WoC 2006

Threat to CivilizationThe War on Christmas has begun. The opening salvo of 2006 is brought to you by this article, Woman faces fines for wreath peace sign (Yahoo News), which brings us the sad tale of Lisa Jensen, who was lying her face off when “said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath” (pictured left). Her arch fiend—and the enemy of a peaceful Christmas—Bob Kearns, said in a phone interview that he couldn’t allow it because it would pave the way for other forms of expression, like saying we should “drop bombs on Iraq”. As if the thought of us dropping bombs on Iraq wasn’t ludicrous enough, imagine trying to work that into a Christmas motif!

It’s not just about Christmas, though, according to the homeowner’s association—to which Lisa’s hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of real estate debt are inextricably bound—they “will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive.” Sounds like the American way, all right. Something called the “architectural control committee” has the final say on all forms of self-expression in the neighborhood.

When a five-person committee determined that it was just a fucking wreath and what’s the big fucking deal? and that it’s fucking Christmas, fer Christ’s sake, Kearns had them all shot fired.

Welcome to a brave new world in the The Age of Access (Amazon).