WTW29: Christmas's Last Stand

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas Smith, and this is the final installment of the War on Christmas so far, we'll pick up right where we left off. I believe Lydia was getting us somewhere into the 2017-2018 epic of the war, of the conflict, of the Great Conflict, so we'll pick right up with that.

0:01:01 Lydia: All right. We're starting to get closer and closer to present day. So I sent you our next video. Just a quick note on 2017. We don't have any videos to play from there, but I do have just Lou Dobbs. This was when the tax reform bill was going through and they were talking about how great it was for the economy. And then Lou Dobbs says that Trump helped bring Christmas back.

0:01:04 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:01:23 Lydia: There's so much obvious joy. He's never seen his neighborhood so decorated in the entire 30 years he's lived there. Just like worshiping. Right. So that I didn't I could not stomach it. And it's boring. So we're going to move on to 2018 and hang out with Jesse Waters for a little bit. And he has none other than Jerry Falwell Jr. guesting with him.

0:01:29 Thomas: Jesus Christ, oh, That upstanding citizen.

0:01:47 Lydia: Yes, that upstanding citizen isn't always with

0:01:48 Thomas: Yeah. Was he found with pool boys or something? What's his We don't have time to go into it, but someday, someday, we should, Jerry Falwell Jr.

0:01:53 Lydia: I Do a deep dive on him.

0:01:58 Thomas: Uh, Oof. So much fun, yeah, when I, I want my wholesome conservative commentary, I go to Jerry Falwell Jr., someone who. I guess his wife was caught with the pool boy and then he was caught having fun watching it or something. I don't know. I'm not sure.

0:02:12 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

0:02:14 Thomas: And then hearing their version of it is even funnier. Like, when they try to clean it up and be like, all explain right, it. It's the best. But anyway, so he's our guest today.

0:02:21 Lydia: Amazing. Yeah, and we have to hear, some real serious Christmas thoughts from Jerry Falwell Jr. and Jesse Waters, because this is real life. And so we need to talk about Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer.

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah. Oh so it's not gonna be like look Santa Claus is a white man who bangs my wife while I watch that's bring back mama's kiss and Santa was that something bring

0:02:42 Lydia: Yeah I saw mommy kissing santa claus yeah

0:02:48 Thomas: Back I saw my wife Banging Santa Claus Oh man, that'll be the next front of the war on Christmas. Look, Santa Clause is supposed to come in and bang your wife while you watch, and that's how the holiday has always been. You can't just change it,

0:02:48 Lydia: Yeah god yeah he'd be into that yeah

0:03:06 Clip: Just when we thought that they'd run out of people classes of people to name as victims. They come up with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as the newest victim class. Listen to this Rudolph attack. The Huffington Post singles this out. They say Rudolph exhibits racism and homophobia, and they called Santa Claus abusive and bigoted, and they said it promotes bullying or something like that. You know, from my recollection of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and I haven't seen it in while, but the point was, the people that were bullying Rudolph were bad. There's

0:03:17 Thomas: Here we go. Hobophobia.

0:03:42 Thomas: Stopped once he was slightly useful. That's the point. So it's not, it's probe. All right. This is where I have to go off on Rudolph for an hour. But like, just look at the lyrics of that song, so this poor reindeer who could be a stand-in for maybe he's gay, maybe he has a marginalized identity, whatever, he's different, he has a red nose, that's different than every other reindeer, and then he gets bullied for that, like he's literally like it's a racist attack on that reindeer, because he has the different color of thing, and everybody the song itself is like, yeah, they hate it, they They fucking did hate crimes against him.

Was Santa during all that? We don't know. We don'T know if he cared. We don't know if Santa has HR. No one, you KNOW? Like, we DON'T know what the situation is there. But then, then he becomes useful. For a minute. Like, then it's all of sudden, oh, wait, we can use this thing. We can actually make use of this, you know, marginalized identity and take advantage of it. And, you Know, and and Then they all loved him and then it was great and Santa was like, yeah, you know what? You're you're amazing. What is the moral

0:03:47 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:04:41 Lydia: Hun.

0:04:42 Thomas: That my kid is supposed to get from this? Oh

0:04:44 Lydia: It gets even worse than the song. Have you ever watched the, I think it's like 1964 movie.

0:04:48 Thomas: God. Yeah, but not for a long time.

0:04:50 Lydia: So so that's what this is originally coming from. Like the song is is concerning. And I have some more information about like the original Rudolph story, too. But the Huffington Post piece was specifically about the Burl Ives film.

0:04:58 Thomas: Oh, wow. Oh, here we go. Sure.

0:05:04 Lydia: And one person wrote about this. But honestly, they're right, because In the movie, it's not just the other reindeer that are jerks, Rudolph's dad is an asshole to him. He

0:05:09 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Doesn't he try to like paint over his nose?

0:05:17 Lydia: Makes him, he makes them wear, yeah, wear a prosthetic nose, basically, so it looks black and

0:05:19 Thomas: Oh my God. He's like, you get back in the closet, you fucking reindeer. Wow, holy

0:05:25 Lydia: It's bad. Santa's a jerk. Santa comes over and he's like, you got to do something about that nose, like we can't hear this. The other reindeer kids are also bullies, of course. Comet is the coach for the kids to learn how to be flying reindeer. And Comet's the one that's like, we're not going to let Rudolph play any of those reindeer games. This adult reindeer is... And I also feel stupid for talking about it like this. But yeah, everyone is an asshole to Rudolph in this, Santa included. And the coach, Comet, encourages the bullying. The dad is an arsehole.

0:05:31 Thomas: Shit. Yeah.

0:05:59 Lydia: And one person wrote about this in Huffington Post that was like, wow, this is pretty bad.

0:05:59 Thomas: Jesus Christ. This sucks. Yeah.

0:06:04 Lydia: Yeah. And here we are with Fox News that but PC police.

0:06:04 Thomas: And now we gotta get a guy who watches his wife get fucked by the pool boy on to to lecture us about that please.

0:06:10 Lydia: Yeah. But let me tell you about the original story.

0:06:14 Thomas: Yeah. This is a Yeah, fucking

0:06:14 Lydia: So the original Rudolph story was written by someone who worked for, Montgomery Ward. OK, so back when lot of department stores would put out, you know, like little stories or images or things during Christmastime as part of like marketing campaigns. And at Montgomery Ward, there was someone who worked there that his wife was going through some major health issues and stuff. And so he was like, you know, trying to come up with an idea to liven her spirits during the Christmas season and came up with this idea of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And then he submitted it to Montgomery Ward. Montgomery Ward used it as a little story book and they sold a ton of copies. And then actually his brother-in-law wrote the song Rudolph the Reindeer later. Later. But the original story for Rudolph not he was not one of Santa's reindeer.

0:07:04 Lydia: He was not the offspring of one of Santa's reindeer. He did not live at the North Pole. Rudolph was just in an ordinary reindeer village somewhere in the world, and he was taunted and laughed at for having a shiny red nose, but his parents didn't see it as an embarrassment. They weren't ashamed of Rudolph's shiny nose. His household was very loving, and he ended up growing up to be a responsible reindeer with a good self-image and sense of worth. And because he did not rise to fame when Santa picked him out from a reindeer herd because of that shiny nose, what happened instead was that Santa discovered him by accident. He noticed the glow coming from his room while he was delivering presents to Rudolph's house. So Santa was going through and delivering presents to all the reindeer in the reindeer village.

0:07:25 Thomas: Wow. Holy Holy shit. What the hell?

0:07:53 Lydia: Notice the glow.

0:07:53 Thomas: I'm on the edge of my fucking seat. What's going to happen?

0:07:55 Lydia: Yeah. And then the fog was starting to get thicker and thicker and thicker as he's delivering presents.

0:07:56 Thomas: Oh, my God. And he's like, I'm going to abduct that child.

0:08:01 Lydia: Yeah, it says already the cause of several accidents and delays. And so he was concerned that he wouldn't be able to finish delivering all the presents on Christmas Eve. So Sana, you asked Rudolph to lead the team. And it was just, you know, a young reindeer? And he said yes. And left a note for his mom and dad as he like went out to help Santa finish delivering all the presents. Very different from the song, very different from the movie, and Like just a sweet story, um, you know, it's perfectly fine for us to criticize how horrible, um, the reindeer are.

0:08:27 Thomas: Yeah. One thing that blows my mind is like we have one have a book version of the, you know, fucking Nightmare Before Christmas. And I was reading it to the kids like years ago or Phoebe, probably just Phoebe like years years ago. And I saw it say on Donder. And I was like, Donder?

0:08:41 Lydia: Oh.

0:08:50 Lydia: Yeah, typo.

0:08:50 Thomas: I was like, is that a print-o I was just about to say? Was that a typo? Is that, and I was like Donder and then I looked it up and it's like, oh no, it was not only is there no fucking Rudolph, obviously, but it was like Don-der. And then I, and it gets even funnier. Cause like, it's like, Oh no, the original is Donder and Blixem. And yeah, there's other versions where it's, like, Blixum and then.

0:08:54 Lydia: Yeah.

0:09:03 Lydia: Blixem.

0:09:12 Lydia: Are you just making this

0:09:16 Thomas: No, no, no. It's because it's Dutch and it's actually Thunder and Lightning.

0:09:16 Lydia: Up? Oh. Yeah. Oh, wow.

0:09:20 Thomas: Yeah. Dunder in Blixom, which I think I like. I like both those words, actually. That's pretty good. Some Blixome out there, you know, like I like the way it's kind of an onomatopoeia, but not really, you know, a little bit Dunder.

0:09:23 Lydia: Yeah. That's awesome. The name of our next kid, just kidding.

0:09:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And so once again, just getting rid of the idea that this is how it's always been and how dare you change anything. It's like, no, not like I don't know where this fucking genius came up with this reindeer mythology. But this that poem is even older than I thought from 1823. And so he came up with that whole reindeer thing, although, you know, he probably was borrowing it from something. But I'm clicking on this, isn't a deep dive we're doing, but I just clicked on, like, oh, yeah, Santa's Reindeer Wikipedia to see, like, how they're doing. You know, and and it doesn't have anything from really before that, it's just like, yeah, no, somehow he came up with this, the first reference is from this, it's like, did he just come up, is he the fucking J.R. Tolkien of reindeer?

0:09:40 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:10:17 Lydia: Reindeer

0:10:17 Thomas: You Know, but anyway, the point is there wasn't a Rudolph, there's only eight of them or whatever, and the broader point is this, that message fucking sucks, I don't know why the original, so you're saying the original, that just somebody came up with for what purpose, again, like, what did, that was it published in something or was it just like

0:10:18 Lydia: Lore, yeah. Yep. Yep. Um. Yeah. So it ended up being published, it was Montgomery Ward issued, like, a little Christmas magazine, yeah, kind of thing every year. But it was like the little story. And so he ended up submitting it to work and they liked it and they published it and it sold tons of copies.

0:10:37 Thomas: A magazine oh, really?

0:10:49 Thomas: Oh.

0:10:49 Lydia: Yeah. But then it was Montgomery Ward's intellectual property because he was an employee there. So then he endedup having a conversation with them, I think years later, and was able to secure that copyright back. They gave it back to him. Yeah, yeah.

0:11:00 Thomas: Wow. Because that was in 1939 or whatever, yeah.

0:11:04 Lydia: A Billion years ago, yeah, something like that, yeah.

0:11:06 Thomas: And Then, and then in the, so in the 50s or 60s, whenever they made the thing, the 60s, they're like, hey, let's take that, but let's use it to justify bullying and hazing culture because it does, I mean, you might say I look, I do think there's something to be said for things can be progressive for their time but then still horrible now, like, there's not, like, that's a totally normal thing, like, honestly most of Yeah, exactly.

0:11:10 Lydia: The 60s, for the movie, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.

0:11:28 Lydia: Yeah. How progress works. Yeah.

0:11:33 Thomas: Like, most of history has been pretty fucking horrifying on every issue. If there was, was a historical person in fucking the year 10 whatever who's like, hey, maybe, you know, maybe you shouldn't, like, murder people for this, maybe just, like, you know, chop their hand off, it's like, all right, that sucks, but, like, it's better, you know, like, I, it's, it's stuff like that, and you can recognize that maybe the message of this in 1960 something was like, hey, don't bully that minority because they might be useful, which is like horrible, but it's still, don't bullying that minority, like, that is the message, but it's for the wrong reason. And so, like, yeah, might have been fine back then, I'm not showing my kids this fucking movie, that that movie is really weird and disturbing.

0:12:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:14 Lydia: And It sucks because that's another thing that, like, I have really fond memories of that movie and

0:12:16 Thomas: Oh, no, we'll find a million other things, it's fine.

0:12:22 Lydia: I Know. I know, and I that's totally fine. And I don't need the kids to watch it either.

0:12:23 Thomas: No, I know, sorry, I don't, but I say that, but if anyone ever tells me that Muppet Christmas Carol is problematic in some way, I'm, I'm Trump now, I'm actually, yeah, oh no, I'll, I will fully, that'll be the thing, I always wondered what will be the thing that puts me someone's like, you can't show your kids Muppet Christmas Carol, oh, okay, I'll move to my own planet, I don't care.

0:12:30 Lydia: We'll have to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Freaking Rudolph.

0:12:46 Thomas: Seriously, that song though, it's like, oh, great, capitalism or something, it's like, oh, yeah, as soon as we can exploit the minority person for their features and make money off of it, essentially, like, then it's cool, then we're super into that. It's, and, like, I don't, I really wonder who the person who made that version, like, what they were thinking, like, interpretation was, maybe it's sort of the message of, like, oh, don't bully minority people because they might actually have redeeming qualities that, that overcome the fact that they're an identity that you despise for no reason. You know what mean? Like, that was a lot of the counter-racist and counter-homophobic messaging back then, that to make baby steps as to, like, hey, maybe don't do that for these bad, bad reasons, in the same way that we had to do, you know, oh, people have no choice. Know, like, that was the, the major argument for gay rights in my childhood and our childhood, I think, was, hey, they're born this way.

0:12:47 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah

0:13:36 Thomas: They don't have any choice. And that was kind of a necessary step. I think people argue about this. I'm not, NOT the decider of this, but like some people say like, yeah, that was a necessary steps. Some people say, like, Hey that, that really messed things up because really what the argument should have been is, you know, fuck you. Like we can do whatever we want. You know, it should be the permit that Ron Swanson has, like, oh, fuck yeah, I do whatever I want, people worry that that argument set that back a bit when it comes to things like maybe identities that aren't, like, you know, biological, or sexualities that aren't like, there's not going to be a gay gene per se.

People worry, you maybe that set that, that back a bit, but I think, I think there's a strong argument that, I don't know, maybe you have to meet the masses of bigots where they are a little bit, and maybe that's what the original Rudolph was, but just like the fucking rapey song of Baby It's Cold Outside, we're not there anymore, so, like, it's irrelevant now, it's not, you know, like it's not a crime if you still want to listen to it, but it doesn't work the same way, it, it doesn't sit within our culture in the same way at all that it would have back then. And so I think if you're going to show it or play it or whatever to young, very impressionable youths, that they better at least know, like, you better at least give them an explanation of it, or just don't bother. Find a different, better thing.

0:13:52 Lydia: Yeah oh man

0:14:50 Thomas: That's my overall Warren Christmas message.

0:14:52 Lydia: Here's the conspiracy theory for you. So the brother-in-law I had mentioned is the one who wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the song of the guy who wrote the original story, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. So the mother-in law is actually Johnny Marks, who wrote a lot of Christmas songs, including Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, Holly Jolly Christmas, Silver and Gold.

0:14:55 Thomas: Okay. Oh, okay. Okay.

0:15:14 Thomas: He was Jewish, wasn't he? Yeah.

0:15:15 Lydia: He is Jewish.

0:15:16 Thomas: I love it, all the best. Again, why was idiot Henry Ford thinking that? Well, oh wait, no, that goes with this theory actually. Oh, shit. Oh.

0:15:18 Lydia: Yeah.

0:15:27 Lydia: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This is the conspiracy.

0:15:28 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. The Jewish people gave us Christmas in order to kill Jesus as our savior or whatever, in which case, fucking A, I love, love him. I love, I love do.

0:15:38 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, this is incredible.

0:15:45 Thomas: That's so funny. But that's the, now what's hilarious about that is all of those things that Henry Ford would have said are, you know, the international Jew is creating in order to get rid of Christ. Those are the very things that those same conservatives are arguing that we're taking away now.

0:16:00 Lydia: Today. Yeah.

0:16:01 Thomas: Yeah. So good.

0:16:02 Lydia: I know. I know. It's

0:16:03 Thomas: It's so good.

0:16:03 Lydia: Amazing. That's why I wanted to start, you know, this whole conversation with like 1921. Yeah. So do you have any more on Rudolph?

0:16:06 Thomas: Yeah, fantastic. I think I've made, I

0:16:13 Lydia: Major points.

0:16:13 Thomas: Think I've done my dissertation.

0:16:17 Lydia: Why don't we talk about what's been going on this year then? So a couple weeks ago, a week ago. It's it's very recent. Jill Biden had a dance troupe come in to celebrate Christmas. And there's a filmed video of them dancing through the White House. And conservatives did not like it.

0:16:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:16:36 Thomas: That's weird. So I'm just on paper. I'm thinking, all right. They did a video of literally people doing... It's Nutcracker, isn't it?

0:16:42 Lydia: Yeah. Well, yeah.

0:16:43 Thomas: Or sort

0:16:44 Lydia: It's a version of the Nutcracker.

0:16:45 Thomas: Yeah yeah. It's the Nutcrackers, and they're dancing and it's Christmas tree and it's about Christmas, so how do we, what's our criticism going to be here, if you know, like, well, okay, let's see, Jesus.

0:16:45 Lydia: Yeah.

0:16:56 Clip: Nothing quite like Christmas at the White House, from Winston Churchill spending his Christmas with the Roosevelts in the midst of war, to Jackie Kennedy being the first First Lady to decorate the halls with nutcracker ornaments and twinkling lights. But who can forget Barney Cam?

0:17:12 Lydia: I Don't know, he's doing like a historical thing. Yeah.

0:17:16 Clip: Everybody's looking for you and you're supposed to be working and here you are playing. I know you've been out here a long time because you've got snow everywhere. Nancy Reagan famously brought Mr. T to the White House for Christmas in a crimson Santa suit with his signature gold chains.

0:17:24 Thomas: Is that supposed to be, so these are the good examples

0:17:31 Clip: Melania Trump decked halls with glam and some dancing ballerinas.

0:17:32 Thomas: Okay. This is the creepiest I Yeah.

0:17:38 Lydia: She looks like she's so pissed off. Yeah.

0:17:41 Thomas: I, this is, look, I know this is an audio medium, we see a, uh, like a fucking dementor walk out and look over this ballerina, white as the driven snow, obviously, uh, doing a dance, which is like, if you know, if we took the kids to a Nutcracker thing, we'd be like, oh yeah, we wouldn't look like I'm going to suck your soul like she, it's creepy, I don't spend a lot of time on this because again, have a hard time with seeing humans that aren't actually humans inside, because it, like, it creeps me out and makes me depressed about the whole world, but when I'm forced to, you look at someone like Melania, she's a dementor.

0:17:47 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Classical ballet Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:17 Lydia: There's no

0:18:18 Thomas: She hovers Yeah, she's just scowl on her face, like, look at this thing I'm doing, and that's supposed to be the good example, that, look at this true hero of Christmas.

0:18:18 Lydia: Joy there. Yeah.

0:18:27 Thomas: What, you're supposed to, you is hire an all white, white, white to be white and dance, and then scowl over them because you're miserable and you hate your fucking life, they come through, she's just fucking scowling, she's like, I can't wait to suck out your souls later, has anyone seen these people since, these ballerinas, are they missing is real Christmas

0:18:27 Lydia: Yeah, yep.

0:18:51 Clip: And the media called that Melania's white Christmas, but this year Joe Biden did, what she plagiarized, recreating the Nutcracker scene, but with a twist.

0:18:55 Lydia: Yeah plagiarized.

0:18:53 Thomas: Okay because it was what okay This, okay. It's just they're just doing tap dance, which is, you would think that, what's more Americana than like a tap dance-y thing, you know, right? Yeah. Oh, there's a Christmas tree. Okay. We got a Christmas tree. We've people with kind of costumes I don't totally understand, but I'm an idiot. I don'T anything. So that's, that's definitely a Nutcracker-esque thing. Yeah, there we go.

0:19:28 Lydia: It's great. Yeah I think

0:19:39 Clip: Now Akilah says she's scared, but as a patron of the ballet, I found it quite

0:19:41 Thomas: What? What is that? Is that another person in the studio? Akilah says she's scared. Is that because there's black people on the thing but what

0:19:45 Lydia: It's a guest. Yeah oh

0:19:48 Clip: Enchanting. But not everybody agrees. Some say it looks like the White House switched from cocaine to acid. Others say it looks like The Hunger Games or

0:19:59 Thomas: But you recognize that in that comment you're saying it was cocaine before right I mean okay sure now you understand cocaine is the Christmas drug it because it's what acid is the that's the progressive leftist war on Christmas drugs

0:20:04 Lydia: Yeah yep yeah because

0:20:07 Clip: Clockwork Orange. But

0:20:13 Lydia: It's white. White as Because what is the snow?

0:20:17 Clip: It's a perfect symbol for the Biden presidency. People spin and tap dance while Joe doesn't appear on camera. They called Melania's Christmas an all-white Christmas.

0:20:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:24 Lydia: Because it's the first lady.

0:20:28 Clip: That would make Jill's Christmas and anti-white christmas because Because the dancing group, Doran's Dance, supports critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and the 1619 Project.

0:20:28 Thomas: Trump wasn't in them there are white people in it it's just I

0:20:41 Clip: In

0:20:42 Thomas: Quit. Yeah, I might have to tap out of this.

0:20:42 Lydia: OK, so, yeah, it's fine. Let me talk about Dorrance Dance Company, because that was something that, like, kind of blew up in conservative circles where they're saying explosive new evidence about the dance company behind the tap dancing at the White House. Yeah.

0:20:47 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:20:57 Thomas: Behind the tap dancing nutcracker video that is a nothing. This is the world we live in.

0:21:01 Lydia: Yeah. So Michelle Dorrance started the Dorrance Dance Company. They are a very well regarded dance company. She is white and she studied at, tap and everything growing up. Her mother was teacher a as well, TAP teacher, and she went to NYU and they have one of their schools at NYU where you can kind of put together your own major. And she developed her own major, which was focused on studying concepts of American race and relationship to democracy in American culture. And that's those are themes that she explores in choreography. TAP has a significant black history.

0:21:09 Thomas: Oh, she's white though, right? Yeah.

0:21:41 Thomas: No way.

0:21:42 Lydia: Yes. Yes. So, you her website itself, education is very important to her and to their mission. And so on the website, it says tap dance was born on the slave plantation in horrific circumstances. To learn the heritage of tap dance is to learn the history of racial inequality in America and how that inequality was transcended. To earn the legacy of tap dance is also to learn that responsibility to pass down that legacy in oral tradition and a Black form. So this is something means a lot to her. It is her dance company. It is fine for that to be part of their mission. Tap dance through history, you know, they on the vaudeville stage, it started off in like minstrel shows where Black performers had to play Black stereotypes and wear Blackface themselves, essentially.

0:22:30 Lydia: And then it moved over to Black vaudeville. But there was an unspoken two-colored rule for vaudeville acts where Black people were never allowed to perform solo. That was pretty much unheard of. So all tap acts ended up being duets for that reason. And then segregation in the era of like film and Broadway prevented a lot of Black people from participating in like this golden age of film film that featured tap dancing, something that, you know, a lot of huge number of greats of tap dancers that didn't really get to participate in this, with the exception of, if anyone writes in, I know, Bojangles Robinson. I understand he was in all the Shirley Temple movies, or not all of them. A lot of them, he is the exception. But because of that segregation in film and Broadway, it led to two different styles of tap dance.

0:23:17 Lydia: You have the Broadway style, which is the white people, and then you have more of the traditional rhythm style with more jazz influence. And so that is the purpose of this company is to understand where tap came from and to to educate audiences and to, I don't know, just do something different. Right. Like what we saw with the well, we saw it. I guess the audience didn't see it. But with the Melania Nutcracker, it's beautiful and it's traditional Nutcrcker. This performance is, you know, Nutcricker is always fantasy. It's always a little crazy. Even in the original, you have, a Nutcracker toy that comes to like a full life size man. And he's actually like giant Nutcrcker at one point. And then it becomes a man and he's fighting, you Know, the Mouse King and like, it's all fantasy.

0:24:07 Lydia: So this is kind of dialing it up a notch. And then the song that they're using is actually from 1960 and it's a jazz arrangement by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn of Nutcracker. So this is not, something you kooky and weird that Jill Biden, you found like a random, you You know, she is not the only person that does this company, that they incorporate these themes and and education as part of the work that they're doing.

0:24:44 Thomas: Yeah, has to be a monoculture for these fascists. That really is. Like, I know it's, not saying any one thing like this means we're the third right kind of thing. But it's like, it's this, that kind of sentiment. It like, no, every single nutcracker needs to be the classic, you the clean cut nutcrcker. I, I just would like every fucking conservative asshole to realize that first off, Tchaikovsky was gay. So everything you, basically every, or any art that's ever been good was done by people whose identity you probably hate, like just so you know, um, into a Christmas icon a gay man's ballet or whatever, and then insisting it has to be done exactly a certain way to coincide with you, it's just, the whole thing is just so fucking boring more than anything, like, let people do different fucking things.

0:24:53 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:31 Lydia: Yep so we we can can evolve we can change and we can you understand that certain dance companies have specific big priorities. And

0:25:38 Thomas: Nothing This is a nothing story. That's not a story, Jill. Biden did a nutcracker thing in a Christmas, it's a Christmassy thing, that's Christmas, yeah.

0:25:38 Lydia: Yeah, I hope folks learned a little bit about a tap on the way. So yeah. Next up, the other big story of 2023's War on Christmas.

0:25:49 Thomas: Here We go.

0:25:54 Lydia: And this is where we're going to leave it for folks. Apparently, Target is Dylanizing, in Fox News's language, Dylanizing Christmas Christmas decorations. Dylan, of course, being Dylan Mulvaney and the threat of inclusivity and diversity.

0:25:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:11 Clip: Corporate America, companies are committing financial suicide one after the other. We all remember what happened to

0:26:17 Thomas: Oh, wait, is that something we could fact check? Well, we'll, I'll wait till we hear which companies.

0:26:20 Lydia: Yeah.

0:26:20 Clip: Bud Light. And Disney got all weird, started sticking their nose in politics, and then their movies started flopping. Then there's Target. They were selling a line of clothes for trans toddlers. Tuckums. Yes, tuckums. Their stock tanked down nine billion over the summer

0:26:34 Lydia: That's that's fake, so also

0:26:35 Thomas: Trans toddlers. Yeah. You know, I know that that's fake. There aren't trans toddlers that do genital surgery. Like what, what, why would, yeah, there's not literally, literally we have Phoebe wear Arlo's underwear that he, he doesn't like and it's fine. No one cares. It doesn't matter. There's toddlers, there literally nothing going on.

0:26:43 Lydia: They're wearing like pull-ups and diapers like all those things anyway so yeah literally a lie

0:27:00 Clip: But they didn't learn anything. Target hired this person, gay Cruella, to run their merchandising strategy. Gay Cruell says he's ready to rip out the glitter and hellfire flamethrowers to rip the old world to shreds. Now, we don't really know what that means, but Target can hire and sell whatever they want. It's their business. If the stock crashes and sales go down, it's their money prime

0:27:00 Thomas: Okay.

0:27:20 Thomas: This is, this is necessary part every single war on Christmas. Now we know that they can do whatever they want because capitalism is also, they should be allowed to hire a nine-year-old kids to work there too. Cause you know, just like capitalism and stuff. But we

0:27:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:27:35 Clip: Time wanted to see what Target was selling, what does the store look like after Cruella ripped out the brewer and the flamethrowers. So we sent one of our producers to Target and they found this. A

0:27:48 Thomas: Sent one of our producers to target is just my favorite thing. We had one of our wealthy, like fucking like fail sons of whoever, whoever they hire at fucking Fox News. You know, the fail son of a wealthy, wealthy billionaire of something, you know, we had them slum it up by going to Target and probably they probably treated it like it was a third world country kind of thing.

0:27:49 Lydia: Investigative journalism

0:28:13 Thomas: Every nutcracker is gay. I'm sorry.

0:28:12 Clip: Nutcracker complete with a rainbow hat

0:28:14 Thomas: They're all gay.

0:28:15 Clip: A trans flag full price 12, but right now it's on sale for eight. Target also sells Santa, Santa ornaments, but Target's Santa is in a wheelchair and is black. And it's on

0:28:31 Lydia: So insane

0:28:31 Thomas: Listen to him struggling to like, OK, don't say, OK. What words am I allowed to say? What words can I say to describe this? Now, listen to how hard this is for him.

0:28:31 Lydia: Yeah yep

0:28:38 Clip: Sale for $8. Target also sells Santa ornaments. But Target's santa is in the wheelchair and it's black. And it is a good thing our chimney is wheelchair accessible so Jesse Jr. is going to get all the gifts he wants. The nutcracker and wheelchair santa might be the only items in Target that don't get looted. A sheriff in California who was trying to help Target stop shoplifters was told to not arrest

0:28:49 Thomas: His face literally twitches while he's trying to make sure he says the right thing.

0:28:50 Lydia: Yeah, Well, you can yeah,

0:29:02 Thomas: Oh, now we're OK. Now we're changing to the panic over looting.

0:29:07 Lydia: But play it through because Riley Gaines talks about this in a minute, I'll

0:29:07 Thomas: Yeah. Oh okay great what

0:29:10 Clip: Shoplisters in the store. If they weren't someone arrested, go around outside and walk behind the store where nobody can film it. The sheriff says those orders come from the top. We're having to be corporate level, not a local level. The employees, law prevention, they really want to work with us. Corporate does not. It's a conscious decision by them.

0:29:19 Thomas: What huh

0:29:32 Clip: So police are triggering for shoppers, they don't want shoppers feeling unsafe or threatened by law enforcement.

0:29:33 Lydia: Know is

0:29:41 Thomas: They're so the b-role while he's talking about this is just like it's a a, I don't know, some target being looted. And it just, they just want your, fucking boomer grandparents or parents or whoever to think that this is all of anywhere.

0:29:53 Lydia: Be scared.

0:29:54 Thomas: Any City is like, wow, it's, it's, if you have conservative family, just ask them their opinion on like any city and you'll hear, oh, it's, oh yeah, I heard everyone's moving out of there. 'Cause it's just all crime infested, um, yeah, so that's that.

0:29:54 Lydia: Yeah.

0:30:08 Clip: Police are triggering for shoppers, they don want shopper's feeling unsafe safe or threatened by law enforcement. It's like they want people stealing, but they don't want anybody to know about it. Is this Target's way of giving out reparations? We don't know. I

0:30:25 Thomas: Wow. Wow. So, is if you already couldn't hear the racism, obviously the video is the people who are looting a Target in this video they're showing are black, so his theory is that Target, oh my god, I can't look, there's so many fucking levels to the, to the stupidity here, are, I think we have to kind of take him at his word that he thinks that this is an intentional thing, they're trying to build the story that Target is doing this intentionally, so they want, here's what Target the corporation wants, they want everyone to steal things from their store and they're preventing local sheriffs from doing anything about it because

0:30:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, he'll

0:31:08 Thomas: That it's their reparations. Can't How Could you think that's any decision any human entity would like, oh, wouldn't they just donate to something if that's what they wanted?

0:31:11 Lydia: I I can't even make sense of it.

0:31:20 Thomas: Like Assume Target is the wokest of woke, which they're not, obviously assume they were, it was like the wokiest of woke people running it, they'd be like, all right, we want to make a shitload of profit at our stores so therefore we can donate to reparations causes, causes, you wouldn't be like, oh, I know what we'll do, we'll let our whole, all our stores be looted and it'll just be a dump, like we won't have a business anymore, that's the woke thing to do? God, these people are so dumb, how could you think that's what anyone would do? No.

0:31:21 Lydia: Yeah.

0:31:48 Clip: Mean, you can now steal up to $900 in California without getting pinched. This could destroy Target.

0:31:54 Thomas: That's True, I Every day I steal nine hundred dollars worth of merchandise from a local California store

0:31:54 Lydia: It's It's Yeah. It moved it from a felony to a misdemeanor. So

0:32:00 Thomas: Yeah. Which it should be, yeah.

0:32:00 Lydia: Yeah.

0:32:02 Clip: That's the idea. Riley Gaines is the director of the Riley Gaine Center and ambassador for the Independent Women's Forum, and that is an OSA Fox Business correspondent. So, Riley, are you going to have gay nutcracker around the Christmas tree this Christmas? What's my other option? Disabled Santa? Yes, you have black Santa in the wheelchair. And we don't have anything against black Santa or disabled Santa. I think if Santa has a disability, then that's fine.

0:32:05 Thomas: Idiots. That's a coincidence. Really?

0:32:26 Thomas: Was That, why are you he's saying this right now. Oh,

0:32:32 Clip: But why do you think Target is selling this type of merch? You know what I thought about today?

0:32:32 Thomas: Okay. Wait, what was I watching then? But

0:32:38 Clip: Day.

0:32:38 Thomas: It's fine though. I thought, no,

0:32:38 Lydia: But It's fine.

0:32:39 Clip: Back in 2005, Target banned the word Christmas, the phrase Merry Christmas. Employees weren't allowed to say it.

0:32:44 Thomas: It's not true. It's

0:32:42 Lydia: Lie. No, it's literally a lie.

0:32:46 Thomas: Not at all true.

0:32:46 Clip: No merchandise was allowed to have the word Christmas on it because it implied that, you know, the idea of Christ exists. Now, I believe that's still in effect, yet they're allowed to

0:32:56 Lydia: No lie.

0:32:49 Thomas: Oh that's weird. Christmas. Who is this nut job by the way? I don't remember who this fucking idiot is.

0:32:58 Lydia: Oh, Riley Gaines. Oh yeah. No. So she is

0:33:01 Thomas: Jesus Christ.

0:33:01 Lydia: A swimmer, right? She was competing against Leah Thomas. Yeah. And we saw her in Lady Ballers over on GAM she tied in fifth place with Leah Thomas, yeah.

0:33:04 Thomas: Oh. So she's a, you know, b-minus athlete that blamed trans people for her not getting yeah she would have tied for fourth place or what is that virus

0:33:20 Lydia: I don't know. She would have have had fifth place by herself, I guess.

0:33:23 Thomas: Oh, she tied with Leah Thomas. Okay so she would she would've gotten that tin medal what is what's the fit they only give to the top three and that was division that was college right that wasn't like the olympics or some shit oh

0:33:24 Lydia: Yeah. From my recollection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. College. Yeah. She's out of University of Kentucky.

0:33:38 Thomas: Hey, isn't that the state where they play Baby It's Cold Outside for two hours. Her brain has been rotted by hearing nothing but Baby It's Cold Outside for hours and hours straight.

0:33:41 Lydia: Yeah? Maybe she's lost her mind. It all makes sense. Man.

0:33:50 Clip: Black disabled Santa and a gay nutcracker. It doesn't make sense. You have to ask yourself, why do they keep pushing this? Who are they trying to appeal to? Because despite what the media portrays or how politicians are voting, this doesn't represent the overwhelming majority of how this country, really how the world, feels on this issue. I think majority of people, parents especially, they can acknowledge that gay nutcracker and black disabled Santa has gone way too far.

0:34:08 Thomas: Politicians are voting?

0:34:10 Lydia: So

0:34:20 Clip: The pendulum has swung. Yeah, I mean, I'm not as upset about it. I'm say that either, but

0:34:20 Thomas: Gone too far. Yeah.

0:34:22 Lydia: Here's the thing, here's the thing. There are people who collect nutcrackers and like different versions of nutcrackers and things, yeah.

0:34:28 Thomas: Yeah. No, they have to collect the same exact one. It has to be the one white straight guy with a hard dick, just like ready to fuck female nutcrackers.

0:34:35 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Make little baby nutcracker, that's how we're going to save the human civilization.

0:34:40 Thomas: Yep. That's why the mouth still has the hinging action. You

0:34:48 Lydia: But there are people who also, like, don't have kids and buy Christmas decorations because they like Christmas, and maybe that's something that they want to have for their house for their decorations. Who cares. Who cares.

0:35:00 Thomas: Don't even have, you don't even have to go that far. I hear what you're saying, but it's like, they are a business selling things. If these didn't sell at all, they would take them off the fucking shelves because contrary to what these idiots think, Target is not a woke woke corporation. Every corporation tries to make money. If they think there's enough people to buy the thing, they'll do the thing. Sometimes you get a corporation that's like fundamentalist in one way or the other, and they try to just make money on a niche audience, and again, that's their fucking God-given right as an American, uh, capitalist fucking oppressor that, you know, that Jesse Waters, I love how they have to sing, they have a virtue signal that every time while they're, they're speaking out of every different side of their mouth now

0:35:10 Lydia: They wouldn't make them Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:43 Thomas: It's okay, I don't have a problem with this, but anyway, here's the problem with this, it's like what you said, you don't have a problem with it, what does it matter, what is it, it's the dog whistliest thing, they just want to say it's black, but they can't say that, so it's fine that it's black, but like it's, it's blank though.

0:35:49 Lydia: So, Crazy. One It's just so hilarious too because, you know, there's this implied sort of situation where that's all that's available to you to buy, where like when you look at the pictures, you can see in the pictures that people are taking themselves and saying like

0:36:11 Thomas: Yeah. It might as well be toy Story 2 with all the Buzz Lightyears that the second one, I think, where it's just like Buzz Lightyear's Buzz Lightyears in the shelves, there's like a, a billion of them, and then there's like if you put one gay Buzz Lightyear there, it'd be like it's the end of the fucking world, God.

0:36:15 Lydia: Oh yeah Yeah. Yeah. That's Basically what it looks like, like you can buy whatever you want, and then there's also this option if you like it.

0:36:32 Thomas: This Is there's people's whole lives, there's a whole job, just keep people afraid of nothing all the time, it's depressing.

0:36:39 Lydia: Yeah.

0:36:42 Clip: Nutcracker, I mean, this appeals to children, the Christmas spirit. You decorate the house, you put Nutcrackers up there.

0:36:45 Thomas: Nutcracker written by a gay composer literally written by gay

0:36:49 Clip: Is this sexualizing Christmas for children? And how does that, Madison, how does it affect corporate?

0:36:52 Lydia: Sexualizing Chris.

0:36:55 Clip: Well,

0:36:49 Thomas: Composer. Wow. No, insisting on a straight, straight nutcracker with a hard dick, that's not sexualizing Christmas. But if you make him gay, that's sexualizing it. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, he has to be straight.

0:37:02 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. If he holds a pride flag, that's sex.

0:37:06 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. He must like entering another nutcrackers vagina. Otherwise, you're sexualizing. It everybody.

0:37:16 Clip: Jesse, I think you made a great point, because the reality is we as consumers have choice.

0:37:19 Thomas: Now, who's this swimmer?

0:37:20 Clip: But what we're seeing in America for the first time on full display is that

0:37:20 Lydia: Yeah?

0:37:22 Thomas: Madison Allworth. Did she get seventh? What is her?

0:37:24 Lydia: No, I don't think she's a swimmer.

0:37:25 Thomas: Okay.

0:37:26 Clip: Consumers are making choices based off of what they're seeing on the shelves. When it came to Bud Light, there was a huge pullback. This summer, Target also saw a pullback during its Pride season. I mean, they're still making choices like this. So you have to imagine that this is either a direction they want to take and they're ignoring the bottom line, or maybe it's not having as big of an impact. But you look at the stock and you do see it going down. So you do know that there is an impact and you have to wonder what is the point. And then you look at the other part of all this is the crime. And the CEO actually coming out and saying, he said that they lock up a lot of stuff at Target. This is something that we see when we go out to our stores. And they say that customers actually like that. But like that they have stuff in stock. You have to wait for it, but I don't know about you.

0:37:42 Thomas: Oh, yeah, probably. Hmm.

0:38:02 Thomas: What? Boy. I'm getting a lot of mixed

0:38:08 Clip: When I can

0:38:09 Thomas: Messages. So I thought a second ago they want everyone to steal to do reparations. But now they're locking stuff up.

0:38:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. But now They're locking everything up and it's

0:38:14 Thomas: Oh, man, yeah.

0:38:17 Clip: Order something online and it shows up to my door in a day and I don't have to stand in the Target aisle and wait for a product, you have a real problem there. I'm embarrassed when I go to the store and I want to buy deodorant or maybe another product for my personal hygiene, and it's locked up, Riley, and I have to hit a button, and then a big beeping sound happens, and then all these workers descend upon me and they see what I want and then they judge me. I don't like that. I just want to go into the store and grab what I wants.

0:38:21 Thomas: What?

0:38:47 Thomas: So then you want less secure, they don't just, fucking, I quit. I quit you just can say whatever you want. The The big bad guy that you're making fun of can have any characteristics at any time, contrary purposes at any... It's just fucking, the whole thing's a big pile of steaming fucking bullshit.

0:38:48 Clip: Totally.

0:38:51 Lydia: Make any sense? Yeah, yeah, no, we're done with that video.

0:39:06 Lydia: Yep, but you know, in all this research that I did watching all of these ridiculous videos videos, yeah, it's okay, uh, it just makes me want to make Christmas extra special for the kids, um, to prove them all wrong, but one thing that I came across was, um, in 2021, uh, someone who used to work for Fox, Allison Camerota, she actually moved over to CNN years ago. And in 2021, she talked about how the war on Christmas, it's not like it was, you know, just kind of people willy nilly doing doing stuff. She talked about how it's very structured. It is a very planned, methodical coverage that Fox News does every single year. And, I think maybe there are some people, not Jesse Waters, certainly not Tucker Carlson, not Bill O'Reilly, but there might be some people who, like, when we've watched the videos and we're like, are they trapped in their bodies?

0:39:11 Thomas: Jeez, I'm sorry. Yeah, I

0:40:06 Lydia: Like, what are they trying to get out? Are they trying to leave or this isn't making sense? I think that there probably is an element of this is what's expected. And so they're having to do this coverage. And, you know, I don't want to necessarily give excuses to to those folks. But I just thought it was really interesting to hear, like how purposeful it all is. It's really directed by Fox at the larger level to perpetuate this imagined war on Christmas year over year.

0:40:33 Thomas: Think there's only one way to go out, and My dearest Lydia, as I lay here amidst the cold and quiet of a winter's night that seems to stretch endlessly before me, I pen these words with a trembling hand, knowing they may well be my last. The war on Christmas, a conflict that once seemed so distant and abstract, now clings to me like the frost on these barren fields. Gone are the days of hopeful resistance, of singing of carols in defiance, of decorating our homes as bastions of festive cheer. The shadows that once held at bay now loom over us, snuffing out the warm glow of our cherished holiday. I remember the laughter of children unwrapping gifts, the sound of church bells echoing through the snow-covered streets, the sweet aroma of gingerbread and pine. But these memories now flicker like the last embers in a dying fire, overshadowed by the relentless march of those who would see Christmas fade into obscurity.

0:41:22 Thomas: As my comrades fall all around me, their whispers of Merry Christmas fading into the silent night, I find myself grappling with despair. The lights of our Christmas trees, once symbols of hope and joy, now seem as distant as the stars above. In this hour, as the end draws near, I am haunted not by the fear of what awaits me, but by the sorrow of leaving a world where the spirit of Christmas may no longer find a home. I grieve not for myself, but for the generations to come who may never know the magic of this time of year, the warmth of family gathered around a hearth, the joy of giving and receiving love. As I gaze upon the snowfall, each flake a testament to the fleeting beauty of life, I hold on to the belief that somewhere, in some corner of our world, the true meaning of Christmas will endure. That the songs, the stories, the traditions we fought to protect will find a way to blossom anew in the hearts of those who still believe.

0:42:13 Thomas: To you, my dearest recipient's name, I leave my final words. Cherish the Christmas spirit. Keep it alive in your heart and your actions. Let it be a beacon of hope, dark in times, a reminder of the love and joy that wants to find the season. As I close my eyes, I take solace in the thought that perhaps, in some small way, our struggle has kept the flame, name, of Christmas burning, even as it flickers and gathering darkness. With all my love and wishes for a merry Christmas, your dying soldier's name. Yeah.

0:42:42 Lydia: That's a lot to write as you're dying.

0:42:44 Thomas: I realized that when I did the prompt, but I thought it would work anyway. Anyway, AI is taking all our jobs, so we'll see. Uh, maybe we'll see you next time, or maybe it will be AI Thomas. And no, I think your job's fine, but mine's gone for sure.

0:42:59 Lydia: I'll be here with chat GPT. It's fine.

0:43:01 Thomas: Sure to go to patreon.com/wherethereswoke to hear the uh Tom bonus where we really, that we had a lot lot of fun with that uh, we did a video that I, uh, think I said is kind of, it, it lays bare our motivations as warriors against Christmas, you know, so really if you want to take a look in the mirror, you know, uh for, in the O'Reilly funhouse mirror of what our motivations are, make sure to check that out, and thanks to Tom Curry for doing that, it was a lot of fun with. That said, have a merry Christmas, we'll see you next time.

0:43:06 Lydia: Oh, so fun.

0:43:18 Lydia: Yeah.

0:43:28 Lydia: Merry Christmas. Bye.

0:43:51 Thomas: Straight nutcracker with a hard dick, that's not sexualizing Christmas, but if you make him gay, that's sexualizing it. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, he has to be straight.

0:43:57 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. If he holds a pride flag, that's sex.

0:44:00 Thomas: Yeah, exactly.