Friday, November 05, 2010

A Christmas Picture Book Bashing Obama, for Tea Partiers of All Ages



From Gawker comes word of a scurrilous but unintentionally hilarious volume called The Liberal Clause, which employs the typical rightist wing-nut agenda of conflating Obama with Stalin, Mao and Rev. Wright, questions his place of birth, shows him using a teleprompter and bowing - to the Chinese, not the Saudis. It attempts a satirical Animal Farm-type approach with a gimlet-eyed Nancy Pelosi, a snarling Harry Reid, evil trade unionists, truculent elf-commissars and other flatfooted narrative devices in a cautionary tale of ConservaChristmas almost lost.

I might decry this book as a sinister attempt to pollute young minds with hateful, partisan indoctrination. But considering the mental capacity of many adult Tea Party brownshirts, as revealed in their hand lettered signs and corresponding sloganeering, it is apparently intended as a Christmas story appealing to Tea Partiers of all ages.

From Gawker:

Are you familiar with the beloved holiday tale of how President Barack Obama destroyed Christmas with his union-boosting, New World Order-establishing, God-hating policies? No? Let's take a look at this Tea Party's christmas picture book, The Liberal Clause.

A writer from the Mercury, a Portland alt-weekly, picked up a copy of The Liberal Clause: Socialism on a Sleigh during a Tea Party election party last night. The book is written by former Washington Tea Party congressional candidate David Hedrick, who's known for yelling at Democrats and allegedly hitting his wife.

With simple sentences and colorful drawings that should appeal to four-year-olds and Tea Partiers alike, The Liberal Clause tells the story of how a small town is taken over by the Liberal Party of Elves and their leaders Elf Peloosi, Barry "Liberal Clause" Obama and his wife "Lichelle".

Here's the Liberal Clauses' victory speech. This may be Stalin's only appearance in Christmas-related literature, ever.




The Liberal Clause hangs out with Chairman Mao and the evil "Rev. Blight." (Hedrick skillfully uses the literary device of "changing a few letters of real people's names" to produce his powerful political satire.)




In addition to supporting lazy Elf unions who manufacture shoddy toys, the Liberal Clause sells the town to the greedy "Hineese," for a big sack of cash with which to buy himself a new sleigh:




Eventually, the story climaxes with the defeat of the Liberal Party of Elves at the hands of a "Christmastution"-waving Tea Party. Just like in real life!

We can't wait to see the Tea Party version of the Hanukkah Story, with the Tea Party Patriots playing the role of the Maccabees who fight evil Al Gore to keep him from replacing all their lamp oil with wind turbines. In the meantime, you can buy your own copy of The Liberal Clause for just $19.95 plus $4.95 shipping and handling.


This from The Portland Mercury blog posting that provided the original material for Gawker:

The Liberal Clause: Socialism on a Sleigh is written by David Hedrick, a Tea Party candidate who lost his bid this year to be the Republican candidate for Washington's third district. You may remember him from this recent story where he is accused of physically assaulting his wife. I think I was the only person to buy a copy of The Liberal Clause last night because Hedrick came over personally to shake my hand, talking excitedly about what he'd created (the book costs $20 so I'm not surprised a lot of people passed). The story, he told me, came naturally one night as he was making up a bedtime story for his children (the book is dedicated to them with the warning "Never forget that free goodies from liberal elves often come at a price"). The satire where Obama steals Christmas that Hedrick came up with on that fateful night was too good not to be illustrated and published for all children to enjoy...

After the Liberal Party of Elves takes over the Great Council Santa Claus suddenly goes missing and the elf people are told he is being replaced. An excerpt from the book with all dubious spelling and punctuation kept intact:

"What about the Christmastution?" [an elf shouted].

Ignoring them, Elf Sneed [the Harry Reid figure] shouted out, "My fellow elves, it is my distinct honor to present to you, the hope and change we have been waiting for; our new Claus!"

Shortly after these words left Sneed's mouth, a man dressed in Santa's suit stepped onto the stage and strutted to the mike. In front of him, a group of elves ran out holding up a TV screen with words on it. This was the first time the elves had seen a teleprompter at the North Pole. Santa Claus had always spoken from the heart.

The skinny imposter began to read.

"My fellow citizens of the North Pole," he stated with a hint of arrogance in his voice, "I am here to pull Christmas back from the brink of destruction. My name is Barry, but you can call me Liberal Claus."

"Are you even from the North Pole?" an elf questioned from the crowd.

Liberal Claus scowled at this elf with pure evil in his eyes. For a moment all of the elves stood in disbelief waiting for a response, but the response would never come.


So Liberal Claus goes on to trick the elves that there is a secret Liberal Clause (with an "e") in the Christmastution that allows him to do whatever he wants. The elves are fooled by this because schools in the North Pole have all stopped teaching the Christmastution long ago. That's when things go from bad to worse.

First a jackbooted elf shows up at the toy factory and, "by order of mein Liberal Claus", forces all the elves to join an eeeeeevil union.

From now on, for ever [sic] fifteen minutes of work there had to be fifteen minutes of break time. The work day was cut from eight hours to six hours with a two hour paid lunch break. If a toy supervisor gave instructions, the union would hold a meeting with every elf to talk about how they felt about those instructions. Toy quality control was no longer allowed, because it might hurt an elf's feelings. As a result, most toys were assembled wrong and were falling apart.

Meanwhile in the North Pole, Elf Sneed extinguishes off all the hardworking elves' fireplaces and destroys their chairs to reduce elf-made global warming. The elves are instructed to sit on polar bears to keep warm while they listen to Mr. Snore (guess who he represents!) give a lecture on reducing their carbon footprint.




And so on.