Yes, friends, it’s come to this:
When kids hear Santa Claus bellow, “Ho, ho, ho,” is their first thought prostitution?
That concern has prompted an attempt to gag the traditional greeting, and many Santas are now fighting back.
I’ll leave it to you to conjure your own images of outraged Santas “fighting back”; for me, I picture some sweaty street person in a dingy rental suit hurling a quarter bottle of Mad Dog at the mall security guard standing between himself and the fat woman in the “What Would Jesus Say?” t-shirt.
Of course, the more apropos question might be “What Would Mary Magdelene Say?” — but then, we’re talking about people who have nothing better to do than to protest a homonym.
According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Santas across Australia are rebelling against attempts to change their saying to a more politically correct, “ha, ha, ha.”
It all started when the recruitment firm Westaff –- which has offices both in the United States and Australia -– told its Christmas trainees that the “ho, ho, ho” phrase could frighten children and possibly be derogatory to women.
Well, I can’t speak for all children. But as a tyke myself once, I can honestly say that the only way I’d be frightened by the phrase “ho ho ho” is if it were being uttered by a crazed PCP freak coming at me with a garden implement.
Beyond that, the very fact of a fat man in a red suit willing to give me gifts for sitting on his lap is inherently frightening — at least until your parents assure you that he has no ill designs on your kiddie junk. Most likely.
“Westaff has been a provider of quality caring Santas for over 40 years,” Westaff’s national Santa coordinator Sari Hegarty wrote to stores via e-mail.
“Part of our advice to our Santas is that they should be mindful of children having their first Santa experience. We ask our Santas to try techniques such as lowering their tone of voice and using ‘ha, ha, ha’ to encourage the children to come forward and meet Santa. We wish you and your family a very merry Christmas.”
The directions have prompted some Santa trainees to quit the program.
One told the Daily Telegraph he was taught not to use “ho, ho, ho” because it was too close to the American slang for prostitute.
“Gimme a break,” said Julie Gale, head of the campaign against sexualizing children called Kids Free 2B Kids. “We are talking about little kids who do not understand that ‘ho, ho, ho’ has any other connotation and nor should they. Leave Santa alone.”
Dr. Joe Tucci, CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation, called it the latest example of political correctness gone mad.
“There is no stronger tradition for children than Santa’s ho, ho, ho,” Tucci said.
Well, maybe a big tree with presents under it — or stockings filled with candy and CDs. But I take the Doctor’s point.
And anyhow. If Santa truly wanted to indoctrinate children into the joys of pimphood, he’d change the traditional greeting to something like, “bitch best have my money, bitch best have my money, bitch best have my money.”
Next up: “Silent Night” is banned because it expresses a wistful desire for the return of the feudal order and a code of Chivalry that treated women as frail beings in need of protection from men in chainmail and heavy heavy boots.
(h/t STACLU)
Note: I’ll be heading of to Krav Maga class here in a few minutes. Any guest posters who’d like to post in my absence be my guest.
When I get back, I hope to present the first story of Ernie the Ornery Bunny. Because the kind of PC nonsense in the above story just naturally pushes me toward R-rated Bunny exploits.
Ha, ha, ha! Nigersaurus!
ERNIE, the ornery bunny
hoppy happy mean old bunny
funny bunny see how fast
he’ll shove that carrot up your ass
The bunny thing….
You had BETTER use the picture…..
No problem, really. Just have the santas say, “heaux, heaux, heaux,” instead.
You know what people like this are? They’re nothing but a bunch of ha’s.
Stay tuned. The transsexuals are protesting “Deck the Halls with the Balls of Holly”
Ho, ho, ho, kids, I hope you’re all gay! Santa needs to take a fag break.
My better half has a cousin named Ha. It is a common Vietnamese name. Why do the PC’ers always carve out exceptions for the Asians?
And yes, I laugh every time I speak to Ha.
If the tyke knows what a “Ho” is, then perhaps they shouldn’t be queuing up to sit on Santa’s lap.
Whatever the meaning of “ho” may be, I’d still prefer it over a Santa who laughs, “heh heh heh.”
How about this for a compromise? “Hyuk hyuk hyuk!”
That’s “Boughs of HA-lly.,”
I would be worried if my daughter was on Santa’s lap while he chanted aaahhh aaaahhhh ahhhhhhhh ooooops….
So–in TBS marathon of “A Christmas Story”–do we get bleeps at the despartment store Santa scene?
We have to draw the line somewhere people.
Preferably north of Ernie the Bunny’s…um…bunny zone.
In a reciprocal move, ho’s have been banned from yelling, “Heh, fat man! Get yo beard offa ma tits!”
Mr. LeFong:
Things like stock market prices, miniature golf scores, post-drugged semen levels, and chronic back pain and flatulence can fluctuate naturally and may regress towards the mean and uncalled for. The logical flaw is to make predictions that expect exceptional results to continue as if they were the average, a representativeness heuristic if I ever saw one! People are most likely to take action when dissent, like morning wood, is at its peak. Then after results become more normal or less turgid, they believe that their action was the cause of the change when in fact it was not causal, wherein cohesion between objects of similar silly appearance is assumed. While often very useful in everyday life, it can also result in neglect of relevant base rates and volumes, an inability to play funk, and other errors. Another snag you may encounter involves describing some occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem, when, throughout my garbled history, it’s been commonly identified again and again that, if the nuns of the order of Sisters of Saint Joseph are to be believed, I am the one with the “problemâ€Â. Though misleading vividness does nothing to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect because of a cognitive forceful brainwashing called the availability heuristic. Another area that needs to be dealt with in a timely and thorough manner is several references in my late Elementary/Junior-high phase of mutational development, otherwise known as the “Parade of horribles”, originally referred to as a literal parade of people wearing comic and grotesque costumes, rather like the Philadelphia Mummers Parade or my yearly family reunion. It was a traditional feature of Fourth-of-July parades in dismal parts of the U. S. in the nineteenth century without indoor plumbing. A 1926 newspaper article about July Fourth celebrations in the White Mountains of New Hampshire notes “Old-time celebrations are to be held tomorrow at Littleton, Lancaster, Colebrook, and Conway, with all the usual features of street parades of horribles and grotesques, brass balls bands, decorated automobiles and vehicles, dance exhibitions by fire departments, basket picnics in convenient small groves, finger-sniffing contest sponsored by the local Catholic diocese, and the regional dwarf tossing semi-finals…â€Â. And to further enlighten and confuse, in Hesse’s “Steppenwolfâ€Â, the protagonist affirms that the men of the Dark Ages (see “Living at Virginia’s houseâ€Â) did not suffer more than those of the Classical Antiquity (see “Attending Catholic school in the 60’sâ€Â), and vice-versa. It is rather those who live between two times, those who do not know what to follow, that suffer the most. In this token, a man from Virginia’s house attending Catholic school, or the opposite, would undergo a gulping sadness and agony.
Santas have to be able to yell “HO HO HO”. How they gonna get the mamas back from drinkin’ a fawty-wata ina alley to pick up they brats?
Mr. Gordon,
It’s probably me………..but I’m not sure you’re on the right thread. Maybe not even on the right blog. I can kinda see where you were leaning towards attempted humor though, so uhhhh………what the fuck was that all about?
Well laugh if you want to, Jeff. I’m heading off to Home Depot to demand they change the name of that thing you use to chop weeds–hoe hoe hoe.
I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to call a Guatemalan, clarice.
uhohes. Work cut out for them, looks like.
Carl, give my regards to your brother Flash.
Demonstrating once again that satirizing the PC morons is ALWAYS prophetic:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JnwUgSb95Os
Think of the poor little ho. Christmas was the one time of year she used to feel special.
You gotta move with the times I guess.
Oh,I don’t know.
Sitting on Santa’s knee always gave me a woody when I was young. Especially the time that he said he would bring me an ack-ack gun.
As long as we can keep the good traditions, I’m not worried about ol’ santa.
Remember making puppetts out of your privates for Aunt Jane, and the time your mother drank all of that cough syrup and threw Granpa’s ashes into the fake fireplace? And everyone has that one really hairy aunt who spends the whole day locked in tha bathroom with your older brother. At my house one of us kids had to stand next to Gramma the whole night and pour water on the arm of the recliner every time she put out a cigarette. Once, when I was eight I accidentally poured my father’s juice glass of 151 on her…so funny! For years afterward I had to sit in the backseat of the car whenever my Gramma came over. But we always had Ice packs, good ones from the medical supply store. To this day, whenever I smell burn salve, I think of Christmas.
And the jokes! God, family is great. Like the time my Dad’s friend “auntie” Candi came to the door dressed as a very sexy elf and told Mom she was pregnant and Dad was the father and said she deserved a gift in return. Then Mom said, “congrats on the herpes, bitch” and hit Candi with the big plastic candle on the stoop, then Candies friend “uncle” Rufus shot out the upsairs windows from the front seat of his Cadillac. Sounded like fireworks! Hilarious! Anyway, Dad stayed close to home for a couple of weeks after that, and Mom got a new blonde wig, so everyone made out pretty well that year. Except for my uncle Jim who had his car stole from right in front of the Amvets by the wierd lady with one arm who sat waaay back in the corner by the phone.
Oh and the Christmas beatings….Gad,ha ha…how could I forget….
When I finished protesting the hoes, I noticed they still have stuff called spades. My work will never end.
“When I finished protesting the hoes, I noticed they still have stuff called spades. My work will never end.”
And yet you’ll still have the garden hose. The dirtiest hose of all.
Lost My Cookies – The painkillers appear to be working overtime today.
Hoes, spades … Apparently, the weekly learning trip where I take Kaitlin to Lowe’s, so she will grow up appreciating power tools, is no longer acceptable. Is there nothing sacred anymore?
Lost My Cookies
You brought back great memories, thank you for sharing that. memories
Santa’s just a cheap cop-out for projected psycho-sexual fantasies, courtesy of your local Catholic “lay member”. The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection, i.e., the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man’s anxieties and desires. So god (or Santa, to all you Wiccans out there) is packing nine inches and wants to do the nasty. Fuck it – I’m supposed to avoid the near occasions of sin, although that seems to be one of the few rewarding activities left on this armpit of a planet tucked away in some insignificant corner of a redundant spiral galaxy swirling around what was once thought of as the center of the universe (before Galileo risked getting his own nutsack fried by the Inquisition by telling the Pope it was totally bogus) but later found to be some backwater burg where you can’t even get a decent egg cream. Oops, there’s that Freudian projection again, but everybody knows that Freud was a perv, shtupping his sister or cousin or the nun that taught him in the seventh grade whilst he fantasized on red pencil boxes or trains going into tunnels. Oops! Damn! Anyway, you can see I’m affected, but not infected, so keep that in mind. Oh well, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” I don’t know who said that but damn, it’s hot!
Carl. Dude. He’s making his list. He’ll be checking it at least a couple times. You are so on it.
That would be the naughty one. And it’s already middle of November.
One of my favorite shows is Cops, and they have one episode called the “Ho Ho Ho Special Edition.” When you pull up the program description on TIVO, it says something to the effect of “Officers respond to holiday-related crimes.”
Let’s just say that this description of the episode is wildly inaccurate.
So what’s next? Banning Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer because it glorifies alcoholism? How about Here Cums Santa Claus, or is that a lesser included crime of ho, ho, hoing? What about wise men? Are they anything like wise guys? Wouldn’t want organized crime to insinuate itself into Christmas. Or should they now be wise people? Wouldn’t that be more PC? And we don’t even want to think about that little angel with the Christmas tree up her butt..
Deemed offensive to Kerry voters.
Nobody seems to care that after the polar ice cap melts Santa is going to have to live in a submarine and wear Bermuda shorts.
I’m so glad you’ve brought this up. If there was anything the Savior cared about, it was semantics. You’re making Him proud. And after all, this holiday season, isn’t it time we set aside partisan bickering and just agree to vote Republican unless you hate America?