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60% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Could big-city atheists be to blame?

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought many good things to the world, but one of its worst side effects was depriving Hollywood of easy villains. For decades American moviegoers could rest comfortably in their seats, secure in the knowledge that no matter what movie they were watching there was a good chance the bad guys were going to be Communists. But that changed when the Reds lost their hold on the country’s collective psyche, and our film industry has stumbled around looking for the next group to fear and denigrate. Homegrown terrorists? Too boring. Arabs? After 9/11 that became pretty insensitive. Neo-Nazis? Are people even scared of them still? We’ve been lost, groping blindly in the darkness.

But now one film has brought the light and shown us a new way forward: Let’s all be scared of atheists! Specifically resentful atheists who want to take away Christmas.

The direct-to-DVD Christmas with a Capital C is based on a song by the Christian Rock band Go Fish and concerns the nefarious plot by a big-city scumbag (Daniel Baldwin) to ruin Christmas for everyone in his home town. Yes, that’s right. NewsFeed should admit, the first time we saw the trailer for the film and heard its laughably on-the-nose dialogue we were convinced it was a joke: Does anyone actually believe in that tired dialectic of humble patriotic small-towners vs. smug urbanites who hate religion? Apparently some people still do. And that makes NewsFeed a little sad.

We do hope, though, that clips from this film make it into the ‘look how far we’ve come’ montage on the night America elects its first atheist President.

(Also, NewsFeed is aware that writing about this film in such a snarky fashion will only reinforce the sense of persecution the makers of this film apparently feel from people who live in cities. So we will reiterate: We enjoy Christmas just like most Americans do and have no problems with anyone saying “Merry Christmas” to us.) (via The Awl)