Last week, Fox News host Megyn Kelly began an argument against a Slate article that asserted that Santa’s image and race could use an overhaul. Kelly insisted that Santa is, and should be, white.
The Slate article brings up the idea that Santa’s race doesn’t matter, and cheekily insists that Santa might as well be a magical penguin.
Now, a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that Kelly isn’t alone in the belief that Santa should only be white, and it’s almost exclusively Republicans who believe it. This poll further bolsters the that many white, Christian conservatives want to monopolize Christmas as their own holiday.
According to the poll, 60 percent of Americans think that Santa’s race is a non-issue, and 31 percent thinks he should be white. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats think Santa’s race doesn’t matter while Republicans showed more tendency to think that Santa should be white, polling at 49 percent. Many of those “white Santa” proponents frequently watched Fox News.
Bill O’Reilly recently joined the “Santa is white” debate, coming to the fellow Fox News host’s aid. O’Reilly attempted to take the discussion to a different level, saying that the Santa issue was a liberal-media tactic used in a frontal assault against Fox News.
“Because they cannot defeat us [Fox News] on the media battlefield,” said O’Reilly, “the far left seeks to demonize Fox News as a right-wing propaganda machine and racist enterprise.”
Fox News needs no help in perpetuating itself as a “propaganda machine and racist enterprise,” and the “Santa is white” issue is a continuation. The poll shows that the network, and most of its viewers, drive home that white conservatives want to keep Christmas as a white person’s holiday.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
