Fox News hasn’t found time to cover the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting but there was plenty of time to lament what the lower third called a “P.C. scrub down” at a Brooklyn public school that has banned Santa.
Apparently, the school, which FoxNews.com reports is 95% Asian or Hispanic, is just too sensitive to those Asian students.
A memo last month from assistant principal Jose Chaparro suggested a “harvest festival instead of Thanksgiving or a winter celebration instead of a Christmas party.” He urged staff to “be sensitive of the diversity of our families. Not all children celebrate the same holidays.”
But when Fox & Friends discussed this outrage (sure to be rehashed on other Fox News shows), they didn’t mention how many of the students may be non-Christians or the children of immigrants.
Instead, cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck complained that Christmas is “not the only classic that’s getting the boot.” Along with Thanksgiving being called “harvest festival,” she said the Pledge of Allegiance “has been scrapped completely.”
Cohost Steve Doocy said, “All these changes came with this new principal.” He and guest Mimi Ferrer, president of the PTA at Brooklyn's P.S. 169, said the principal’s Asian name and showed a photo of her. It was only done so that Fox viewers could give her a piece of their collective Christmas spirit, I’m sure.
“You’re such a brave mom to stand up for what you want for your kids,” Hasselbeck told Ferrer. And while Hasselbeck had no curiosity for how kids at Sandy Hook might be doing after a massacre at their school, she was all concern for the difficulties in Brooklyn. “How are the kids reacting to no Santa, no Pledge?” she asked.
As the segment ended, Doocy asked Ferrer, “Will you keep us posted, see if anything changes?” Of course, what he meant was, “Let’s see if anything changes now that we’ve publicly shamed and pressured the principal."
In a post written several hours after Fox & Friends aired, Media Matters wrote, "Despite being mentioned on other cable news networks, the three year anniversary of the (Sandy Hook) shooting has not yet been mentioned on Fox News in its programming through 2 P.M. EST, according to a Media Matters analysis of internal video archives."
On Fox News, the removal of Santa from one school is a more important trauma than a mass shooting in another one.
Watch it below, from the December 14 Fox & Friends.
Have Yourself a Bill O’Reilly Christmas
On your facts be light,
Bill O’s here and all the booze is out of sight,
Have Yourself a Bill O’Reilly Christmas,
Bash the weak and gays,
Bill O’s here and all the booze has gone astray,
There we were back in olden days,
Happy long lost days before
Rush Limbaugh came on the tube,
Now we’re fed up with the bore,
Though his show seems to go on forever,
Like a drunkard’s row,
Hang your iPod high upon the highest bough,
And have yourself a Bill O’Reilly Christmas now.
:^)
