(image courtesy of Robb Allen)This story just gets more and more ridiculous. At first glance, you might think that maybe he made a crack about someone's child, a "fat" joke, or a "wet" joke, or something of that nature. Would that be enough to get someone fired from two decades of playing Santa? What about a racial/ethnic slur? Probably. Something sexual? Hoo, boy, yeah, that's grounds for termination - if not inclusion on a registry.Santa Claus has been canned from Macy's, and he's anything but jolly about it.
His fans aren't happy, either. And there are many.
John Toomey, known for 20 years at the Union Square Macy's in San Francisco as "Santa John," was told Saturday he'll have to take his "ho, ho, hos" elsewhere because an adult couple complained about a joke he cracked.
But this wasn't the case here. First of all, it wasn't a child sitting on Santa's lap, it was an adult. Okay, that changes things a little; did Santa play a little grabass? Look down a low-cut Christmas dress? Ask one of his female elves to polish his candy cane? As it turns out, his "offensive" joke was pretty tame:
"When I ask the older people who sit on my lap if they've been good and they say, 'Yes,' I say, 'Gee, that's too bad,' " Toomey said Monday.Seriously? Someone took offense at this? We have become a nation of ninnies, people. That someone would take offense to this is bad enough, but it's someone that - as an adult - has made the conscious decision to sit on Santa's lap??? There's a certain level of expectation that, if an adult is sitting on Santa's lap, that they might have a functioning sense of humor - Santa's for kids, after all.
"Then, if they ask why Santa is so jolly, I joke that it's because I know where all the naughty boys and girls live."
And now, a guy that has portrayed Saint Nick for two decades has been sent packing, over a (relatively) harmless joke. I certainly hope the humorless Harry and Harriet are proud of themselves - they've just insured that the next Santa won't let an adult anywhere near him. It's hard to imagine what goes through the mind of someone like that - how on earth anything he said could be "offensive" enough to warrant a firing is beyond me.
Even worse is that the folks at Macy's just fired the guy for it. In a different time and place, they'd have thrown the couple out, telling them that if they didn't have a sense of humor, they could move on. Barring that, they might have a quick, off-the-record chat with Santa John to remind him that certain folks have a grim outlook on life. At the very most, they might have given him a warning to be more careful with his wording - CYA in this day and age. But to give him the boot over something this innocuous?
Looks like Macy's is putting the "ass" in Christmas.
That is all.
Link sent by PISSED, who really knows how to raise the ol' rage-o-meter...
6 comments:
Why am I not surprised that this happend in San Francisco. . . .
There's a new Miracle on 34th Street movie in here somewhere. We have Macy's (check), Santa Claus(check), people that love this Santa because "He's totally the best Santa ever, very jolly and very authentic."(check), and a Santa that was fired for doing something that Macy's thought wrong(check).
What we need know is the modern equivalent of all those bags of mail that got dumped in the courtroom in the climatic scene.
Santa got a new job!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/07/BAGB1GNB8P.DTL
Nice find ASM... Good for him!!
OK, so the jokes were a little adult in nature, but come on, that's just stupid. Besides, this is in San Fransicko, they probably passed much more explicit activity on their way to the store. (If you doubt that, go check out zombietime, but bring some eye bleach.)
In my universe, Santa drinks, chews tobacco and smokes cigars, and whores around when he's not fishing. Much like my great-uncle Charlie. Hey...nah. Can't be.
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