As NewsBusters has reported for years, the hatred liberal media members have for and display towards former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin knows no bounds.
On MSNBC’s Ed Show Thursday, substitute host Joy Reid castigated Palin first for having the nerve to show family pictures on Fox & Friends Christmas Eve – the horror! – but also for having a Christmas tree on - wait for it! - Christmas (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOY REID, SUBSTITUTE HOST: In “Pretenders” tonight, a merry Palin Christmas. Sarah Palin dropped by Fox & Friends to promote her manifesto on Christmas purity. She brought a treat better than Christmas cookies - family photos.
Imagine the gall of sharing photos of your family from Christmases past on a morning show on Christmas Eve. Should be a law against it, right?
But Reid was just getting her inanity machine warmed up:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: In Skagway, Alaska, a little gold mining town where my dad was teaching school and coaching basketball, and that's my older brother and older sister. And then that was on a college break. We were all in college at the same time my siblings and I home for an alumni basketball game in Alaska.
STEVE DOOCY, HOST: That's really the key, isn't it, as we look at another picture of the family. There they are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Not so fast, Palin. We learned some important lessons on Monday about all the arbor activity in those pictures. I even had to break out the good book, not hers of course.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Certain parts of the Bible also appear to preach against let’s say, I don’t know, Christmas trees. Here's Jeremiah 10-10, it reads:
“For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scare crow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Now, a Christmas purist wouldn't want to stray from the Bible on Christmas, would she? Everyone celebrates Christmas in their own special way. That could mean being tree-side with the family or even profiting off your [cause?] and commercialism. But if Sarah Palin wants us to believe there's only one true meaning of Christmas, she can keep on pretending.
Now I'm sure many readers have heard this atheistic canard about Jeremiah speaking against Christmas trees.
As Grace Communion International points out, nothing can be further from the truth:
An important key to understanding any passage is to pay careful attention to its context. Verses 2 through 4 of Jeremiah 10 are part of a larger context. That larger context is verses 1 through 16. In these verses Jeremiah proclaims the Lord as the only God. "No one is like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power. Who should not revere you, O King of the nations? This is your due.... The Lord is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King.... God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding" (verses 6-7, 10, 12, NIV).
The gods that pagans worship are nothing compared to the Lord. "These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens" (verse 11). They are mere images made by men and women. "Every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. His images are a fraud; they have no breath in them. They are worthless, the objects of mockery" (verses 14-15).
Gold is not the only substance used to make idols. Verses 8 and 9 speak of "worthless wooden idols" on which workmen place hammered silver and gold, and rich apparel. When we consider that these verses condemn idolatry, we can understand what Jeremiah meant when he said "the customs of the peoples are worthless" (verse 3). No wonder he tells us not to "learn the way of the nations" (verse 2). [...]
Jeremiah is not condemning Christmas trees. He is condemning idolatry. The trees in Jeremiah 10 are cut down to carve them into worthless idols that will later be decorated with gold and silver. Jeremiah says nothing about Christmas trees. That custom originated in northern Europe, not in ancient Judea.
Not surprisingly, BillyGraham.org confirms this:
These verses, however, do not apply to Christmas trees, but they do condemn the idolatry practiced in Jeremiah’s day. God’s people were following the customs of the heathen who cut down trees, shaped the wood into idols, decorated them with silver and gold ornaments, and worshiped them as gods.
Somehow I doubt this will deter the Christmas and Palin haters from cherry-picking lines out of the Bible to castigate their enemies.
Quite the contrary, deceptive editing is standard operating procedure at MSNBC - even during the holidays!
*****Update: Want to know what Reid also missed? Jeremiah is from the Old Testament written BEFORE Jesus was born and therefore BEFORE there were Christmas trees. So how could that section have been about someone and something that didn't exist yet?
Sadly, such logic eludes shills such as Reid.
For more on this, please see Ed Morrissey's fabulous "Confirmed: MSNBC Pretty Darned Ignorant About Christianity and Scripture."
