Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2005 04:11 am
They come bearing gifts
A peace offering to Bill OÂ’Reilly and other right-wing cranks

Kate and Anna McGarrigle
The McGarrigle Christmas Hour
(Nonesuch)
Dear Bill O’Reilly:
As a godless liberal, I have no reason to
like you. Your unctuous smirk and smarmy patter got on my nerves
when you were a lowly late-night infotainer; since you’ve
resurrected yourself as a right-wing demagogue, you’ve gone
from annoying to insufferable. But Christmas time’s
a-comin’, after all, and in the spirit of Christian charity
I’m sending you a peace offering: The McGarrigle Christmas Hour.
Although it might seem presumptuous for an admitted atheist to
explain to you the reason for the season, bear with me. You hold
forth on abortion despite your lack of a functioning uterus; the
least you can do is endure a short theology lesson from someone
who, despite her lack of a personal savior, has read the entirety
of Paradise Lost and most of the Bible and has even been known to enjoy
the occasional episode of Seventh
Heaven. Besides, I come bearing gifts.
Do you even remember what Christmas is? Yeah,
yeah: It’s the holy day that you’ve vowed to defend
against “oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian
forces” determined to “diminish and denigrate the
holiday and the celebration.” Although I’m not sure how
the Prince of Peace would feel about your plan to “bring
horror into the world of people” who neglect to emblazon his
name over every aisle of their big-box stores, I’m reasonably
confident that he’d approve of the enclosed CD. Assuming that
your eardrums aren’t as hard as your head and heart, you
might, too.
All of us, wingnuts and secularists alike,
can agree that Christmas is about family, so what better soundtrack
could we hope for than an album of Christmas music made by an
honest-to-gosh family? Call me naïve, but I’m hoping
that sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their spectacularly
gifted offspring can quiet your Yuletide wrath. Granted,
you’d probably call Kate’s son Rufus Wainwright a
sacrilegious queen if you knew that he wrote a song called “Gay
Messiah,” and you’d probably denounce his sister, Martha,
as a foul-mouthed feminazi if you knew that her solo debut contained an
ode to her dad called “Bloody Mother****ing A**hole,” and
maybe you’d even take smug pleasure in the fact that they both
grew up in a single-parent household in commie-clogged Canada, but look
at it this way: If you can love Dick “Go F*** Yourself”
Cheney, who can in turn love his lesbian daughter, surely you can cut
the McGarrigle/Wainwright clan some slack.
The McGarrigle Christmas Hour boasts a beauty born of familial love, with no
shortage of references to the baby Jesus, the Virgin Mary,
frankincense, shepherds, and other sacred signifiers. The
sisters’ longtime pal Emmylou Harris contributes a
heart-wrenching rendition of “O Little Town of
Bethlehem,” and the whole gang joins in on traditional carols
such as “Seven Joys of Mary” and “God Rest Ye
Merry Gentlemen.” It’s a wonder to hear those
closer-than-close sibling harmonies and a comfort to know that some
families celebrate the season by making a joyful noise unto the
Lord, not by maxing out their credit cards on China-made fodder for
future landfills.
The track that you most need to hear, though, is the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Rebel Jesus,” performed by Martha and her cousin Lily Lanken. Their trembling, angelic voices remind us that Christ’s message was about something that you Republicans like to call the redistribution of wealth, not about the visitation of horror upon discount retailers. I’ll sign off with a verse from this song: “I bid you pleasure, and I bid you cheer/From a heathen and a pagan on the side of the rebel Jesus.”
The track that you most need to hear, though, is the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Rebel Jesus,” performed by Martha and her cousin Lily Lanken. Their trembling, angelic voices remind us that Christ’s message was about something that you Republicans like to call the redistribution of wealth, not about the visitation of horror upon discount retailers. I’ll sign off with a verse from this song: “I bid you pleasure, and I bid you cheer/From a heathen and a pagan on the side of the rebel Jesus.”
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