Few things can compare with being labeled a lunatic only to have one’s opinions and observations later confirmed as insightful commonsense. Recently I got to experience this brand of joy in reference to two different issues.
This past holiday season, news consumers could hardly turn on the television or surf the Internet without coming across stories about the escalating campaign to undermine Christmas in the conflict having the ultimate goal of abolishing Christianity as the foundation of American society. To many, this culture war crescendo comes as a surprise; I predicted it as far back as 1994 and have written at least one column regarding the controversies surrounding Christmas every year since then.
I feel vindicated even more, however, on the second issue. In spring of 2004, I wrote a couple of columns on the impropriety of applauding unwed American Idol contestant Fantasia Barrino as a role model worthy of emulation by the youth of the nation.
From the response to the columns, you would have thought I suggested everyone ought to toss their grandmothers into oncoming traffic. After getting over one thousand hits at one website, in an act of unparallelled gratitude I was shortly thereafter banished from its roster of columnists.
If authors and analysts are going to be that concerned about tickling the ears of readers, why not just go ahead and become a liberal? Though many so-called “Conservatives” refused to address the issue, Larry Elder is to be commended for eventually tackling the matter head on.
In a column titled “Children Having Children”, Elder lets Fantasia really have it for not only having an out of wedlock child but for glamorizing it in her ditty “Baby Momma” and in mooching off the public dole just because she couldn’t keep her baser impulses in check. Those wallowing in hedonism and wanton impropriety whine it’s nobody’s business that she had a child outside marriage.
Really? That might be true if Fantasia, her baby, and the sleazebag fathering her child were the only ones involved in this story; but, as Elder details in the column, Fantasia had her own welfare apartment and sat on her rear-end all day platting her rugrats hair and watching TV.
Since she was picking the pockets of taxpayers to finance her lifestyle at that time, as citizens we have the right to say whatever we want since we were the ones putting the roof over the heads of her and her child and food in their bellies.
Many theologically confused Christians hoodwinked into embracing a weak-willed sissy version of Jesus that would not demand anything from anybody invoke the usual cliches of judge not lest ye be judged, the need to forgive, yada yada yada. Yet to receive forgiveness and absolution, doesn’t one have to be sorry? But with lyrics calling unwed motherhood a “badge of honor” it would seem Fantasia really isn’t sorry about anything.
If those on welfare don’t like what the gainfully employed have to say about them, they are perfectly free to forego these lavish handouts. After all, a musician such as Fantasia should understand that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
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