THE NO SIN ZONE

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As America‘s foremost embedded reporter in the current War on Christmas, I am sending this encrypted message to you from the front lines: Macy’s.

Dear Soldiers for the Baby Jesus:

Once again, pagan combatants, wielding verbal grenades made of non-specific cheer, are on a militant rampage to retake the Winter Solstice, a holiday invaded and occupied by Christians over 1,700 years ago. 

Friends, we stole December fair and square — and are going to stay the coarse ones in turning a season devoted to love and joy into an vitriolic turf war all about us!

The first shopping skirmish of the season occurred when my Personal Shopper spotted secular insurgents maraudering behind the Estee Lauder counter.  I personally overheard several of these “Happy Holidays” extremists, uniformed in the Lauder infantry’s blue, paramilitary smocks, boldly declare a jihad on the Baby Jesus’ birthday.  As I feigned interest in an egregiously harloty shade of bright red lipstick, I overheard the make-up militia chant such bellicose, Christmas-hating greetings as “Have a wonderful holiday!” to civilian shoppers.  They also brandished IEDs (introductory exfoliating devices) to Christian foundation buyers, Bible-believing bargain hunters simply looking for a Christmas gift that came free with a $35 purchase.

Moments later, bell-ringing infantry from the Salvation Army were called in to drown out the battle cries of “Ho! Ho! Ho!” from a sidewalk Santa. This invasion appears to have been based on faulty intelligence as it turns out that the Santa bellowing “Ho! Ho! Ho!” was merely greeting Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as they drunkenly stumbled out of Neiman-Marcus. Before Baptist mercenaries realized this mistake, angry Pentecostal militia had already rounded up striped-stockinged enemy combatants (pint-sized operatives calling themselves “elves”).  They were wrestled to the ground just outside of their bunker, a Styrofoam gingerbread house in Bloomingdale’s window.

Yes, friends, this year’s War on Christmas has been the most angry and dangerous yet.  Several shoppers’ eyes were taken out as called-up shopoholic reservists from Landover Baptist Church carpet bombed mall parking lots with “Jesus is the Reason for 40% Off Selected Merchandise” Bible tracts.

Bill O’Reilly and I undertook a reconnaissance mission to undercover anti-Christmas propaganda militants.  Holiday hostilities began after I resourcefully used a “Noel” candle from Pottery Barn (which Bill mistook for a candy-striped pagan tribute to Jeb Bush’s crackwhore daughter) to ignite an appalling “Peace on Earth” banner dangling just outside a notorious secular stronghold called Sephora.  As Bill jumped up and down on the flaming banner, he screamed at frightened eye-shadow and fragrance browsers, “Peace on earth?  You can take your anti-troops, anti-Bush, pinko pacifistic agitprop and shove it right up your –”

Fortunately, a resourceful spritz of “Hillary Duff with Love” Eau de Parfum Spray not only prevented Bill from completing his proctologic entreaty, it also caused so much collateral damage to bystander shoppers that “Hillary Duff with Love” has replaced Polonium-210 as my favorite disabling spray during our current campaign to retake the fur department at Saks for Jesus.

As all of you arm yourselves for CHRISTmas shopping this season, know that your comrade-in-arms, Mrs. Betty Bowers, is with you in the AMEX-accepting trenches.  Your Commander-in-Cashmere wishes all of you a joyous Baby Jesus Day and asks you to remain vigilant against secular uprisings, such as shockingly rude cards that wish so-called “nice” things without pandering to your particular brand of faith.  And a special word of warning to you lady shoppers out there: Watch out for Pastor’s notoriously inaccurate missile-toe!

So Close To Jesus, I Still Haven’t Forgiven Him For Stretching Out Last Christmas’s Lovely Elie Tahari Paulo Sweater By Allowing The Entire Trinity To Try It On All At Once,

Mrs. Betty Bowers

America‘s Best Christian

My dear friend Janet L. Folger at Faith2Action called me last night. As usual, she was furious — and drunk. Two of Fred Phelps‘ loud and vulgar relatives have been invited to speak at a debate about Amendment 2 (against so-called “gay” marriage) in Florida.

As America’s Best Christian, I have devoted my life — and your generous tithes — to adding a glossy, coy sheen to the message that Jesus hates people who are not exactly like me in every respect.

I join Faith2Action in being appalled that those odious Phelps Sisters (not to be confused with the charmingly limber duo who juggled Fiesta® Ware while licking their own ankles in chiffon on the Lawrence Welk show) have been invited to Florida to rant and froth about Amendment 2. As a deliciously naughty Jesus is wont to remark, “Those gals are a pair of braying bumpkins no longer on speaking terms with mental health — or mirrors!” And, in contradistinction to me, Faith2Action, and Focus on Wringing Cash from Families, et al., these dowdy gargoyles lack the sophistication to couch their livid distaste for others in a more careful, media-friendly manner.

As founder of the world’s most profitable ex-gay ministry, BASH (Baptists Are Saving Homosexuals), I must support Amendment 2. After all, anything that can denigrate and delegitimize the hobby of being a homosexual, can only lead to less gays feeling secure and happy and, therefore, more likely to tithe at one of my many BASH franchises! (Look for my new BASH kiosk in Coral Gables!) Besides, since evangelical Christians have the highest divorce rates in the country (even higher than those dreadful Mary-Worshipers or hellbound atheists!), it behooves us to do everything possible to make sure that the gays don’t show us up by having happy, long marriages!

But I think the Phelps sisters have clearly gone several steps too far in their zeal for ostracizing homosexuals from their lives. One look at their bought-off-a-pegboard make-up, permed-over-a-kitchen-sink hair and unfortunate “House of Polygamist Compound” couture, it is clear that the one thing these gals need more than no gay marriages is a battalion of gay stylists!

So close to Jesus, I’ve seen the Polaroid of Fred that Drove the Phelps Sisters to Crazyville,

Mrs. Betty Bowers

John McCain said, “We don’t need another politician in Washington who puts self-interest and political expediency ahead of problem solving.” At the time I assumed he was putting down Barack Obama, but now I think he may have been referring to his running mate Sarah Palin.

As most of you know, Arctic Agnew, the ruthless fibber from Alaska, is smirking under a shadow. Among the many unseemly stories coming to national attention, one has the potential to be her undoing. And it isn’t the one about her having an affair with her husband’s best friend the year before her latest baby was born. No, I can already hear James Dobson gaily dismiss that by remarking: “Why, almost every Christian little lady runs around on her spouse! Finding this out just makes Sarah more like ordinary Republicans. And an even more rabid abortion-hater when she keeps the guy’s baby for gosh sakes!”

Sarah’s biggest problem (caveat: that we know of) is the so-called Troopergate scandal. Whereas it would certainly be in our country’s best interest to know if Palin abused her power before we vote, John McCain apparently has plenty of private exceptions to his public proclamation: “Country First!” Effortlessly placing campaign above country, he has deployed a militia of lawyer insurgents to storm Juneau to try to undermine the Alaska legislature’s effort to find out if Palin broke the law.

Clearly, this is one of the other exceptions we keep seeing: to how John will bring a change from the Bush years.

While John McCain may be rethinking his lackadaisical decision to outsource the vetting of Sarah Palin to the more curious American press, I’ve really enjoyed watching all these surprising layers peel off of the panglossian pioneer we were introduced to only last week. Looking a bit like one of those stock and staid librarians in movies, the one who is only moments away from removing her glasses and liberating a thick, lustrous mane of hair with a seductive snap of the neck while stripper music trumpets on the surround-sound, Palin exudes a sense that she is always about to reveal something unexpected before our startled eyes. And the really fun part: I have a hunch she’ll only know what that something is moments before we do. But, of course, weeks before John McCain will.

What I have enjoyed witnessing to a far lesser degree has been my fellow evangelical Republicans’ response to Palin’s energetic striptease of embarrassing information. It seems that the very idea of Dick Cheney’s office being redecorated with moose throws and baby seal pelt doilies by a ferociously ambitious MILF from Alaska has rendered a group of professional faultfinders and scolds mawkishly carefree, giddy in their eagerness to forgive. With a mix of opportunism and testosterone, habitual chiders like James Dobson are swooning over Palin, light-headedly jostling to anoint and absolve.  The GOP’s rehabilitation of poor, maligned Murphy Brown has been as blithe as it has been sudden.

Yes, in many ways Sarah is our kind of gal. Her first priority when she began her contentious reign as the amusingly vindictive mayor of a small, snowy town? Try to ban books at the local library that contained the type of naughty words that so rudely besmirch the English language’s great literature! And, yes, Palin embraces the God of our President and Party, a God who is more likely to fritter away His day romantically daydreaming about a $30 billion gas pipeline than plucking a victim of one of His hurricanes out of a capsized canoe.

But it is not this shared (and profitable) vision of a mercantile God that has evangelicals verbally petting Palin like a pack of Emo youths whose ecstasy has just kicked in. No, their ardor springs solely from a rather discrete source revealed rather indiscreetly: She’s fixated on bringing every embryo she comes near to term. And she has created an “abstinence only from condoms” family that recklessly makes it its mission to ensure that there will be plenty of them, wanted or, as in the case of the last two, not.

Apparently, according to many of my fellow evangelicals, Palin could hold up a liquor store naked on a meth-binge just as long as she and her underage daughter keep pushing out the young’uns! According to Dobson, “The media are already trying to spin this as evidence Gov. Palin is a ‘hypocrite,’ but all it really means is that she and her family are human.”

But perhaps the biggest hypocrite in this story is Dobson. Is he now casting the issues of unwed pregnancy and teenage sex as inconsequential trifles, to be carelessly thrown under John McCain’s Straight Jacket Express? After all, he has quickly scolded unwed mothers in the past, showing a far less happy-go-lucky, “stuff happens” insouciance to “values.” [And speaking of scolding unwed teenage mothers: What, exactly, is the holdup on setting a date, Bristol, dear? Is it a busy-as-bee caterer – or an election, after which the boyfriend who doesn’t want kids can go back to college?]

Imagine the horror and tut-tutting if Barack Obama had a pregnant daughter (well, that and the probable interest by the New England Journal of Medicine). Do you think Dobson would fawn over the news – perhaps, encourage Miss Obama to have a few more? Probably not. Remember how he famously lit into Mary Cheney for having a child without being married to a man? Now, wait. Does that mean that this isn’t partisan pandering after all, just saying whatever claptrap is needed to get a Republican to pick some more wild-about-fetuses Supreme Court justices? Oh, how foolish! What was I thinking? Mary, while a Republican, is, moreover, a homo. And, in evangelical circles, being a homosexual is about the only thing as potent as being pro-fetus: The former condemns with the ease the latter absolves.