Dan O'Donnell takes a look at all of the ways liberals in the media express their utter hatred of Thanksgiving.
Listen to the on-air version by clicking Play in the player below and read the transcript below the player.
Liberals in the media hate Thanksgiving. I mean, they really, really hate Thanksgiving. How do I know this? Because they can't stop telling us how much they hate Thanksgiving.
Just listen to "The Big Bang Theory" star Mayim Bialik:
Fellow actress and comedian Sarah Silverman agrees:
The Huffington Post even went so far as to call Thanksgiving "National Genocide Day," while al-Jazeera calls it the "annual genocide whitewash."
Meanwhile, Salon.com (and its sister site AlterNet) employs a writer who seems to specialize in writing about his hatred of the holiday. Over the past few years, Robert Jensen has produced articles entitled “No Thanks to Thanksgiving,” “Why We Shouldn’t Celebrate Thanksgiving,” “How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to Be Afraid,” and “Thanksgiving is for Sociopaths.”
A liberal in The New York Times is so concerned about the holiday that he bragged about indoctrinating this fear into his 4 year-old son:
“Do you know what Thanksgiving means?” I asked him.
“Yes.” He thought about the word I had taught him. “Genocide!”
What is wrong with saying that Thanksgiving is about genocide as much as it is about gratitude?
History and America are contradictory and ambiguous, and yes, 4-year-olds who are capable of being racist and sexist should be exposed to some of that ambiguity as a form of inoculation.
Even if you're not a racist, sexist 4 year-old, The Atlantic believes that you shouldn't be happy this Thanksgiving since the holiday is nothing more than "a celebration of inequality," especially that of "low-wage working women," for whom Slate.com believes "Thanksgiving is becoming impossible."
Not to be outdone, The Huffington Post found "gender inequality in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade," while The Week determined that "the poor can't catch a break on Thanksgiving."
If all of that weren't enough to make you feel guilty about enjoying your holiday, The Chicago Tribune frets about "Thanksgiving dinner's carbon footprint," while the Climate Reality Project warns that your favorite Thanksgiving foods "could be very different if we don't act on climate."
Yet by far the biggest reason that liberals seem to dread Thanksgiving is the horrifying reality that they might have to encounter a family member whose politics differ from theirs. This is such a terrifying possibility that NBC News, USA Today, US News and World Report, and CBS Miami all published guides on how to survive it this year. Salon took it a step further with a guide entitled "How to survive Thanksgiving if you have to spend it with diehard Trump supporters."
I don't know, maybe you could survive it by remembering that these are people who love you regardless of your political differences? That apparently wasn't enough last year, when the stunning nature of Trump's victory in the election just two weeks before Thanksgiving prompted nearly every single mainstream and left-wing news source to publish a "How to survive Thanksgiving with Trump supporters" guide. No, seriously, nearly every single one.
That's perhaps why this year, many of those same outlets are running a story similar to Eater's charming missive "Yes, Donald Trump Ruined Thanksgiving in 2016." Never mind that the actual Stanford University study cited in that piece actually determined that Thanksgiving dinners were shorter in 2016 than they were in 2015 and theorized that political arguments may have played a role in that, the conclusion for liberals is obvious: Thanksgiving is terrible and Trump is the reason why. Bravo TV concurred, while Vogue proclaimed this "the weirdest Thanksgiving ever." Why? Because of Trump, of course.
Maybe, though, there is nothing weird about this Thanksgiving (or any Thanksgiving, for that matter) except for the increasingly unhinged reactions to it from an increasingly unhinged segment of the political left. Maybe it's perfectly normal to have disagreements with relatives, but maybe it's better to handle them like an adult instead of relying on some ridiculous survival guide that encourages such disagreements by feeding inane liberal talking points.
And maybe, just maybe, Thanksgiving isn't a celebration of genocide or imperialism at all. Maybe, in the symbolism of two distinct ethnic groups with two markedly different worldviews coming together to give thanks for the blessings that they all share, there is a lesson for us today: That no matter how different we are politically, we can all thank God for what He has given us.
Oh wait, never mind: The far left hates God, too.