It's a Wonderful Life if you’re rich and white, that is.

Comments

1
Wow, Cholly. I'm bitter, too. I'm bitter because I probably have only a few more years to live, and I'm going to have to spend them under a Trump administration with a Trump-appointed Supreme Court majority-making justice. Christmas should be my oasis, but it won't be.
2
CHARLES, very well written, with what I detect is a bit of your sly lounge touching your cheek to ghrind out the massage politik....Dec 20 1986, Dana Carvey done did this already, sort of,,,,Remember, Charles, Donny Trumpkins and his Merry Strumpettes only win if we believe that Candy Mountain has turned to shit. Close your eyes and click together your shiny red stilettos and dream candy mountain back to cocaine..anyway, have a laugh,,,

www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/.../its-…...
3
@2 sly lounge, been there, I meant sly tongue,,,

4
@2 here's a better link

www.hulu.com/watch/4267
6
Nice essay, Charles
7
Sorry the Hulu link is some bullshit free trial sales thing, here's a free link

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/post/SNL-…
8
I've been feeling the same way. Before the election, I was fantasizing about buying a tiny trailer and traveling around the U.S. after I retire. Now that sounds scary.
9
#8 don't do it. The Hills Have Eyes, Deliverance, Southern Comfort and every other cliche and stereotype about crazy Hillbilly Trumpster Zombie fiends must be true. There are no decent human beings anywhere in rural Amerika; The Stranger says so...
10
I'd really REALLY like to know the reasons why The Stranger keeps paying this fucking bigot.
11
@10 because he's an excellent writer with great insight and he's a Provocateur Wonderfulus, which would be his label if he was in the Coyote/Roadrunner simulation instead of this one...
12
Love you, Charles...your writing is brilliant as ever
13
"You can see all of the money and time they wasted to make their ordinary homes galaxies of the Christmas spirit." Maybe it's not time and money wasted if they truly enjoy it. Just like say, to you, writing bullshit diatribes is not a waste of time - though to me it sure seems like one.
14
#10 because some of us delight in how much he upsets the William F. Fuckley types. good job, Charles.
15
It's as if George Bailey had never been born.
16
"Charles Mudede" is a long-running project by Tim Keck to troll the trolls.
17
I'll be in Austin, probably chowing down on Chinese food with my dad and siblings. Merry fucking Christmas, chums.
18
Maybe they're objecting to that sign because SEX, and not because it advocates demeaning, dehumanizing and abusing women. That's how they can vote for the Sexual-Offender-In-Chief, they disapprove of the sexual word being seen in public, not of the assault he encourages.
19
Small town... "the strangely smiling sheriff..."

!! Wake In Fright remake in Cowlitz County? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKfrUPSn…

20
Great writing, if depressing. The Trump pall is thick and terrible.
21
I agree with @5, Grew up gay in small town America and survived.Best to have a good sense of humor and stay strong. Remember this too shall pass. Charles best thing I've ever read from you. Please write more like this.
22
How the Trump stole Christmas.

Christmas is a nationwide federal holiday and a Christian holiday. Hell, if we gave other than lip service to the separation of church and state, we might have to deal with the fact that one in five Americans identify as atheistic or agnostic, yet this minority hasn't a single representative in Congress or the Senate.
23
Crazy fact. ^
24
@23
According to the Pew Religious Landscape survey of 2014 the percentage I claimed is most likely about 5% too low. One in four would be a closer approximation.
25
@23
Please name one current, openly atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated member of Congress or the Senate and I will gladly eat my words.
26
@25: Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ 9)
Do your research.
27
"Mommy, where's daddy, it's Christmas."
"Upstairs sleeping off last night's hookers and booze. He'll be down later to be a condescending asshole. Now be quiet and don't wake him, you don't want to spend another Christmas in the ER."
28
Charles is "going to revert" to his "African ways" and get drunk. Sounds about right. Bottoms up buddy.
29
@27 ...just can't give up his "african ways"...it's like every writer who fawned over Clinton has to project their disappointment in her loss into an accusation onto all the "rural" folk. Seattle is such a happy little bubble right now.
30
...after all, hildebeest was the closest mudede could get to a Mugabe style marxist he could get in this country...that was in the final run for president. Yeah, I got your "african ways" asshole.
31
How could all these fine Americans, so passionate about the birth of Jesus Christ, overcome their repulsion for Trump's very own words and make him their leader? I'll tell you how. We are tired of over-educated whiners complain while they collect big salaries, expecting people to do for them. We are tired of the cost of living jumping 30% annually, while our 10-year old salaries stagnate. We are tired of 30, 40, 50 and in some instances 100% increases on rents annually when again, our salaries may only see a 1% or 2% increase. We are tired of being told to have "hope" and that "Progress is a comin'" and then being made to cowtow to political correctness that takes away the few remaining simple pleasures in our lives and history for the minority of, how did you put it, are - "Too African"- we-don't-care" attitude that you and liberal ilk carry. We are tired of working our asses off to serve whiner hipsters that feel that they are entitled because they have a college degree, shitty taste in clothes and not a lick of common sense. For the last 20 years I went Democratic. I voted for Obama both times. And whereas I didnt vote for Trump personally, as a single, white, wage-stagnated, Christian male, I did go Republican and I'm glad he won. Im tired of the political correctness. Im tired of footing the bill for reckless child breeding which includes paying for schools, food programs and school security and idiot parents who can't secure their personal firearms from their kids before they trot off to school to use them. Im tired of whiny women in the workplace crying how underpaid they are while they sit around complaining all day only to run to free food like a gurnesy everytime there is cake available - and then complain that they are too fat. Im tired of trying to live on political promises and trying to pay the rent and groceries on "hope" and "progressiveness" because my landlord and grocer arent taking those as payment right now. Faith in Christ and God is all we have left, and if we have a choice, we'll make that choice even if its the last thing we'll do, because we have nothing left. Don't blame us for the change in political tactic, blame yourselve for restricting that hypocritical "inclusiveness" to just your age demographic and arrogant thinking. If just some of those reasons too "American" or "Caucasian" for you, then there is nothing in this world that says you have to stay. I believe the governement is still issuing passports and there are plenty of flights back to your homeland in Africa whether or not you are a native of Africa, you certainly have no problem aligning with the African nation, so maybe you should just immigrate there and save the rest of us you're whining about what Christmas should mean to the rest of us, because change in the air for at least the next four years.
32
Clarence! Help me!!
33
#31 Thank God Putin is here to save righteous Christians like you from the struggles and disappointments of Democracy!
34
I didn't realize this was a post about the town where I spent much of my formative years (Kelso High, Class of 1978), or I would have commented sooner. On this one Charles is right on the money.

@31:

If those are truly your complaints, then why aren't you fighting against the root causes: the greedy corporations that keep wages low; the greedy landlords that keep rents high; the racists, and bigots, and misogynists, and ___phobes who make political correctness necessary - those are your enemy, not liberals. And yet you continue to put them into power year after year, decade after decade, because you buy what they sell: the idea that THEY aren't the ones making your life miserable, it's the people just a couple of rungs above you on the ladder we're all desperately clinging to that are keeping you downtrodden, and not those at the top kicking all of the rest of us off.

Look around - most of the people receiving public assistance in this country look just like you: white, Christian, poorly-educated, semi-rural, lower-class blue-collar types. The exact people you hold up as "fine Americans", the ones who constantly over-extend their credit purchasing expensive, gas-guzzling toys that spend half the year littering their front yards; who on the one hand willingly assault each other to be first in line to buy cheap, Chinese made crap at their local big-box store, and who on the other complain about the loss of American jobs, and the deterioration of their crumbling downtown retail cores; who would rather waste their precious excess income on lottery tickets or pull-tabs at the local tavern than sock it away into a savings account; who gorge themselves into Type II diabetic comas and early-onset congestive heart failure on endless calories of cheap, fatty, carb-loaded processed foods, while they bitch about the high cost of health care; who look down on brown and black people as being "shiftless" and "lazy" while they literally enjoy the fruits of their manual labor; who bemoan the "loss of American values" and the rise of "PC culture" while they whisper under their breath about how the niggers and spicks and wetbacks and chinks and kikes and rag-heads are ruining this nation. If your God actually does exist, it's pretty clear he abandoned you to your own devices a long, long time ago, while you took the admonition that "God helps those who help themselves" to mean "...help yourself to a second or third serving of those Olive Garden all-you-can-eat breadsticks."

You mean THOSE "fine Americans"? Like the ones I grew up with in Kelso and couldn't wait for the day I graduated from KHS and got the hell away from them as fast as I could?

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