Merry Fucking Christmas!

Atheist tidings to all the Newsfuckers in Whoville on the most ecumenical holiday of all

Sometimes, I’m unemployed. For instance, a long time ago, I was the executive producer of two successful shows at Air America Radio — Morning Sedition with Marc Maron and The Rachel Maddow Show with not-yet-THE Rachel Maddow — but the company was corrupt and inept so they let me go.

So I blogged. And I wrote about the meaning of Christmas. To Fox and to the right.

This Christmas, it occurs to me that many of you new Newsfuckers don’t even know who I am. That’s because TFN has grown a lot lately and although longtime Newsfuckers may have known a bit about my background, I’ve been pretty muted about it lately.

That’s because I’m unemployed again and have some lingering fears that my Substacking could cost me a job opportunity.

On the other, hand, however, fuck it.

So, although I’m not quite coming all the way out on every post forever after, on this Christmas, with so many new Newsfuckers, it seems appropriate to re-introduce myself and share a bit about what Christmas means to me, an atheist, today.

Hi! My name’s Jonathan Larsen.

I was the editor of my high school newspaper but never thought much about becoming a journalist. Y’know how I got onto the college paper? I could type well, so I got a job as part of my work study to pay for college and ended up as the editor-in-chief.

There are many noble reasons to become a journalist, and I like to think they all apply to me. But if I’m honest, which happens on occasion, I have to admit there’s a selfish reason, a personality flaw that drives me. I’m a contrarian. A nitpicker and fault-finder.

Can’t help it. Not proud of it. Paid for it! But there it is.

So, on those occasions when I’m honest and someone asks me why I’m a journalist, I sometimes say: “To fuck with people.”

People in power, to be sure; there’s little more detestable than punching down. But that’s basically the gist of it: If you have power and I have the time, I am inclined to fuck with you.

I started off as an actual, old-school print reporter in Brooklyn, complete with note pads, working for a weekly newspaper in Bay Ridge. It was a great experience. That neighborhood — one neighborhood — had three competing weekly newspapers. Thfuckingree.

I never thought I deserved or had the skill to move up in the world of journalism and so spent too little time cultivating my career and counting instead on the magical, non-existent, Invisible Hand of meritocracy to elevate me. Reader, it did not.

But as I worked at different places I got a better sense that, yeah, I could actually do those jobs I once thought I couldn’t. Because have you met most of those people?

From Bay Ridge, I became a writer/editor/I forget my title at UPI when it was still clinging to its dying status as a competitor of the Associated Press. I was hired as a writer for ABC News, I found out later, not thanks to the Invisible Hand, but because a college friend (build those networks, kids!) knew someone there who didn’t want someone else hired. Thanks to the union I got to join, I was suddenly making a liveable salary, not knowing I was a blocking move.

I was on the overnight at ABC, got promoted, but eventually realized no one on dayside knew I was alive. I was having fun working with my anchors, Juju Chang and a young guy named Anderson Cooper. I had gotten William Shatner to sing our show’s theme song, the World News Polka. What more was there to do? So I quit.

After a brief stint at The Daily Show to help with election coverage, I landed at CNN and worked on (Jeff) Greenfield at Large and Connie Chung Tonight. I was asked to help create and launch a new show anchored by that guy from ABC, Mr. Cooper.

Then I got the chance to help start Air America Radio. That’s where I met Lizz Winstead who, luckily for me, later brought me over to MSNBC to start — wait for it — Weekends with Maury and Connie. While there, I bumped into an anchor who I knew from his days as a sub for Greenfield, a sports guy named Keith Olbermann.

I worked on Countdown with Keith Olbermann for something like six years, got promoted, and broke some stories I’m still proud of and refer back to every so often. From there I got a chance to become an executive producer working with Chris Hayes to create his first show, the weekend-morning program Up w/ Chris Hayes.

At both programs, I was driven by twin desires, to elevate subject matter that deserved it, but also to do cable news that was better than cable news. I like to think Chris and our team at Up showed it was possible to do all of that and succeed and make money and all those other good things.

The network didn’t offer me the gig as showrunner when Chris went to primetime, so I gave my best shot at keeping Up going and then, true story, was asked to create and launch a weekly interview show hosted by Alec Baldwin.

Shockingly, it didn’t work out. (You can read him shitting on me and saying incorrect things here.)

I bounced around a bit again and, unemployed, started to write on my own again. I created The Fucking News as a challenge to myself.

Having worked at The Daily Show, I wanted to see whether there were enough stories — and enough to write about — every day, in a way that was funny or otherwise entertaining or compelling … but with the restriction that the subject matter couldn’t be chosen based on comedic potential. The stories had to be the ones that mattered most to people’s material lives, no matter how boring.

The challenge was to tell “boring,” “policy,” “wonky,” really important stories in a way I was happy with and that would work as content that eyeballs would consume, or, as we used to say, words that people would read. The idea was to prove that it could work as a TV/streaming show.

I sidelined TFN when I was hired to oversee original reporting at The Young Turks, which I did for almost seven years, breaking stories that still inform my journalism today and getting to meet and work with many lovely people. I started a newsletter there called The Progress Report that I thought would make a pretty good Substack.

When my TYT job went away in January, it seemed like a smart — and financially prudent — idea to revive The Fucking News. On Substack, which also hosts some vile work, to my dismay. But that’s because it’s committed to free speech, to my, uh, may?

I called The Fucking News The Fucking News because I believe it’s helpful to violate arbitrary norms. It announces that I care about something other than pleasing setters of arbitrary norms.

It also says I’m willing to lose some audience in order to say what I want to my audience. Which is you. Today. On Christmas.

I love Christmas for many reasons. There’s nostalgia in hanging the Swedish ornaments that my Swedish mother hung on our trees when we were kids. There’s the little rituals of trees and decorating and Advent calendars with chocolate in them.

There’s the forced thinking-about-other-people at least enough to buy them presents. And there’s the giving and the unwrapping and the connecting and all that good stuff.

And, yes, it’s complicated by compartmentalizing the fact that some of the people we celebrate with just voted to push my son and his friends and their future off a cliff along with millions of people I’ll never meet.

But I also like the religious stuff about Christmas. I like the paganism and the solstice and lights in the dead of winter in the longest nights. I love that Christmas has nothing to do with The Bible and is profoundly different in our culture from what religious zealots want it to be.

I love that the right wing’s insistence on making Christmas universal has robbed it of its sectarian significance. You won, fuckers, Christmas is for everyone now!

And even some of the remaining Jesus stuff resonates with me. Although the Jesus narrative is deeply warped and oozing with trauma, people I’ve known who are moved by it have moved me.

One of my favorite musical acts, Bruce Cockburn, sings on occasion about Christianity. His song “Cry of a Tiny Babe” has a lyric I find especially powerful.

“Forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear.”

It’s not just the “aw, thanks!” of forgiveness. It’s the notion that guilt and fear are things for which we need forgiveness.

As a fan of evolution, I believe all our emotions have reasons and have served us. Guilt and fear included. But that doesn’t mean all our guilt and fear is okay. Some is vestigial. Some is misguided. Some might actually require forgiveness.

And that, too, is part of what I’m hoping to do with The Fucking News. I’m not there yet, but one of the goals for TFN is to help us past guilt and fear. Too often, we get good, smart, and humanistic takes on the news only days or weeks later, when the trauma’s already settled in.

I’m trying, with TFN, to accelerate that broader, humanist view of the news. Sometimes with snark or comedic conceits or attempts thereat. But either way trying to show that it’s okay to ignore stupid news and to render the non-stupid news bearable even when it’s about stupid things.

That … and fuck with people.

So, Merry Christmas, Newsfuckers, whatever you do or don’t believe in. It’s truly lovely to meet you. My name is Jonathan Larsen. Thank you for being here with me.

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