I’m finally getting around to writing my post about the Fox News team’s recent “discussion” on Wiccans and pagans.
It’s been a long week for most of us pagans and Wiccans. My feeds have exploded with blogs, videos, comments, and tweets about the news “report” that was given by Fox with Friends earlier this week. They made some generalizations that have upset me deeply. I’m sure you’ve seen the video by now and know what I’m talking about, but I’ll point out the most offensive statements.
First of all, they had the opinion that witchcraft is a bad thing. They didn’t call it “evil” or “devil-worship” or any of those typical, conservative responses to the pagan community, but they didn’t have to for us to know that that’s what they were thinking. There’s no wondering why so many people still feel this way concerning witchcraft, today. When a “trusted” news team makes statements like this, some people are going to be ignorant enough to believe it.
There was also a comment that Halloween is the most important holiday that we observe. This is not true. I personally don’t even see Samhain and Halloween as the same event, or as occurring on the same date. Halloween is when children dress as whatever they want to and go trick-or-treating, and is celebrated on October 31st. Samhain is, in its most basic form, the pagan new year, and I observe it on November 1st. Halloween is not a religious holiday to me and I think the most important pagan holiday is a matter of opinion.
I haven’t heard many people point out the following comment specifically, but it really hurt me, so I think it needs to be addressed. One “journalist” remarked that many Wiccans are “twice divorced midwives, who live in rural areas”. The “twice-divorced” comment is specifically what I’m referring to. Why is it that someone would think of Wiccans as commonly being divorcees? Is it that Wiccans can’t get along with our spouses, or that we are to focused on our Craft to keep a partner’s attention? Could it be that they didn’t realize “all the weird stuff we were into” before the wedding? This statement made me sad, really, more than any other.
Fox News is known for its reports being skewed strongly to the conservative side. They made this report just to mock our religion. I’m not normally a negative person, but I had to make exception after watching this broadcast. They put this out there to have a good laugh about Wicca and other minority religions. They complained that Christians have to take backlash for saying “Merry Christmas” in public. This is true, in some cases, but they know nothing of how hard is be to be pagan or Wiccan in many public situations. They know we are a comparatively small, widely disregarded group, and are trying to make it worse for us by pushing these stereotypes that there are so few Wiccans, making it seem like we don’t matter. They do it on purpose in an attempt to make it so that there are even less of us and even more of them.
As we know, our numbers keep growing, despite media like this. They are trying to bring us down, but their attempts won’t work.
Witch of the Meadow 