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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman hosted a rollicking good time last night, as tons of our members showed up to share in a great discussion on the history of the War On Christmas. Plus, Nick tries dipping french fries into a chocolate milkshake for the first time. Riveting.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the official Muckrake podcast holiday party.
I'm Jared Yates-Axton.
I am enjoying a little, a little nog.
Nice.
I'm here with Nick Hausman, and for those of you who are not aware, Nick has weird decisions about things that he has eaten and things he has not.
At one point, Nick thought that Reese's Cups sounded terrible.
He has also now said that fries dipped in a milkshake aren't going to be good, and before we begin this show and talk about some really important business, he is going to try it.
And we're going to see, what do we have there?
What do we have?
This is a Jack-in-the-Box.
I thought it was Carl's Jr.
It's Jack-in-the-Box around the corner from my house.
They make the thickest milkshakes I've ever had, which is obviously a very good thing.
The fries, though, I thought they were crinkle fries.
They're fine.
I thought they were thicker crinkle fries.
They're not.
They're like their typical, you know.
So we're doing a live show right now.
And before Nick does this, for people who are listening to this in the future, Nick has a cap over his milkshake.
Take that cap off.
What about the big hole in the middle of the cap?
I think I can leave the cap on.
No, you're not dipping it into whipped cream.
That's not what's going on here.
We have to discuss this because I didn't remember that they put all this whipped cream on top.
So the whipped cream can't be part of this?
No, you need to take the top off, move the whipped cream to the side, and then dip in the shake proper.
All right.
Well, I'm going to make a mess in my office, which is a big no-no, but okay.
There's the top.
Okay.
Maybe I'll put it in the bag and then that way it won't touch anything.
It's going to get sticky.
Okay.
So there's that.
I'll put it in the bag.
Okay.
Here we go.
So now here are the fries.
Okay.
Now, again, this is a little rough though.
You can see this is all, this is all kind of.
You got to move it over to the side.
By the way, as Nick is navigating this, to let everyone know, we're going to talk about one of the- oh my god.
Nick is- Nick is- I'm going to have to drink it separately.
Nick is hastily eating the whipped cream, people.
Listening in the future.
This is wonderful.
Oh, there is whiskey in this eggnog.
If you think that there is not, you are wrong.
There's no moving it to the side, but let me get the last bit on top.
Yeah, you'll get there.
So after Nick does this, we're going to talk about the most important topic, probably in the world, probably the most important topic that we have ever talked about on this show, which is the war on Christmas.
And we're going to talk about the history of the war on Christmas, why it happened, what's going on.
And then we're going to take some questions from our live audience.
If you're not live, you should join one of these live shows at some time.
They're a good time.
We're going to have muck rig trivia.
After we're done taping, we're going to give away some hot prizes.
Oh, Nick, is it good?
This is such a good milkshake.
I gotta tell you.
This has literally turned into a podcast of you just eating a milkshake.
Yes.
I can definitely see like a real chocolate color now without having to deal with the whipped cream.
So I think we're good.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
So are you ready?
I'm ready again.
So it's a chocolate milkshake in case anyone's wondering.
Okay.
All right.
That's not what I've picked, what I would have picked, but that's okay.
It's a black and white.
As far as I know, it is a, uh, you know, uh, vanilla ice cream and the chocolate sauce, which is the only way you should have a chocolate, uh, you know, milkshake.
Wait, is that what the technical name is?
A black and white?
I mean, that's like what the fifties name is.
Probably not.
Okay.
Never heard it called that.
Okay.
Nick, a moment of truth.
Okay, so here's what I do.
I take a fry or a couple fries even.
Take a couple fries.
Dip it in there.
Dip it in there.
Remove it and then eat it.
I mean, you're not gonna leave it.
You're not gonna leave it in there.
It's like a couple dunks.
Is that what we're talking about?
A couple of dunks I think would do.
Remember, Nick thinks this sounds disgusting.
Yeah, it really does, but okay.
Okay, do it.
Nick's doing it, everybody.
He's going back for more.
I gotta be sure of what I'm, you know, my feelings are.
Yes!
So, I take it that people like, this is the thing, like when you like the salty and the sweet mixed together?
Is that the people who like this?
Yes, that's what's going on.
What's that famous, you know, there's a place actually in LA now, it's in Portland, whatever, that makes the, that like developed it, the ice cream shop.
People knows something and something.
Anyway, um, You know, I'm going to have to try it.
I'm going to try a couple more because... Nick has now basically eaten an entire package of fries with the milkshake.
I need to coalesce the vapors.
Um, I don't know.
You know, because also the potato?
Hmm.
Consistency mixed with the ice cream?
I'm not sure I like it.
I don't think I love it.
Do you find it repulsive or do you find it acceptable?
It's acceptable.
It's acceptable.
There's nothing wrong with putting fries in milkshakes, as far as I'm concerned.
I will say that Jesse, who is watching, called this.
Jesse said, and I quote, Nick will find them meh.
Are you meh or is it a little bit better than meh?
No, I think I'm meh.
Does meh is like on a borderline of take it or leave it, right?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're gonna do this again, right?
Yeah, I wouldn't.
I mean, I would easily order this again, but then I would eat the fries, and then I'd have the milkshake.
And probably in that order.
Okay.
Which I'll figure out now, because the fries are getting cold.
So, by the way, I'm glad you brought that up, because the reason we had to do this at the very beginning of the show, and the reason we had to get on here and rush it, is because Nick was very, very adamant of not letting any of this not be as fresh as humanly possible oh yeah so check this out i went around the corner to get in the the drive-through line and i felt like i was probably three minutes early i didn't want to be too early have to sit there and let him get cool i let one guy go in front of me he was like so nice thank you thank you
i'm like please go he orders like 50 worth of stuff 50 and he's taken like forever to order it and i'm like the one thing because you never see this line like completely empty like it was so anyway that's why i was five minutes late forgive But here we are.
So I guess I messed.
So Jesse called that?
Yeah, but it's not a repulsive thing.
When we first brought this up, let's clear the record.
You reacted as if I had said the most disgusting thing that you had ever heard.
I did?
Did I really?
You were very upset.
By the idea of it.
And he's gone back for more.
He's into like five or six of them.
Yeah, it's not for me, but it's not repulsive.
At some point or another, better fries, I think.
Better fries.
I want the crinkle, the thicker fries, for some reason in my mind, might be better.
That's a better answer.
I completely agree.
So, thank you for being a good sport.
Thank you for being honest in your moment.
It wasn't a Reese's Cup, right?
It wasn't at the level.
You thought the Reese's Cup was going to be really, really bad.
Yeah, that was good.
That I've had.
Really good.
But, out of all this, I get to have a milkshake now.
Which, by the way, I really haven't been having a lot of sugar.
I had some chocolate chip cookies last night.
I woke up this morning and I felt like I got hit by a truck.
Basically, you could fly right now, is what you're telling us.
And I'm going to be playing Spider-Man after this.
Oh, very nice.
I'm going to be clinging to the walls as Spider-Man is in the movie theater, Amiga Optimum.
That's very clever.
That's very clever.
I'm going to be clinging to the walls like Spider-Man because I have a milkshake.
That's really nice.
Yes, it's great to be able to use all sorts of cliche in a different way.
Well, so what a wonderful start this holiday party is off to.
Again, we're here with our wonderful, wonderful patrons.
If you're listening to the preview of this, you should be here.
I don't know why you're not.
You could watch Nick scarf down a milkshake and look as happy as he's ever been.
It's so thick, I can't get it through the straw.
I had to like, you know, spoon out the straw.
Awesome.
I don't know if we tweeted it out.
Would we let everybody know on Twitter that we're doing this right now?
No, I don't think so.
This is exclusive old-school Patreon stuff, and I like it.
So, for people who are here, who are hanging out, a reminder, we're going to have a little bit of Muckrake Podcast trivia after we're done recording.
We have prizes.
Prizes!
Do not say we didn't ever give you anything.
So we're going to do that after we're done recording.
But, uh, before we begin, uh, if you have any questions, topics you want us to talk about in the later part of the show, we have an ask a question button down there.
Go ahead and post it and we'll get it to, to it once we're done with the main part of this program.
And again, the most important possible topic that there is the war on Christmas, Nick, the war on Christmas.
Yeah.
Nick is way too good.
You know what's funny?
Is that, um, I love Christmas music.
Hmm.
And ironically, some of the best Christmas music is written by Jews.
Do you have examples?
Yeah, White Christmas, uh, right?
Oh wait, is that... Bing Crosby sang it, but the guy who wrote White Christmas is, uh... Well, I believe Irving Berlin wrote some of the most iconic ones.
I guess we'll look it up, but If that's not a sign of capitalism, then I don't know what is, right?
Here are some Jews who don't celebrate this holiday saying, hmm, if people like this, they like this holiday, and how can I profit off of this?
You know what I mean?
That's, it's genius.
But I'm sure people are going to start telling me.
I used to know the whole list of all the great, you know, great Jewish Christmas songs.
I mean, they're not Jewish Christmas songs.
They're written by Jewish people.
Anyway, White Christmas I'm almost positive is written by somebody who's Jewish.
Can someone confirm that with me?
So, on that note, I'm glad you brought that up because there is no truth whatsoever to the idea of war on Christmas.
Even if you're not religious, which is of course at the root of this thing, most people just really enjoy the time of the year.
Even people who don't consider themselves Christian.
Maybe they're culturally Christian.
Maybe they're atheist agnostic or whatever.
Maybe they're of a different faith or whatever.
Nobody is trying to take Christmas down.
No one is trying to destroy Christmas.
This is obviously a completely made-up bullshit thing, and we're going to talk about why it's happened.
But we also need to go ahead and talk about what is the ideology at the heart of the quote-unquote war on Christmas.
Why do they do it?
What's it about?
How did we get to this moment?
Why has religion become so radicalized within the United States of America?
But before we get to that, Nick... One other question you can ask is how do we get Trump?
I think it's directly related to those questions.
Oh, it's directly related to it.
In the current crisis that we're in, all of these things sort of combine.
But I will say, we do a lot of joking on this show.
We do a lot of camaraderie on this show.
We like to tease.
We had fun with french fries and milkshake.
There is nothing funny about Fox News' Christmas tree going up in flames this year, Nick.
Um, okay, I can't even tell where you're going and how your real feelings are, but, um, you know, it was, it was not necessarily, you know, it was interesting.
It was not even, like, funny.
I don't know what it was.
Do you think it was funny?
Or do you think it was ironic?
Did you declare it... Did you declare it interesting, not funny?
Is that your official statement on Fox News' Christmas tree going up in flames?
The biggest takeaway I think I had was that, wow, it wasn't really a tree.
Uh-oh, you're pointing at me.
Well, no, I'm pointing because Martini Tower in the chat took what I was getting ready to say, which is, this is where my mind is.
The moment that I saw the Fox News Christmas tree up in flames, I immediately thought about the Reichstag fire.
I thought that, like, somebody on the inside might have done it in order to push this thing.
It is too on point with Fox News' concept of itself and the message that it presents to America.
It is so strange and weirdly analogous to what they do.
Oh yeah, and now I got a problem because I pressed the button that made the chat go away and it's gone and I can't see anybody's chats and that's really going to bother me.
You're going to figure it out as we go along.
I know, but if I hit that reload button, I might disappear for good, so I can't do that, but anyway.
On the subject of the war on Christmas, you live, so I live in the green zone, if you will, the safe zone of the war on Christmas.
Down here in Georgia, loud and proud, Christmas everywhere.
They don't say Happy Holidays, they don't say Merry X-mas, they say Merry Christmas.
And they do it in a way, and this is the same way it is in Georgia, but it's also this way up in Indiana too.
And I noticed that there was a shift in time where all of a sudden people like at the store or out in public, they would yell it at you like an aggressive type of Merry Christmas, almost like it was an offensive weapon being thrown at you, a cultural javelin.
I assume that's not the case out in Los Angeles, correct?
Um, no.
Los Angeles still has that feeling of like, you know, all the Christmas stuff is up on the, you know, you drive through Beverly Hills, you'll see all of the maritime, what's that word I'm looking for, all the tinsel and all that stuff is up.
There's absolutely no denial of Christmas at all, anywhere.
Maybe it went to the point where, hey, they're accusing us liberals of saying that Christmas is dead, we're gonna make sure that you know it's not.
Wait, are you telling me in California that they haven't banned Christmas altogether?
They have not.
I'm a little bit shocked.
They have Santa's house.
So the Grove is a really popular mall over here, where I'm going to go see Spider-Man after this.
And every year they have the Christmas, the house, the Santa's house.
And every year the huge lines and people come and there's Santa on a sleigh with reindeers in front of him over the whole crowd.
Huge gigantic tree.
It's a thing.
And every mall has that for sure.
Every shopping store, every department store.
No, this is an all-out war on having as much Christmas as possible.
They're gonna like outdo each other.
Well, that's the amazing thing about this.
And again, we're gonna get into the history of how this happened and why it's happened.
But it's actually, we've seen Christmas expand.
Christmas is, it's like the blob.
It now, it reaches Into September at this point?
There was a moment where all of a sudden around Halloween, I noticed that it was taking over parts of, I mean, obviously it took over Thanksgiving without any sort of pushback, right?
It was like the Blitzkrieg going into Paris, right?
Thanksgiving just fell to the side.
But when it went through Halloween, I was shocked.
And now it's it's into mid and late September at this point.
Well, here's the thing, because just like, you know, by the way, I found the list of Jews who wrote, you know, hit us, hit us with that list.
So I found one really quickly.
Caveller.com, which is absolutely hilarious, because if you know what it means to Cavell in Yiddish.
Number one is Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.
Mel Torme, a Jewish singer.
Great tune.
And he wrote it.
Great tune.
Let It Snow was written by Sandy Khan.
Santa Baby, don't know that one, but anyway.
Oh, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
I love these.
These are, I really, I do love Christmas music.
These are great tunes!
Silver Bells.
Okay, Silver Bells is okay.
Yeah, White Christmas, one of the best of all time by Irving Berlin, which isn't really a pro-Christmas song.
It's kind of a very melancholy, you know, it's written in the minor key.
So that's another one.
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, rock around the Christmas tree, a holly jolly Christmas, and silver and gold are all by Johnny Marx, another fellow Jew, and then walking in a winter wonderland.
These are all, you know, so again, just to tie that bow around, oh that's a good another phrase we could use, about this idea, you know, to capitalize on Christmas is really what this country is about, right?
But we love it.
Yeah, we're not like helping people.
I mean, we do give presents and a lot of that stuff is very performative, right?
I'm going to make sure everyone sees me on TV giving out presents, you know, people who are, you know, famous and whatnot.
But, oh, I lost the point of that one though.
But anyway, keep going with that because we were talking about Well, I was just going to say that there's a reason why everyone is actually cool with Christmas.
And there are multiple reasons.
One, the reason we celebrate Christmas when we do is because it took over the winter solstice holiday.
We love these things.
We love our seasonal celebrations.
That's why we have our holidays when we do.
We want that winter solstice holiday.
On top of that, it's just nice.
Sometimes you get some snow.
Sometimes you get to see your family whenever there's not a massive pandemic that you have to hide from.
We enjoy it.
Nobody wants to destroy Christmas.
There's no war on Christmas.
It is a weaponized mythology that we're going to talk about and why it's occurred and how it happened.
But none of it's real.
It's a complete and utter bullshit fabrication.
And you have been listening to a free preview of our Patreon-exclusive Weekender Show.
If you want to get in on all the fun and get that bonus episode every week, not to mention exclusive content, live hangouts, question and answer sessions.
We're even going to do some of these live so you can come and watch how the sausage is made.
All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
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