gets a foothold in July.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 7:53 AM on December 10 [6 favorites]

Let's pray it never gets a foothold in July.

Too late... They are coming from the South in a pincer-move with their allies at North Pole... (I have only seen this in AU/NZ)
posted by rozcakj at 9:06 AM on December 10 [1 favorite]

I noticed this year that there was no real pretense of waiting until after Thanksgiving when it came to merchandising, but I thought that might have been in anticipation of supply chain lag. When the complaints about "Democrat run cities" come in, I've become morbidly curious about what the other kind would even look like. Even SLC appears to lean blue.
posted by Selena777 at 10:31 AM on December 10

Ever seen Escape from New York?
posted by Horkus at 2:03 PM on December 10 [3 favorites]

Christianity as practiced in America would be nearly unrecognizable to Jesus himself.

"If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.

— Max von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:38 PM on December 10 [6 favorites]

All Fox News needs is a laugh track and it would shoot to the top of the comedy charts in an instant.
posted by dg at 1:14 PM on December 12

Janet: "Not a tree."
posted by mikelieman at 4:49 PM on December 12

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