This is the pleasant- and deceptively-harmless-looking Merry Hyatt^A woman with the ironic name of Merry Hyatt is on a Mission From God in her small town in California to force school children to sing Christmas carols--against both Constitutional requirements and her own stated beliefs.
Merry is a member of her local Tea Party unit. Tea Partiers are the people who are hell-bent on getting the government out of our bid-ness ... unless, of course, they want it in our business, as with abortion and Christmas carols.
The Redding, Calif., Searchlight reports (here) that Miss Merry wants to collect 433,971 signatures so she can get the issue on the California ballot next year. She has to have them by March 29. California's great for these oddball initiatives and this one will certainly rank with the initiative to outlaw marriage (organized by pissed off gay people who didn't like the result of the gay marriage initiative recently).
The Searchlight reports that "The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn't followed." Schools can allow--get that: allow--children to sing carols now, but they have to be part of some kind of learning program in the same way they would study, say, Buddhist chants.
So, will it pass? Who knows? California's California. But as to Merry, let's all wish her a happy Kwanzaa.
(My pal Mike Kennedy wrote this reply on the Facebook promo for this post: "I'm thinking they should force the kids to sing 'Adeste Fidelis.' L.T. Anderson, late of Charleston, W.Va., was one of the best columnists who ever put pen to paper. He said all the West Virginia legislators who'd introduce bills to mandate school prayer would shut up if the mandated prayer were the Hail Mary.")
What in the world is this language?
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