December 12, 2005 by s.z.

Bizarro World It seems that an ion storm caused a fluctuation in the space-time continuum, disturbing the dilithium crystals while Sadly, No! and Michael Bérubé were using the transporter, causing them to take each other's place in an alternative universe ... or something.  Now Michael sports one of those little goatees while blogging about Kaye Grogan,  while Seb, Brad, and Gavin have been discussing trends in higher education while attempting to remove fruit from the faces of Pajamas Media bloggers.  Anyway, we think this is a great trend, and if the Michael and the Sadlys manage to survive this experience, we long to see conservative bloggers have the guts to do the same thing.  Yes, think of the fun when Jesus' General switches places with The Powerline Triplets or the LittleGreenFootball guy!  How long will it take us to spot the change? 5:17:39 PM

People in the News A  look at some people who are, um,  in the news. 1.  First is Jennifer Giroux, the "Bracelets for Baby Jesus" lady whom we last discussed on Friday.  Now even BBC News has heard of her and her "group" (by which I suppose they mean the nine children, the youngest only five, who work in her "Just Say Merry Christmas" sweat shop). Her group has tapped into a current craze for rubberised wristbands, producing a green and red version emblazoned with the slogan "Just say 'merry Christmas'". What began as a local campaign has swiftly mushroomed. She has already sold 15,000 bracelets at $2 each. A further 43,000 are on their way to customers. "We just wanted to encourage Christians to have the courage to say 'merry Christmas' instead of 'happy holidays'," she says. "We had no idea that it would tap into a national frustration. "People are tired of being told not to celebrate Christmas, they are tired of the ACLU. This is just parents saying they want to preserve Christ in Christmas."  Yeah, this is all for the children.  (You will recall that WorldNetDaily reported, "The bracelets are not a moneymaker for the Girouxs whose goal is to reclaim Christmas and its meaning.")  But colored rubber bands can't cost $2 each (commenter Bea, who says that she's in the promotions business, indicated that similar bracelets "start at $.50 with a minimum of 500".  And labor costs for the Girouxs shouldn't be too high, since they're using their nine children, plus some nieces and nephews (and probably some kids from a local orphanage whom they invited to a "special Christmas activity") to fill the orders for the bracelets.  So, if the BBC's cited sale figures for the bracelets are correct, it would appear that the Giroux have made close to $87,000 from their plan to save Christmas.  Baby Jesus must be so happy. 2.  While looking up stories about Jennifer, I found this one from the Detroit News which contains a great quote from the AFA's Randy Sharp. "Christmas is not a holiday. A holiday is when you take a day off work and run around playing," said Randy Sharp, a director with the American Family Association, which is leading the Target boycott. "They're devaluing our nation's most holy day. And I take offense." Okay, not even Christians think that Christmas is "our nation's most holy day" -- and they do believe that it's a holiday ("Etymology: from Old English hAlig holy + dæg day. 1 : HOLY DAY").  Anyway, of the Christian holidays, Easter is the most important, since actual Christians believe that Christ's atonement and resurrection were crucial to this whole Christianity thing.  Oh, and is Randy claiming that people shouldn't get Christmas Day off from work, and that children shouldn't be allowed to play with their new toys on Dec. 25th?  If so, I don't think that issue is going to generate many donations for Wildmon's group. P.S.  Check out this page that MaryC shared with me: The War Against Melody's Birthday.  It has the perfect illustration for Brad of Sadly, No!, and his seasonal warfare. 3.  Our third person is the news is Randy Sharp again, because after reading the above comment, we wanted to find out if he actually worked for AFA, or was just  invented by the liberal press to try to make the Warriors For Christmas look stupid.  It turns out that Randy is purportedly a real person.  The AFA offers this photo of  him: And Randy's duties as "Director of Special Projects" apparently include keeping track of the gays and making sure they don't have sex.  Randy was mentioned in a recent SF Chronicle story about how Focus on the Family took all its money out of Wells Fargo Bank so it wouldn't get gay cooties because the bank donated funds to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.  Randy offers up an explanation as to why the AFA called for a boycott of companies which support the Gay Games. A leader of the American Family Association, the group advocating the Walgreens and Kraft boycotts, said those companies' donations supported "subsequent activities" that occur during the Gay Games, which draw thousands of participants and spectators. "With this many people, we expect an increase in the bar scene, and we expect a lot of anonymous sexual encounters," said Randy Sharp, the association's director of special projects.  Yes, Randy's point is that by donating to an event spotlighting "athletic and cultural performances by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and their friends," Walgreens and Kraft are actually subsidizing anonymous sexual encounters.  I imagine that the AFA will be calling for a boycott of all the sponsors of the 2006 Olympics for just the same reason. 4.  Our fourth person (sorta) is Ann Coulter, who is still in the news for sucking because her speech at UConn was interrupted by a song from "South Park." Here are some selections from a great unsigned HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE piece about Ann's martyrdom at the hands of evil doers; it's called "The Real Story Behind Ann Coulter's UConn Speech." She began her speech amid a standing ovation from hundreds of students. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes into her speech, the South Park song, “Kyle’s mom is a big fat b****,” echoed over the sound system. Some enterprising young liberals had hijacked the sound equipment. Since this is considered a method of torture and violation of the Geneva Convention, I expect Amnesty International representatives to arrive any day now. I hope UConn students aren’t offended by Tandori chicken. After guaranteeing their future as the Left’s up-and-coming leaders, Coulter gave liberals in the audience their “two minutes of hate” and announced that she was going straight to the Q&A. As you can see, our anonymous pundit is a Coulter wannabe.   I attribute the incoherence demonstrated in the above passage to the author's efforts to emulate Ann (I see this piece as a Coulter pastiche), and not from any lack of native talent -- because surely Human Events Online wouldn't publish something that was only inadvertently atrocious. For years conservatives have battled a repertoire of name-calling, teach-ins, protests and projectiles. Gathering from the four or five snot-nosed kids protesting at UConn, their mainstay is the Hitler mustache.  Okay, this part makes it sound like our reporter is emulating Midge Decter, who often rails about how conservatives have been battling the same folk-singing protesters ever since the Vietnam years.  (However, to the best of my knowledge, Midge has never used the phrase "snot-nosed kids.") Liberals’ rants are no match for affirmative action bake sales at numerous colleges, Clothe-A-Feminist Day (in response to a protest led by naked feminists) at the University of North Texas and Coming Out [as a conservative] Week at Drake University. Repartee with Ann Coulter is just kicking them when their down. It’s really not a fair fight.  No, it's not a fair fight -- those campus conservatives are just so much smarter than us stupid liberals. UConn liberals made a spectacle of themselves last Wednesday night. [...] Those at the microphones were emotional, pitiful, angry and, in some cases, homosexual (or they appeared that way to me, but they could have just been college liberals). Wow, our mystery columnist really zinged us with that one!  Ann Coulter, meet your own personal Eve Harrington, who is more than ready to step into your shoes as soon as you have the grace to admit that you never believed most of what you've said, and were just stringing along the credulous rubes. UPDATE: The HEI home page now indicates that this piece was penned by "Lisa De Pasquale, Human Events."  Ms. De Pasquale is "Program Director at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute."  (So, she's apparently not the 19-year-old president of the UConn chapter of Young Republican College Conservatives Who Love Ann Coulter, as we had previously assumed.) Here are the titles of her most recent HEI columns: Coulter on 'The O'Reilly Factor  Kate O'Beirne Skewers Famous Feminists Phyllis Schlafly: A Living Blueprint for Young Conservative Hopefuls Is It True What They Say About Ann? Ann's Guidebook For Conversing With Liberals   "It's like having acess to her diary" So, you might say that she's Ann's #1 fan ... but Kate and Phyllis should probably watch their backs too.  3:06:03 AM