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America’s Christmas wars
美国的圣诞节战争
Having spent almost two decades ballyhooing a non-existent “War on Christmas”, Fox News received the best present imaginable in the first week of Advent. A homeless man called Craig Tamanaha, while stumbling around Manhattan late one night, came across the 50-foot-high “All American Christmas Tree” in Fox Square. Mr Tamanaha climbed it, allegedly flicked his lighter, and the tree-like installation went up with a whoosh.
在花了近20年的时间大肆宣扬一个根本不存在的“圣诞节战争”之后，福克斯新闻在降临节的第一周收到了你能想象到的最好的礼物。一天深夜，一位名叫克雷格·塔玛纳哈的流浪汉在曼哈顿附近踉踉跄跄地走着，在福克斯广场偶然发现了一棵50英尺高的“全美圣诞树”。据称，塔玛纳哈爬了上去，点燃打火机，这个像树一样的装饰嗖的一声起火。
It seems the suspected arsonist was not in his perfect mind. Mr Tamanaha had earlier exposed himself to journalists outside the courthouse where Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial. Yet for Fox, his vandalism represented the war its anchors had spent so long trying to talk into existence. “Torching Christmas trees is an attack on Christianity!” wailed Tucker Carlson. For two days, the catastrophe and Fox’s Churchillian resolve to rebuild the tree sculpture dominated its coverage. “We will not let this deliberate and brazen act of cowardice deter us,” thundered Fox’s CEO, Suzanne Scott.
看来这名纵火犯的头脑并不灵光。早些时候，塔玛纳哈曾在吉斯莱恩·马克斯韦尔受审的法院外向记者暴露了自己。然而，对福克斯来说，他的破坏行为代表了新闻节目主持人花了这么长时间试图促成的战争。“焚烧圣诞树是对基督教的攻击！”塔克·卡尔森哀号道。两天来，这场灾难和福克斯重建这座树形雕塑的丘吉尔式决心占据了新闻报道的主导地位。福克斯首席执行官苏珊娜·斯科特怒气冲冲地说：“我们不会让这种蓄意和厚颜无耻的懦弱行为吓退我们。”
Fox’s imagined War on Christmas is nonsense and conservative pay-dirt. Though Christian practice is collapsing (the share of Americans who attend church regularly has fallen by almost half since Bill O’Reilly first detected the war in 2005), Christmas is invulnerable. Nine in ten Americans celebrate it, including a growing multitude of non-Christians. The problem, for Fox’s anxious white audience, is precisely that diversity, however. The war is a figment designed to exacerbate its fears of a changing country.
福克斯想象中的“圣诞节之战”纯属无稽之谈，也是保守派的赚钱手段。尽管基督教活动正在瓦解（自从2005年比尔·奥莱利首次察觉这场“战争”以来，经常去教堂做礼拜的美国人的比例几乎下降了一半），但圣诞节是坚不可摧的。十分之九的美国人都在庆祝这一节日，包括越来越多的非基督徒。然而，对于福克斯焦虑的白人观众来说，问题恰恰在于这种多样性。这场战争是虚构的，旨在加剧人们对一个不断变化的国家的恐惧。
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