Bozell's Christmas Column: Comedy Central's Merry F-Bomb Christmas

This year’s Christmas season has been marked by a pitched battle sparked by John Gibson’s book "The War on Christmas." The trend is hot enough that liberals are taking umbrage at the idea that Christians like the word "Christmas" and want to tell America’s most massive retailers that the last few weeks of the year are not centered on some winter festival without religious significance. But there's an entirely different "war," Brent Bozell writes this week, a nastier, more intolerant war going on in cable TV-land:

The Viacom corporation is an active participant through its Comedy Central channel. Its method is not excessive sensitivity, but wild-eyed insensitivity. This cable sinkhole is attacking Christianity with contemptuous mockery. It’s TV programming that approximates urinating on the Koran, except that is to be condemned, and this is to be celebrated.

Exhibit A is a poisonous one-hour “special” airing throughout December titled “Merry F—ing Christmas,” hosted by “comedian” Denis Leary. Religious and secular Christmas traditions alike are put through a meat grinder, starting with an animated opening with a drunken Santa Claus crashing into pedestrians. The song has allegedly funny lyrics that include the show’s profane title. “Old St. Nick’s got bourbon breath,” and “A cop just sold me some crystal meth,” and “The streets are twinkling with frozen pee,” and predictably, “My priest just sat on Santa’s knee.”

In the opening sulfurous rant, also known as a monologue, Leary reports Tom Cruise is receiving a lot of guff for believing Scientology theology about aliens coming to Earth 75 million years ago. “That’s nothing,” boasts Leary, “I was raised Catholic. We believe Mary was a virgin and Jesus ended up walking on water, creating a bottomless jug of wine and rising from the dead. Oh yeah, and Tom Cruise is crazy, yeah.”

Leary’s just warming up. He calls the Christmas story “bull[bleep],” saying he believes in baby Jesus, but “I also believe that about nine months before he was born, somebody sure as [bleeped] banged the hell out of his mom." He then announces he puts this baloney over on his kids so they can share his pain when they realize it’s a cruel hoax.

Nothing is sacred to Leary, just as nothing is sacred to Hollywood, which only worships the Almighty Dollar. The show that follows is just a parade of nasty, unfunny skits. William Shatner reads children letters to Santa from children in poverty or in war zones and laughs at them as they say they only want peace on Earth. Shatner’s response? “What a wuss!” Charlie Murphy reads a version of “The Night Before Christmas” with Santa doing cocaine to stay awake. Leary fake-shoots three men to death for singing a Christmas carol. When the rock group called the “Barenaked Ladies” (all men) try to sing a carol, they are blown off the stage by wind and snow. A young boy says he’s sick and Leary prods him to drink whiskey and go away.

Other faiths are mocked, too. Leary mocks Hanukkah by lighting candles he calls “wish sticks” that include his “secret evil plans,” which he insists everyone should have, including wishing diseases and misfortunes on your enemies. For the Muslims, there’s a remarkably unfunny Charlie Brown cartoon ripoff where “Farley Towne” joins Linus in converting to radical Islam, except Farley fails at blowing up his classmates. When the bomb goes off, “Farley” is shown in Hell, wondering where his virgins are.

Those who believe in charity are mocked with a running Carmen Electra gag for a charity called “Tits 4 Tots,” giving flat-chested teenagers a chance to make it in Hollywood.

But Leary really does have a hankering for attacking the Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary in particular. A choir called “Our Lady Of Perpetual Suffering Church Choir” sings in harmony to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree,” but their song is “Oh Hooker Girl,” asking that she “lay some booty on me.” Another segment advertises a turn-on video calls “Nuns With Colds Gone Wild,” which ends with two filmmakers encouraging nuns to kiss. The women are naked except for their nun headwear (coifs), rubbing and kissing each other.

This same trend can be found with Comedy Central’s cartoon “South Park,” which mocked the Virgin Mary on December 7, the night before Catholics celebrate the feast day of Mary’s immaculate conception. A statue of the Virgin Mary, they say, was “bleeding out her ass,” as witnesses standing behind the statue were showered in blood. Pope Benedict XVI comes to investigate and determines it’s menstrual blood. The TV reporter reads the supposed papal quote: “A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time.”

Vulgar Viacom is underlining why millions of parents have a Christmas wish: Give us cable choice, so we can not just change the channel, but stop being forced to subsidize it.