With the recent electoral victory of the Democrats in both houses of Congress, one would think that the partisan rhetoric that has divided this nation in twain for well over a decade would cease to inundate us all.

Unfortunately, though the election is over, the holidays are nearly upon us. And you know what that means. Once again, Christmas and Hanukkah are starting in on their own smear campaigns against one another, vying for the hearts and minds of Americans young and old. Luckily for you, we managed to obtain copies of both sides' campaign ads by posing as a small NBC affiliate in the midwest. They fell for the ruse and sent us their tapes, and now we're going to post them for you our beloved audience weeks before they will even air.

But be warned, you're not going to believe what you're about to see, the level of raw ugliness and the willingness to sink to unthinkable moral depths simply to make a point. It's all there, in spades. This sort of behavior is pronounced enough in tightly run political battles, but compared to America's two most prominent religions, the Swift Boat Veteran ads look like a dissertation AGAINST factual relativism.

While we here at Drink At Work don't espouse this sort of defamatory tone in getting out a message of any kind, we must admit that these verbally violent spots, which were created by several faith-based PAC groups, at least properly reflects the essentially volatile nature of most major Western religions which all believe in the exclusivity of their own people's ability to reach heaven and at the same time the inherently doomed nature of those not born under the same religious star.

So, like the good Christians and Jews that we never really were, we will forgive them their nature and simply try to listen to the messages hidden underneath all the mean words and hostile images. We hope you can too.

Leading up to the holidays we will be releasing about one ad and one response ad each week. Stay tuned for Hanukkah's response to this first ad on behalf of Christmas.

Yours,
DAW

A little "animated" film featuring the vocal talents of New York comics Craig Baldo, Sean Crespo and Sean Lynch.