The idea of a "War on Christmas" is a bit more ludicrous than the idea of a monolithic and Liberal (Mainstream) Media, but both ideas sprout from the spoiled-rottenness of people who nowadays pass for conservatives generally and Christian conservatives more specifically.

            When the source for such comments isn't cynical lying by pundits, that source is an honest but parochial perception that everyone important in one's life is or ought to be a Christian, living a life normal by the norms of traditionalist American society.

            In such Ozzie-and-Harriet perceptions, it is simply natural and literally unremarkable that everybody celebrates Christmas and that the pushing of religious-conservative views is nonpolitical.

            For example, pronatalism: encouraging marriage and reproduction. How do fairy tales and romantic comedies end? "They married and lived happily ever after."

            Most Americans find it natural that we celebrate Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day but take no time out to acknowledge those Americans who aid the environment by not reproducing; most of us find it unremarkable that Americans get tax deduction not just for the first and second child but for unlimited numbers of offspring dependents.

            Most people don't notice just how much of the newspaper is advertising, or how much TV nowadays is commercials. Well, each ad and commercial has as a subtext, "Buying is good"; "The Market is good"; "Capitalism is good" — and that is a political message you may agree with, but it is political.

            Few Americans find it odd that newspapers have a section titled "Business" but none titled "Labor" — or that few recent TV shows celebrate defense attorneys like Perry Mason or straight-arrow, by-the-book cops like Joe Friday. On much TV and in most of crime-story movies, the heroes are cops and prosecutors; Christians who praise Jesus and the US Constitution, will often cheer on images of sworn police officers solving social problems with violence, usually including figurative violence to the Bill of Rights.

            More so for war movies and video games: "Blessed are the peace-makers"; they and the meek will called "the children of God" and inherit of the Earth — but neither the meek nor the assertively peaceful get much screen-time, and that is fine with most Americans. Few professing Christians get even a twinge of cognitive dissonance when they hold in contempt some alien-symp Sci-Fi scientist trying to study and negotiate with the Thing or other such alien invaders, and youngsters in the audience learn to cheer on the slaughter of the ETs.

            If "All we are saying, / Is give peace a chance" is Leftist doctrine, then much of the product of "the liberal media" is solidly on the Right.

            But — there is an important "but" here: But serious Christians and other religious people do have valid complaints about various media, media of a wide variety and over a long time.

            To immodestly quote me in a journal article entitled "Le Guin and God" starting with an obvious point about Star Trek:

 We don't see bathrooms on the starship Enterprise—or even on the industrial, funky Nostromo in Alien—and the Enterprise's chapel gets used only for the occasional nondenominational wedding and perhaps a funeral. If we do see washrooms, there is a good chance we are in a satire; and outside of the TV or radio religious-broadcasting ghetto, prayer is as invisible as urination..

 In most of what Americans read and hear and watch in the various arts and media, people don't piss, and people don't pray. What we usually see are human beings as social animals and only social animals, not animal animals and not spiritual beings.

            And that is just wrong. Of the seven billion or so people on Earth, some five billion subscribe (more or less, at least nominally) to one of the world's major religions. With only trivial exceptions, "Everyone poops" and pisses; and most people — at least occasionally — pray.

            With honorable exceptions like The Simpsons and a theologically serious atheist like Ursula K. Le Guin, you don't encounter such standard human behavior on most TV or radio, or in books, movies, video games, plays, or whatever.

            Either you're in the religious ghetto where all the talk is of God and such — or spiritual matters are ignored.

            So enough already with "The War on Christmas" and similar horse puckey! The legitimate complaint is that matters important to most of the world's people are too often shut off from view as rigidly as excretion.

            There's no need to stress biological functions or hit audiences over the head with religion. But humans are definitely biological and — in some sense— spiritual beings, and those facts should be recognized and not, dishonestly, denied.