The BookwormRoom has a perceptive take on President Obama's family Christmas card:
There’s been a fair amount written
about the Obama Christmas card. It’s a pop-up card, which
has an expensive look that’s unseemly as millions lose their insurance and
millions more have joined the ranks of the perpetually unemployed.
It’s colors are cool, not warm, which seems to refute the warmth that Christmas brings to people in the dark of
winter. It shows a vacant building, which seems symbolic when one
considers that Obama invariable answer to all the scandalsrevealed in the past year is to
disclaim knowledge or responsibility. And lastly, despite going out at Christmas time and despite Obama’s claims to be
a Christian, the card makes no mention of Christmas.
Keep in mind with this last point that the card ostensibly comes not from “the
government” but from a man and his family. George and Laura Bush were not
ashamed that they celebrated Christmas and always sent out cards that included
Biblical verses.
Amidst all the buzz about the Obama Christmas card, there’s one thing I
haven’t seen. No one is talking about the card’s peculiar message: “As we gather around this season, may the warmth and
joy of the holidays fill your home.”
Am I being a pedant, or is it bizarre to “gather around” a
“season”? People gather around hearth fires
and Christmas
trees, and infant cradles and birthday cakes, and
classic paintings in museums and street buskers making beautiful music.
That is, people gather around tangible objects. People do not gather
around something as abstract as a season. It’s the same as saying “As we
gather around this air” or “As we gather around this ambiance.” Yes,
those are nouns, but they’re not the type of nouns one “gathers around.”
In trying to create a card that is all things to all people (never mind that it coincidentally goes out at Christmas), the White House has managed to create nothingness.
(To be charitable, it is possible to read the opening phrase as a muddy version of "As we gather around [tangible objects during] this season." Whatever.) Read the rest here.
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