...and the fun continues as Rosie picks another victim
Rosie's Latest Target Is 'Intoxicated' Abdul
O'Donnell Leads Criticism Against 'Idol's Nasty Edge [and she would know 'nasty']
By BUCK WOLF
ABCNews.com
Rosie O'Donnell is one of the 37 million TV viewers watching "American Idol," but don't count her among those who liked what they saw.
One Week Into Season, the Scandals Start Only two episodes in and judges are already accused of going too far. For the second day in a row, "The View" co-host suggested Paula Abdul was drinking during the show and lashed out at the show for making fun of the people auditioning. O'Donnell and her co-hosts played a clip from Wednesday night's "Idol," in which a contestant, following an off-key audition, was roundly mocked and rejected by the judges.
"That's compassion for you," O'Donnell said. "Isn't that what America thinks is entertainment, to make fun of someone's physical appearance? And then, when they leave the room, laugh hysterically at them -- three millionaires, one probably intoxicated." O'Donnell had joked about Abdul's demeanor a day earlier. "Paula was very thirsty last night," she said.
Spokesman: Abdul 'Never Drinks'
Abdul's spokesman, Jeff Ballard, denied his client had a drinking problem last week, after online video emerged of Abdul slurring her speech and acting strangely while promoting "American Idol" in a string of satellite interviews.
Ballard said Abdul was simply fatigued last Thursday from the intense publicity campaign for the sixth season. "She was exhausted," Ballard told Reuters. "This was at the end of three days of press interviews and appearances, and she has had cameras following her around for a reality TV show too."
Ballard was referring to a new documentary series now in production about the star's life. "She was sitting in a room with just a camera and a mic on, and the controllers dropped the sound twice, which is why she rolled her eyes."
The 44-year-old Abdul canceled all media interviews the following day, saying that she had a sore throat after sitting in the chilly studio Thursday. "She never drinks," Ballard said. "I have known Paula Abdul since she was 13, and I have never seen her drink ever in my life. ... And no, she is not on any kind of medication."
Left Brain, Right Brain, Why Are Women So Different From Men? --UPDATE!
By Mary Grabar
After watching The View and following the inane statements made on the program, I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is true what Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton said: Women, without male guidance, are illogical, frivolous, and incapable of making any decisions beyond what to make for dinner.
We’ve seen what happens when women put their professionally styled heads together and make statements about current events. A few months ago, Rosie O’Donnell said, “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam,” and earlier this week show regular Joy Behar compared Donald Rumsfeld to Adolf Hitler.
But every burned-out hippie I’ve talked to since 2001 has been making the comparisons between the Bush administration and the Nazis. O’Donnell and Behar could have gotten their talking points from the bright leaflets of every communist youth group that’s been hoping to organize a day to “stop business as usual” and proclaiming in apocalyptic terms the dangers of the Bush administration to the very survival of the “planet.” They also agitate for the legalization of marijuana.
Such statements are becoming quite tedious.
Rosie, getting louder with each passing segment of "The View."
--------------------------------------------
But, on Jan. 9, we read:
Let's Get This Party Started
It's War!!!
TMZ Staff
A full-out battle between Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters has broken out at "The View" over the Donald and his Rosie-bashing.
Rosie lashed out at boss Babwa yesterday morning in a pre-show dressing-room bitch-off, calling her "a [bleeping] liar," according to Page Six, and was furious with Walters for not sticking up for her during the Rosie-Trump feud of the last two weeks.
When Walters saw Rosie yesterday morning, a couple of hours before "The View" aired, she tried to hug Ro – but Rosie, who'd been on vacation over the holidays, wouldn't touch her. And, according to the Post, she fumed, "You didn't call me for 10 g**damn days ... You never called [Donald] a liar."
Then, on yesterday's show, Babwa proceeded to brand Trump as such, which prompted the Donald to tell 'EXTRA,' "Barbara lied, as she knows very well." Rosie and Walters' rep says it was "hardly a squabble" and that everyone has "moved on."
------------------------------------------------
But it’s a sign of our crumbling civilization that a bunch of girls of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds, sitting around all dressed up for a coffee klatch, some of them with cleavage spilling out of Victoria’s Secret Infinity Edge Push-Up bras, spout off opinions borrowed from disturbed teenagers and Michael Moore, and call it a talk show.
This was the danger of giving women the vote. The danger to conservatives (and the survival of this country) is the voting bloc of single women, i.e., those who lack the guidance of a man in the form of a husband or intellectual mentor.
These are women who pride themselves on being independent and empowered when they dress like prostitutes (look at the view of cleavage on the View!). These are the women who watch the View. These are the women who support Hillary Rodham Clinton. These are the women on the show who ask Senator Clinton questions like “Do you think being a mom will help you in the White House?” as they did on December 20. These are the women who think it matters that a potential presidential candidate waxes on about the same themes in her re-released book, It Takes a Village: that preschool programs need to be expanded, that working parents should have time off to take care of their kids. This is the potential presidential candidate who was applauded on the show for allowing one of her staff members to bring in her baby’s playpen.
This is a woman who started off with a discussion about how much she likes to do crafts at Christmas time.
Yes, I can imagine: we’ll have playpens and parenting classes and crafts classes in the new Clinton White House, maybe even a special prayer room for the Muslims and breaks five times a day for them. This will bring peace to the world by setting an example, for all the terrorists will supposedly drop their weapons in awe of this “village.” Hillary’s answer to the Iraq question was that she wanted the country to have a “conversation” again. What--like the one they have on The View?
News flash: there are fanatics who want to annihilate us and Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking about crafts and “conversations.”
The other guest was Kaye Ballard. Her newsworthy item was that she had slept twice with the late Marlon Brando. The question “Was he good?” posed by I forget who was not answered. Ballard just said she loved Brando but then talked about her four dogs: “They’re my life,” she said. See?
Probably many of the women watching the View are stay-at-home moms. But I question what kind of men they have for husbands, or “partners”; they’re probably English professors who have “Peace is Patriotic” bumper stickers on their Volvos. They’re probably the ones who work under department heads who have imposed the popular pedagogical policy of the “maternal presence” in the classroom. These male teachers try to be “facilitators” and nurture spoiled college students who are text-messaging insults about them as they drone on about the “other” and feelings. They write conference papers agreeing with their colleagues that the whole canon of dead white male authors should be eliminated to make way for women writers who eschew linear (read logical) and therefore patriarchal thought. They probably sit down to pee. Well, it stands to reason that a show like The View, with all women, would turn out the way it does. It’s not surprising. After all, this is what happens at a bridal or baby shower. Women get all gussied up and squeal and play silly games. They have gift bags. On The View, Rosie pulled up a handbag filled with Elizabeth Taylor’s brand of perfume, White Diamonds, as a “gift” for everyone.
Ever observe a table at a restaurant filled with women? Good Lord, it’s exhausting just watching the gesticulating and gabbing. Whenever I get invited to a “luncheon” I head for the hills.
Not that there is anything wrong with such gatherings and not that I have anything against other women. In fact I have a few female friends. But such squeal-a-thons (“I love what you’ve done to your hair!”) are not the proper places in which to make public political statements. When women have been the minority among men they have proven themselves to be quite competent. Look at Jeane Kirkpatrick, Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleezza Rice. Did any of these women attend any of these on-air chat fests?
Men, on the other hand, are quite capable of holding forth intelligently among themselves, as commentators have done through the years. You don’t have men squealing “Oh, I love your tie!” as they set to embark on a discussion about the future of free world.
I know many women will disagree with me. They will be hurt. Maybe angry. There may be some tears. The lesbians will come to their defense. All the Rosie O’Donnell’s will give them big hugs, maybe even pull them on their laps as Rosie did with Danny DeVito.
So what.
I admit I’m not a typical woman.
When I was a graduate student, for $50 I participated in the Psychology Department’s study and took the Myers-Briggs personality test and came up, not surprisingly, as an INTP. My type is the absent-minded professor, which I learned was very rare among women.
The test pegged me. At a party (party being the situation that many of the questions were about), I study people to determine if they’ve read "Truth and Method" before talking to them. They have to pass my test, but then I don’t let them go until they plead starvation and head for the hors d’oeuvres.
No I’m not a typical woman. I read philosophy. I hate to shop. I don’t care what I’m wearing. Nothing in my house is coordinated. If I had been on The View I probably would have taken that old-lady-Elizabeth-Taylor-perfume out of the handbag that Rosie pulled up and dumped it on her head.
But I’ve read Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton, and I think they have very good things to say.
At Large
The Candles of Christmas 1981
By Paul Kengor
It's difficult to explain how much the world has changed in 25 years -- and for the better. Those who lived through December 1981 would be well served to pause and give thanks for the differences.
In December 1981, much of the world lived in totalitarian darkness. This was captured at the time by Freedom House, the group begun by Eleanor Roosevelt and today headed by freedom fighter Nina Shea. Freedom House published its map of global freedom, which showed the world's free nations in white and unfree nations in black. Nearly all the great Eurasian land mass was colored black, from the western border of East Germany, through eastern Europe and the massive spaces of the Soviet Union, and on to the huge terrain of China, and still further down to Vietnam and the South China Sea. The contrast was pointed out by a presidential candidate who hoped to transform the darkness: "If a visitor from another planet were to approach earth," said Ronald Reagan, "and if this planet showed free nations in light and unfree nations in darkness, the pitifully small beacons of light would make him wonder what was hidden in that terrifying, enormous blackness. We know what is hidden: Gulag. Torture." Reagan noted that "the very heart of the darkness" was the Soviet Union.
What was that totalitarian darkness like? It sought the persecution and even annihilation of entire classes and groups of hated people. According to the 1999 work by Harvard University Press, The Black Book of Communism, at least 100 million people were killed by Communist governments in the 20th century, a conservative figure that we already know underestimated the total. (We now know, for example, that Mao Tse-Tung alone killed 70 million in China, and Soviets authorities like Alexander Yakovlev maintain that Stalin himself killed 60-70 million in the USSR.) If one combined the total deaths in World War I and World War II and multiplied them by two, they still did not match the deaths by Communism in the 20th century.
These governments robbed individuals of the most basic rights: property, speech, press, assembly, the right to life. Communists had a particular antipathy for religion. Of special attention this time of year -- in December -- Communist governments went so far as to inspect houses in search of Christmas trees, as they tried to also strip the right to celebrate the birth of Christ.
THIS HATRED OF RELIGION WAS imbedded in Marxism-Leninism. Marx had called religion "the opiate of the masses" and said that "Communism begins where atheism begins." His chief disciple agreed: "There can be nothing more abominable than religion," wrote Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, in a letter to Maxim Gorky in January 1913. Religion, howled Lenin, was "a necrophilia," akin to a virulent form of venereal disease. Once he was in power, Lenin resolved to do something about it, ordering "mass terror" against the religious: "The more representatives of the reactionary clergy we manage to shoot, the better," he decreed.
Lenin especially detested Christmas. On December 25, 1919, he issued an edict directed at all levels of Soviet society: "To put up with 'Nikola' [the religious holiday] would be stupid -- the entire Cheka must be on the alert to see to it that those who do not show up for work because of 'Nikola' are shot."
Fast forward to Christmas 1981, when the Communist world still despised religion. That year in Moscow, "church watchers" retained their regular duties: sitting in the back of chapels taking notes on those "stupid people" (as government propaganda described them) who entered to worship. By 1981, only 46 of the 657 churches operating in Moscow on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution were permitted open, though they held closely monitored and controlled services. In one of the Soviet republics, the Ukraine, the government celebrated the nativity according to Marx and Lenin. Political commissars hijacked traditional Christmas carols and purged them of Christian references. Lyrics such as "believers" were changed to "workers"; the time of the season became October, the month of the glorious revolution; rather than the image of Christ, one song extolled "Lenin's glory hovering"; the Star of Bethlehem became the Red Star.
In fact, the red star replaced the traditional star atop the occasional Christmas tree erected in the Communist world, where the Christmas tree was renamed the New Year Tree. This was part of the secular Great Winter Festival that replaced the traditional Christmas season, celebrating the mere advent of the New Year. Said Ukrainian Olena Doviskaya, a church watcher and a teacher, who was required to report students who attended Christmas services: "Lenin was Jesus. They wanted you to worship Lenin."
The prospects for shining light upon that darkness seemed grim in 1981. The Soviets were on the rise, having added 11 satellite or proxy states since 1974.
The new man in Washington, President Ronald Reagan, was sure he could reverse this. He had survived an assassination attempt in March 1981, sure that Providence had intervened to spare him for a larger purpose: to defeat Soviet Communism. Reagan was especially hopeful that the tide could begin in Poland, the most recalcitrant of all the Soviet bloc states, where the Communist war on religion utterly failed.
And just then, on December 13, 1981, the lights were dimmed again. At midnight, as a soft snow fell lightly on Warsaw, a police raid commenced upon the headquarters of Lech Walesa's Solidarity labor union. The Polish Communist government, consenting to orders from Moscow, declared martial law. Solidarity's freedom fighters were shot or imprisoned. The cries of liberty were being snuffed out in this most pivotal of Communist bloc nations. That was what the world faced 25 years ago this month.
BUT THEN CAME A MOMENT of hope forgotten by history.
Ten Days later, on December 23, with Christmas only two days away, Ronald Reagan connected the spirit of the season with events in Poland: "For a thousand years," he told his fellow Americans, "Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government." He made an extraordinary gesture: The president asked Americans that Christmas season to light a candle in support of freedom in Poland.
This idea was kindled by a private meeting Reagan had with the Polish ambassador, Romuald Spasowski, and his wife, both of whom had defected to the United States the previous day. The ambassador and his wife sat in the Oval Office. His wife was very upset. Vice President George H. W. Bush put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. The ambassador said, "May I ask you a favor, Mr. President? Would you light a candle and put in the window tonight for the people of Poland?" Immediately, Ronald Reagan rose and walked to the second floor, lighted a candle, and put it in the window of the dining room.
That candle might have brought to mind those special candles lit after Mass by a young Karol Wojtyla, a Pole from Krakow who was now Pope John Paul II. Then and now, they burned bright for Russia's conversion.
Of course, the atheistic Communist press was not quite so sentimental. It was enraged by Spasowski's request, calling him a "slanderous, dirty traitor." The slightest American invocation of God's side set the Soviets seething. "What honey-tongued speeches are now being made by figures in the American administration concerning God and His servants on earth!" fulminated a correspondent from Moscow's Novoye Vremya. "What verbal inventiveness they display in flattering the Catholic Church in Poland. Does true piety lie behind this?"
The Soviet press, maybe because it was never driven by religious piety itself, doubted that such could be a sincere Reagan motivation. The next day, on Christmas Eve, propagandist Valentin Zorin dashed before the Soviet TV cameras to question the "rather doubtful Christmas gift" Reagan had just given to Americans.
UNDETERRED BY SOVIET RAGE, Ronald Reagan and a core group of cadres -- some of whom passed away this past year, such as Caspar Weinberger and Jeane Kirkpatrick -- remained committed to liberating the people of Poland and all of the Soviet empire. Without going into the debate over where and how they succeeded -- that's another article -- suffice to say that the world changed dramatically by the end of the decade, and in precisely the way they had hoped.
In 1980, according to Freedom House, there were 56 democracies in the world; by 1990, there were 76. The numbers continued an upward trajectory, hitting 91 in 1991, 99 in 1992, 108 in 1993, and 114 in 1994, a doubling since Reagan had entered the Oval Office. By 1994, 60% of the world's nations were democracies. By contrast, when Reagan lamented the lack of freedom in the mid 1970s, the number was below 30%. Few presidents got so much of what they wanted.
There has been an explosion in freedom worldwide since the 1980s. This democratic transformation is one of the great stories of modern humanity, and one of the least remarked upon, as high-school texts -- among numerous other sources -- are completely silent on the subject.
This is a truly global blessing that transpired in the lifetimes of most of us. Unfortunately, many of us Americans are not good at counting our blessings or remembering our history. A look back at 25 years ago this month can help us to be grateful for what we have, especially at Christmas time, when we pause to remember the ultimate source of light that conquers the darkness.
Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2006) and associate professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Rosie's Latest Target Is 'Intoxicated' Abdul
O'Donnell Leads Criticism Against 'Idol's Nasty Edge [and she would know 'nasty']
By BUCK WOLF
ABCNews.com
Rosie O'Donnell is one of the 37 million TV viewers watching "American Idol," but don't count her among those who liked what they saw.
One Week Into Season, the Scandals Start Only two episodes in and judges are already accused of going too far. For the second day in a row, "The View" co-host suggested Paula Abdul was drinking during the show and lashed out at the show for making fun of the people auditioning. O'Donnell and her co-hosts played a clip from Wednesday night's "Idol," in which a contestant, following an off-key audition, was roundly mocked and rejected by the judges.
"That's compassion for you," O'Donnell said. "Isn't that what America thinks is entertainment, to make fun of someone's physical appearance? And then, when they leave the room, laugh hysterically at them -- three millionaires, one probably intoxicated." O'Donnell had joked about Abdul's demeanor a day earlier. "Paula was very thirsty last night," she said.
Spokesman: Abdul 'Never Drinks'
Abdul's spokesman, Jeff Ballard, denied his client had a drinking problem last week, after online video emerged of Abdul slurring her speech and acting strangely while promoting "American Idol" in a string of satellite interviews.
Ballard said Abdul was simply fatigued last Thursday from the intense publicity campaign for the sixth season. "She was exhausted," Ballard told Reuters. "This was at the end of three days of press interviews and appearances, and she has had cameras following her around for a reality TV show too."
Ballard was referring to a new documentary series now in production about the star's life. "She was sitting in a room with just a camera and a mic on, and the controllers dropped the sound twice, which is why she rolled her eyes."
The 44-year-old Abdul canceled all media interviews the following day, saying that she had a sore throat after sitting in the chilly studio Thursday. "She never drinks," Ballard said. "I have known Paula Abdul since she was 13, and I have never seen her drink ever in my life. ... And no, she is not on any kind of medication."
Left Brain, Right Brain, Why Are Women So Different From Men? --UPDATE!
By Mary Grabar
After watching The View and following the inane statements made on the program, I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is true what Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton said: Women, without male guidance, are illogical, frivolous, and incapable of making any decisions beyond what to make for dinner.
We’ve seen what happens when women put their professionally styled heads together and make statements about current events. A few months ago, Rosie O’Donnell said, “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam,” and earlier this week show regular Joy Behar compared Donald Rumsfeld to Adolf Hitler.
But every burned-out hippie I’ve talked to since 2001 has been making the comparisons between the Bush administration and the Nazis. O’Donnell and Behar could have gotten their talking points from the bright leaflets of every communist youth group that’s been hoping to organize a day to “stop business as usual” and proclaiming in apocalyptic terms the dangers of the Bush administration to the very survival of the “planet.” They also agitate for the legalization of marijuana.
Such statements are becoming quite tedious.
Rosie, getting louder with each passing segment of "The View."
--------------------------------------------
But, on Jan. 9, we read:
Let's Get This Party Started
It's War!!!
TMZ Staff
A full-out battle between Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters has broken out at "The View" over the Donald and his Rosie-bashing.
Rosie lashed out at boss Babwa yesterday morning in a pre-show dressing-room bitch-off, calling her "a [bleeping] liar," according to Page Six, and was furious with Walters for not sticking up for her during the Rosie-Trump feud of the last two weeks.
When Walters saw Rosie yesterday morning, a couple of hours before "The View" aired, she tried to hug Ro – but Rosie, who'd been on vacation over the holidays, wouldn't touch her. And, according to the Post, she fumed, "You didn't call me for 10 g**damn days ... You never called [Donald] a liar."
Then, on yesterday's show, Babwa proceeded to brand Trump as such, which prompted the Donald to tell 'EXTRA,' "Barbara lied, as she knows very well." Rosie and Walters' rep says it was "hardly a squabble" and that everyone has "moved on."
------------------------------------------------
But it’s a sign of our crumbling civilization that a bunch of girls of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds, sitting around all dressed up for a coffee klatch, some of them with cleavage spilling out of Victoria’s Secret Infinity Edge Push-Up bras, spout off opinions borrowed from disturbed teenagers and Michael Moore, and call it a talk show.
This was the danger of giving women the vote. The danger to conservatives (and the survival of this country) is the voting bloc of single women, i.e., those who lack the guidance of a man in the form of a husband or intellectual mentor.
These are women who pride themselves on being independent and empowered when they dress like prostitutes (look at the view of cleavage on the View!). These are the women who watch the View. These are the women who support Hillary Rodham Clinton. These are the women on the show who ask Senator Clinton questions like “Do you think being a mom will help you in the White House?” as they did on December 20. These are the women who think it matters that a potential presidential candidate waxes on about the same themes in her re-released book, It Takes a Village: that preschool programs need to be expanded, that working parents should have time off to take care of their kids. This is the potential presidential candidate who was applauded on the show for allowing one of her staff members to bring in her baby’s playpen.
This is a woman who started off with a discussion about how much she likes to do crafts at Christmas time.
Yes, I can imagine: we’ll have playpens and parenting classes and crafts classes in the new Clinton White House, maybe even a special prayer room for the Muslims and breaks five times a day for them. This will bring peace to the world by setting an example, for all the terrorists will supposedly drop their weapons in awe of this “village.” Hillary’s answer to the Iraq question was that she wanted the country to have a “conversation” again. What--like the one they have on The View?
News flash: there are fanatics who want to annihilate us and Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking about crafts and “conversations.”
The other guest was Kaye Ballard. Her newsworthy item was that she had slept twice with the late Marlon Brando. The question “Was he good?” posed by I forget who was not answered. Ballard just said she loved Brando but then talked about her four dogs: “They’re my life,” she said. See?
Probably many of the women watching the View are stay-at-home moms. But I question what kind of men they have for husbands, or “partners”; they’re probably English professors who have “Peace is Patriotic” bumper stickers on their Volvos. They’re probably the ones who work under department heads who have imposed the popular pedagogical policy of the “maternal presence” in the classroom. These male teachers try to be “facilitators” and nurture spoiled college students who are text-messaging insults about them as they drone on about the “other” and feelings. They write conference papers agreeing with their colleagues that the whole canon of dead white male authors should be eliminated to make way for women writers who eschew linear (read logical) and therefore patriarchal thought. They probably sit down to pee. Well, it stands to reason that a show like The View, with all women, would turn out the way it does. It’s not surprising. After all, this is what happens at a bridal or baby shower. Women get all gussied up and squeal and play silly games. They have gift bags. On The View, Rosie pulled up a handbag filled with Elizabeth Taylor’s brand of perfume, White Diamonds, as a “gift” for everyone.
Ever observe a table at a restaurant filled with women? Good Lord, it’s exhausting just watching the gesticulating and gabbing. Whenever I get invited to a “luncheon” I head for the hills.
Not that there is anything wrong with such gatherings and not that I have anything against other women. In fact I have a few female friends. But such squeal-a-thons (“I love what you’ve done to your hair!”) are not the proper places in which to make public political statements. When women have been the minority among men they have proven themselves to be quite competent. Look at Jeane Kirkpatrick, Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleezza Rice. Did any of these women attend any of these on-air chat fests?
Men, on the other hand, are quite capable of holding forth intelligently among themselves, as commentators have done through the years. You don’t have men squealing “Oh, I love your tie!” as they set to embark on a discussion about the future of free world.
I know many women will disagree with me. They will be hurt. Maybe angry. There may be some tears. The lesbians will come to their defense. All the Rosie O’Donnell’s will give them big hugs, maybe even pull them on their laps as Rosie did with Danny DeVito.
So what.
I admit I’m not a typical woman.
When I was a graduate student, for $50 I participated in the Psychology Department’s study and took the Myers-Briggs personality test and came up, not surprisingly, as an INTP. My type is the absent-minded professor, which I learned was very rare among women.
The test pegged me. At a party (party being the situation that many of the questions were about), I study people to determine if they’ve read "Truth and Method" before talking to them. They have to pass my test, but then I don’t let them go until they plead starvation and head for the hors d’oeuvres.
No I’m not a typical woman. I read philosophy. I hate to shop. I don’t care what I’m wearing. Nothing in my house is coordinated. If I had been on The View I probably would have taken that old-lady-Elizabeth-Taylor-perfume out of the handbag that Rosie pulled up and dumped it on her head.
But I’ve read Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton, and I think they have very good things to say.
At Large
The Candles of Christmas 1981
By Paul Kengor
It's difficult to explain how much the world has changed in 25 years -- and for the better. Those who lived through December 1981 would be well served to pause and give thanks for the differences.
In December 1981, much of the world lived in totalitarian darkness. This was captured at the time by Freedom House, the group begun by Eleanor Roosevelt and today headed by freedom fighter Nina Shea. Freedom House published its map of global freedom, which showed the world's free nations in white and unfree nations in black. Nearly all the great Eurasian land mass was colored black, from the western border of East Germany, through eastern Europe and the massive spaces of the Soviet Union, and on to the huge terrain of China, and still further down to Vietnam and the South China Sea. The contrast was pointed out by a presidential candidate who hoped to transform the darkness: "If a visitor from another planet were to approach earth," said Ronald Reagan, "and if this planet showed free nations in light and unfree nations in darkness, the pitifully small beacons of light would make him wonder what was hidden in that terrifying, enormous blackness. We know what is hidden: Gulag. Torture." Reagan noted that "the very heart of the darkness" was the Soviet Union.
What was that totalitarian darkness like? It sought the persecution and even annihilation of entire classes and groups of hated people. According to the 1999 work by Harvard University Press, The Black Book of Communism, at least 100 million people were killed by Communist governments in the 20th century, a conservative figure that we already know underestimated the total. (We now know, for example, that Mao Tse-Tung alone killed 70 million in China, and Soviets authorities like Alexander Yakovlev maintain that Stalin himself killed 60-70 million in the USSR.) If one combined the total deaths in World War I and World War II and multiplied them by two, they still did not match the deaths by Communism in the 20th century.
These governments robbed individuals of the most basic rights: property, speech, press, assembly, the right to life. Communists had a particular antipathy for religion. Of special attention this time of year -- in December -- Communist governments went so far as to inspect houses in search of Christmas trees, as they tried to also strip the right to celebrate the birth of Christ.
THIS HATRED OF RELIGION WAS imbedded in Marxism-Leninism. Marx had called religion "the opiate of the masses" and said that "Communism begins where atheism begins." His chief disciple agreed: "There can be nothing more abominable than religion," wrote Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, in a letter to Maxim Gorky in January 1913. Religion, howled Lenin, was "a necrophilia," akin to a virulent form of venereal disease. Once he was in power, Lenin resolved to do something about it, ordering "mass terror" against the religious: "The more representatives of the reactionary clergy we manage to shoot, the better," he decreed.
Lenin especially detested Christmas. On December 25, 1919, he issued an edict directed at all levels of Soviet society: "To put up with 'Nikola' [the religious holiday] would be stupid -- the entire Cheka must be on the alert to see to it that those who do not show up for work because of 'Nikola' are shot."
Fast forward to Christmas 1981, when the Communist world still despised religion. That year in Moscow, "church watchers" retained their regular duties: sitting in the back of chapels taking notes on those "stupid people" (as government propaganda described them) who entered to worship. By 1981, only 46 of the 657 churches operating in Moscow on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution were permitted open, though they held closely monitored and controlled services. In one of the Soviet republics, the Ukraine, the government celebrated the nativity according to Marx and Lenin. Political commissars hijacked traditional Christmas carols and purged them of Christian references. Lyrics such as "believers" were changed to "workers"; the time of the season became October, the month of the glorious revolution; rather than the image of Christ, one song extolled "Lenin's glory hovering"; the Star of Bethlehem became the Red Star.
In fact, the red star replaced the traditional star atop the occasional Christmas tree erected in the Communist world, where the Christmas tree was renamed the New Year Tree. This was part of the secular Great Winter Festival that replaced the traditional Christmas season, celebrating the mere advent of the New Year. Said Ukrainian Olena Doviskaya, a church watcher and a teacher, who was required to report students who attended Christmas services: "Lenin was Jesus. They wanted you to worship Lenin."
The prospects for shining light upon that darkness seemed grim in 1981. The Soviets were on the rise, having added 11 satellite or proxy states since 1974.
The new man in Washington, President Ronald Reagan, was sure he could reverse this. He had survived an assassination attempt in March 1981, sure that Providence had intervened to spare him for a larger purpose: to defeat Soviet Communism. Reagan was especially hopeful that the tide could begin in Poland, the most recalcitrant of all the Soviet bloc states, where the Communist war on religion utterly failed.
And just then, on December 13, 1981, the lights were dimmed again. At midnight, as a soft snow fell lightly on Warsaw, a police raid commenced upon the headquarters of Lech Walesa's Solidarity labor union. The Polish Communist government, consenting to orders from Moscow, declared martial law. Solidarity's freedom fighters were shot or imprisoned. The cries of liberty were being snuffed out in this most pivotal of Communist bloc nations. That was what the world faced 25 years ago this month.
BUT THEN CAME A MOMENT of hope forgotten by history.
Ten Days later, on December 23, with Christmas only two days away, Ronald Reagan connected the spirit of the season with events in Poland: "For a thousand years," he told his fellow Americans, "Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government." He made an extraordinary gesture: The president asked Americans that Christmas season to light a candle in support of freedom in Poland.
This idea was kindled by a private meeting Reagan had with the Polish ambassador, Romuald Spasowski, and his wife, both of whom had defected to the United States the previous day. The ambassador and his wife sat in the Oval Office. His wife was very upset. Vice President George H. W. Bush put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. The ambassador said, "May I ask you a favor, Mr. President? Would you light a candle and put in the window tonight for the people of Poland?" Immediately, Ronald Reagan rose and walked to the second floor, lighted a candle, and put it in the window of the dining room.
That candle might have brought to mind those special candles lit after Mass by a young Karol Wojtyla, a Pole from Krakow who was now Pope John Paul II. Then and now, they burned bright for Russia's conversion.
Of course, the atheistic Communist press was not quite so sentimental. It was enraged by Spasowski's request, calling him a "slanderous, dirty traitor." The slightest American invocation of God's side set the Soviets seething. "What honey-tongued speeches are now being made by figures in the American administration concerning God and His servants on earth!" fulminated a correspondent from Moscow's Novoye Vremya. "What verbal inventiveness they display in flattering the Catholic Church in Poland. Does true piety lie behind this?"
The Soviet press, maybe because it was never driven by religious piety itself, doubted that such could be a sincere Reagan motivation. The next day, on Christmas Eve, propagandist Valentin Zorin dashed before the Soviet TV cameras to question the "rather doubtful Christmas gift" Reagan had just given to Americans.
UNDETERRED BY SOVIET RAGE, Ronald Reagan and a core group of cadres -- some of whom passed away this past year, such as Caspar Weinberger and Jeane Kirkpatrick -- remained committed to liberating the people of Poland and all of the Soviet empire. Without going into the debate over where and how they succeeded -- that's another article -- suffice to say that the world changed dramatically by the end of the decade, and in precisely the way they had hoped.
In 1980, according to Freedom House, there were 56 democracies in the world; by 1990, there were 76. The numbers continued an upward trajectory, hitting 91 in 1991, 99 in 1992, 108 in 1993, and 114 in 1994, a doubling since Reagan had entered the Oval Office. By 1994, 60% of the world's nations were democracies. By contrast, when Reagan lamented the lack of freedom in the mid 1970s, the number was below 30%. Few presidents got so much of what they wanted.
There has been an explosion in freedom worldwide since the 1980s. This democratic transformation is one of the great stories of modern humanity, and one of the least remarked upon, as high-school texts -- among numerous other sources -- are completely silent on the subject.
This is a truly global blessing that transpired in the lifetimes of most of us. Unfortunately, many of us Americans are not good at counting our blessings or remembering our history. A look back at 25 years ago this month can help us to be grateful for what we have, especially at Christmas time, when we pause to remember the ultimate source of light that conquers the darkness.
Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2006) and associate professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.
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