Obviously I talk a lot about mental health and the fair treatment of human beings on my website; as such, it would be unfair for me to make light of the "rare neurological condition" with which pundit Glenn Beck has been recently diagnosed.
...
Everyone got the giggles out now? Okay. Because he's also working on a new gritty action-adventure book/movie about an immortal warrior called Santa Claus who roams the — desert? tundra? — protecting the wee Baby Jesus, presumably from the legions of Hellish MainstreamLiberalMedia Spawn.
(but like no really why are there camels and also snow?)
Here's what Beck himself had to say about it:
My Santa, the Immortal is a very different guy. He starts out right before the birth of Christ, and he is up in the mountains. And he is a warrior. He has lost his wife, and he’s a sad individual. And he’s got a son who loves dearly, and he lives up in the mountains, and he hunts for food.
He eventually is hired by three wise men because he can negotiate, because nobody is going to rip them off, and he knows how to get the very best gifts. And so he negotiates with gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then has to go protect that gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then through a series of events is left there to protect the Christ child, never interacting, just watching.
He doesn’t know who he is, and he goes darker and darker in his whole life as he watches this boy grow, but he’s always touched by him, but he doesn’t realize it until the Sermon on the Mount. [. . .]
He makes a pact. Little does he know in that pact he has now become immortal, because as he watches the crucifixion from afar and cannot get close to it, cannot stop it, he feels he fails again. He runs off before the resurrection. A thousand years pass until he meets another little boy, a little boy that happens to grow up to be what we know as Saint Nicholas...
Beck does ultimately go on to make some salient points about mythology — how Santa Claus as we currently know him has in fact evolved over the years, an amalgamation of multiple cultural incarnations filtered through the veil of Clement Clarke Moore and years of Coca-Cola ads. As such, this badass eternal ninja warrior version of the man in red is just Beck's contribution to the ongoing memetic traditions of the Santa Claus, in the same way that Greek and Norse mythology (and, of course, comic book superheroes) has changed and been re-appropriated over time. It's a high aspiration, sure, to deem yourself The One To Revolutionize The Santa Claus Myth For Future Generations, but then, I guess he can't be blamed for trying. After all, my friend Aisha did put out that fantastic controversial piece last year about Penguin Santa Claus, which I thought was a great idea (and which Glenn Beck surprisingly didn't say anything stupid about?) — so I guess that change has got to start somewhere, right?
Then again, Glenn Beck's last attempt at a Christmas revolution featured him and — ah, you're right, I'm sorry. Rare neurological condition and all that. It's not polite to laugh.
