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showAuth({"version":"1.0","encoding":"UTF-8","entry":{"xmlns":"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom","xmlns$blogger":"http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008","xmlns$georss":"http://www.georss.org/georss","xmlns$gd":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005","xmlns$thr":"http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0","id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-708938817000327103.post-3965437940773042131"},"published":{"$t":"2015-12-24T09:06:00.000+10:30"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-01-04T09:09:28.369+10:30"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Columns"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Forget goodwill, these Christmas songs are about... rape, racism and bullying?"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-88cUtxq7y6k\/Vomi9bPxLoI\/AAAAAAAACwM\/_ODmcLCNfeU\/s1600\/imagen-3.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-88cUtxq7y6k\/Vomi9bPxLoI\/AAAAAAAACwM\/_ODmcLCNfeU\/s400\/imagen-3.png\" width=\"296\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nYOU know how Christmas is a time for love and goodwill and peace on earth and all that stuff? Well forget all that, because this week I learned that it isn’t.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis week I learned that everything I thought I knew about Christmas was a lie, and I don’t just mean that Father Christmas doesn’t exist (sorry, kids — although if any kids young enough to still believe in Father Christmas are reading this ... well bloody done! And sorry for swearing).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBecause in 2015 it became law to be outraged and offended by absolutely everything, I’ve realised that all those lovely Christmas songs I’ve always thought were charming and innocent are actually nasty, misogynistic, racist anthems that encourage violence, hatred and sexual deviance.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nTake Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, for example. As an acquaintance pointed out on Facebook recently, it clearly encourages bullying: “All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, they never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games”. To which he commented, apparently without irony, “And we wonder how bullying and bigotry starts.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI felt so ashamed. Every Christmas I’d cheerfully sung this ditty about Rudolph and his bright red nose, never realising I was actually encouraging discrimination against ruminant mammals with facial deformities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nOf course one might say that, in the end, Rudolph wins the prize position on Santa’s sleigh precisely because of the glowing nose for which he was once mocked, so one might conclude that the song is actually about celebrating one’s differences.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut no. It’s 2015, remember? It’s definitely about bullying, and we should probably ban it in schools.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThen there’s the croony classic Baby, It’s Cold Outside, which I always thought was a romantic song about a man trying to convince his lady friend to stay the night, but which I now know actually encourages rape.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n(So does kissing under the mistletoe, incidentally, so steer clear of that tomorrow too lest you be carted off by the Christmas police).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWhile the woman flirtingly protests — “I really can’t stay”, “My mother will start to worry” — the man persists with all the reasons she can’t leave. Namely, that it’s cold outside.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis week the Washington Post opined the song is “creepy at best, encouraging of date rape at worst”, while feminist website Jezebel decried it as “disturbing” and “predatory”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nFunnily enough, when it was first released in 1944 the song was seen as flying the flag for feminism because the woman decides to stay the night, despite the fact that “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow” among the neighbours.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut yeah, that was 71 years ago. Now it’s definitely about rape.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nAnd let’s not forget Bing Crosby’s hit White Christmas, which is quite obviously racist.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThat’s not just a bad joke, that’s an actual issue that some people are actually upset about. \u003Cb\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_gFgmXe3q1s\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EIn a prank video\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/b\u003E that went viral this week, dozens of American university students are shown happily signing a petition to ban the song for being “insulting to people of colour”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n“It perpetuates the idea that white is naturally good and that other colours are bad, and we feel that’s a micro-aggression,” the prankster says as students nod and sign his clipboard.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe fact that these songs have all been played for decades before being harpooned by the outrage squad in the same week shows how attuned we’ve all become to harnessing indignation for sport.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIt’s not about “changing attitudes”, it’s about scoring points, and it’s ridiculous — especially when everybody knows the only truly offensive Christmas song is Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nDon’t want to offend anyone this Christmas? The easiest option might be a silent night.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n---\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Ci\u003EFirst published in The Advertiser, December 24, 2015. \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.adelaidenow.com.au\/news\/opinion\/petra-starke-christmas-killjoys-outraged-by-everything-bar-own-mean-spirits\/news-story\/6ddbdce5abfde54649c94705cf6473f1\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ECLICK HERE \u003C\/a\u003Eto read the original article\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/708938817000327103\/posts\/default\/3965437940773042131"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/708938817000327103\/posts\/default\/3965437940773042131"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.petrastarke.com\/2015\/12\/forget-goodwill-these-christmas-songs.html","title":"Forget goodwill, these Christmas songs are about... rape, racism and bullying?"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"petstarr"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/09455921983611787867"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"32","height":"32","src":"\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjHw-A2jLGqT8RwSHGuBf3ee9SG0jkW-khCmY1n6f0EUdd0-cbukkcvO5uOooFYedyM5gR901vE6a7S2ImLskBGhjI7p9cN9J79yr-RXwmpB9DIMWlEqAYCRE0D0z8hKw\/s220\/headshot-sm.JPG"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-88cUtxq7y6k\/Vomi9bPxLoI\/AAAAAAAACwM\/_ODmcLCNfeU\/s72-c\/imagen-3.png","height":"72","width":"72"}}});