NOt sure if this was posted anywhere, but it is Ben Stein's piece (I am told) from CBS 'Sunday Morning' on Christmas Day

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Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

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Even before FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, I loved Ben Stein.

He's a smart cookie.

He was one of Richard Nixon's speech writers. :mad:

No wonder he went into comedy.

Happy New Year, all of you.

There's more to it than that, Elsp. Living offspring were the Social Security of the era. Enough nephews would be almost as good for keeping you in your old age as a few sons. The widow with no adult sons was in a world of hurt, shekel-wise, and this was a continuing problem through the first century and beyond.

Here in Boulder the Christmas Parade was renamed December Lights Festival. I'm a Witch, but I deliberately went caroling in the Pearl Street mall and telling people Merry Christmas because this PC crap pisses me off.

Happy Yuletide

Evidently it continues in the 21st century :eyebrow:

I was talking about your descendants being your retirement plan, not "honor killings." That should go in another thread, I think.

We were talking about doing the wife's sister or brother's wife in this case. ;)

And it's hard to see the intent here to make descendants because...?

Because it's the 21st century not the first, which was my point. :p

And I was talking about the first, which was my point. :p

That's your problem.... well one of them....you're 2000 years behind.
You rant about what a great idea it was for women to be handed off, to be knocked up for their own social security, in the 1st century.
When I pointed out it still goes on, you say it's not about honor killings. Obviously you didn't read past the headline and immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.
It must be Urbane W. Guerrilla. :rtfm:

Rant about what a great idea...? You have confused me with someone else, Bruce -- AFAIK, someone who has not even posted on this thread. My sole remark was that it was done this way, back then, and before. I read the honor-killing article linked, and made no remark on it, as you will doubtless see when you check. Have fun with your strawman, but I think you can leave me out of that.