{"id":6577,"date":"2013-12-20T00:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6577"},"modified":"2013-12-20T15:44:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T20:44:06","slug":"santas-nsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/santas-nsa\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa’s NSA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Santa_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In an industry based on appealing to as many people as possible it pays to stay neutral. That\u2019s not to say that I don\u2019t feel strongly about certain political issues, I just don\u2019t tend to reflect them in my videos. I do jokes. You can\u2019t get mad at someone for jokes \u2013 although this is the Internet, so there\u2019s always one.<\/p>\n

So why did I make this video? To be honest the idea came to me by accident, originally I wanted to do a poem about how Santa was having a hard time in the modern world and how he had preferred it back in the good old days. I wrote most of it too; it talked about how Santa was being called morbidly obese rather than festively plump, and how electronics manufacturers were suing him for copyright infringement, but then I came to the part about his reindeer:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reindeer pack is a shambles and causing him stress, Rudolph\u2019s fame got the best of him; he\u2019s a drug-addled mess, With a reindeer down he hired one named Snowdon, But things went from bad to worse when a story was broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was it, I had stumbled upon a better idea. After some careful consideration I decided that I would scrap most of what I had written and start again. As I mentioned before usually I try to avoid politics, but it seemed to me that this particular issue cut across political lines. Groups on both side of the political spectrum share the same concerns, namely that the balance between maintaining national security and ensuring that civil liberties are upheld needs to be adjusted, or at the very least debated. Two weeks and a lot of caffeine later I uploaded the video, I hope you all enjoy it!<\/p>\n