Saturday, August 30th, 2008

A guide to giving gifts along party lines

Holidays no reason to put our political rivalries aside when partisan presents can be the best ammunition

During the holiday season, most people are filled with goodwill.

Except for me.

My fellow political aficionados will understand what I mean.

As your family sips eggnog together Christmas Day, it will be impossible not to rub the recent congressional defeat into your Republican uncle’s face.

And your vegetarian cousin who insists on wearing clothes made only of hemp? Let the hippie-liberal jokes roll.

So if making fun of your friends’ and family members’ political differences sounds like a jollier time than putting them aside, the following gift guide is for you.

For the Right:

Send your conservative acquaintances a pint of frozen goodies from the Star Spangled Ice Cream Company.

The enticing flavors, such as “Smaller Governmint” and “Cherry Falwell,” which you can find at starspangledicecream.com, will taste even better once you tell the recipient that 10 percent of the profits are donated to the troops.

I’m planning to send my uncle some the day before the 2008 presidential election – hopefully he’ll go into a sugar coma and not be able to make it to a polling place.

For the extreme right-wingers on your list, give a subscription to RUSH 24/7 – a feature on Rush Limbaugh’s Web site that allows the subscriber full access to all of the material Limbaugh features on his show. It gets better – you can even watch and listen to him live on the Internet as he makes a fool of himself during his radio broadcasts.

And really, $59.90 for a year’s worth of insightful, prescription drug-inspired rants is a great bargain. Also, a nice present for the liberal conspiracy theorist who’d like to get into the enemy’s head.

For the Left:

Your wild Democratic girlfriends will appreciate the scandalous and witty lingerie available at cafepress.com.

The “I shave because I don’t like Bush” thong will be sure to raise eyebrows when it’s unwrapped on Christmas morning.

And since hating Bush is the only message Dems can seem to agree upon, it’ll please all of your liberal friends.

For the dreadlocked nature lovers in your life, a gift certificate to Whole Foods is sure to please.

They’ll feel good about being overcharged for their purchases as they buy pesticide-free fruits and veggies for the sake of saving the environment.

Bonus: If they do their shopping in Hollywood, your tree-hugging friends can admire the two Hummers they parked between as they load their groceries into the car.

For the children:

It’s never too early to begin inundating your nieces and nephews with political rhetoric.

If tolerance, gay rights and making the world way more complicated than it needs to be for a 6-year-old is on your personal agenda, the 10th-anniversary edition of “Heather Has Two Mommies” is now available at Amazon.com.

If you’d rather spread paranoia than holiday cheer, however, you can pick up a copy of, “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!,” a heartwarming tale of two kids who start a lemonade stand. And then the government taxes all their money away and steals their portrait of Jesus – also conveniently available from Amazon.com.

Reality is harsh – but the youngins will have to face it some time or another.

For those who couldn’t really care less:

We can’t, of course, forget the jaded politicos, the ones who began as young idealists but now refuse to vote or do their taxes because it’s the government’s way of controlling us.

A “Property of Colbert Nation” T-Shirt from Colbertnation.com will be the only thing he needs to declare his disinterest and announce his apathy to the world.

Nothing says cynicism like wearing Stephen Colbert’s logo across your chest.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a good-natured rivalry will tell you there is never an excuse to give your enemy a break, and the holidays are no exception.

So the next time a newscaster smiles at you from your television and declares that it’s time to put all this partisanship behind us and come together to work toward common grounds, don’t fall for it.

It’s just the other side trying to throw you off guard.

Send your holiday tidings or political jabs to Strickland at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.