An interesting story about a Judge in Toronto who moved the courthouse Christmas tree to behind a frosted glass door has about 50 stories in Google News...all of them in Canada. Except one in Western Australia, where they're capable of recognizing a good human interest story when it comes over the wire.

The story has caused a news release by the Muslim Canadian Congress, saying they didn't want to suppress Christmas, and a story by former international correspondent Peter Worthington pointing out that even the Communist countries he visited during the Cold War had Christmas trees. Worthington writes

Justice Marion Cohen this week make a monumental mistake when she ordered that a decorated Christmas tree be removed from the lobby of the Ontario Court of Justice on Jarvis St.

"I do not think it appropriate," she wrote to staff, that the first thing non-Christians who come to the court see "is a Christian symbol."

Justice Cohen is so wrong.

But this story hasn't received any penetration in the American press.

That's because there's a marked unwillingness to discuss this, except dismissively, among the press. I'm not the only one who thinks this—there's an article in Human Events by Brian Fitzpatrick of the Media Research Center, making the same point.

The media have almost completely ignored the leading developments on the First Amendment issues in the War on Christmas. Do we have the right to celebrate Christmas in the public square? Is displaying a cr?che on the courthouse steps the same as establishing a state religion? Does the right not to be offended trump freedom of speech and religion?

Berkley, Michigan’s decision to take down the city’s cr?che after the ACLU threatened to sue received almost no coverage outside Michigan. Southfield, Mich., tried to sell its menorah rather than display a cr?che alongside it, triggering a public outcry, but the media ran fewer than a dozen stories. When St. Albans, W.Va., tried to remove Jesus, Mary, and Joseph from a nativity scene, only a handful of papers found this nuttiness newsworthy. You’d think the national media would have covered the St. Albans story for the laugh value alone. What’s left when you remove the Holy Family from a nativity scene? Three wise men checking out a barn?[War on Christmas? Bah, Humbug Dember 15, 2006]

Remember, this is not the result of an actual conspiracy, conspiracies don't actually work that well. What it is is an attitude of journalists as a class that certain issues shouldn't be discussed, or aren't interesting. I've just been re-reading Slanderby Ann Coulter, and it's amazing the number of bestsellers that have been published by Regnery because every other publisher in America has turned them down.

This is in spite of the sometimes blindingly obvious potential for best-seller status: Senatorial Privilege, (how Ted Kennedy got away with it) and Murder In Brentwood, by Mark Fuhrman, (How O.J. got away with it) were rejected by every publishing house in New York. They were not only hugely profitable for Regnery, but forseeably profitable. But all the other publishers refused to see it. The same thing happens in the news business.

VDARE.com is also in the business of publishing stories that have been rejected, and we hope to continue to do so. Unfortunately, we aren't in a position to make huge profits by doing so, which is why we will continue, during the Christmas season, to ask for your donations.