Who knew that when Bill O’Reilly would kickstart the annual ‘War on Christmas’, the first battle would be with… all the cool toys this Christmas!

Not content to leave the video game bashing to Democrats like Hillary and Joementum, Bill O’Reilly has decided to turn luddite, and open fire on gaming and technology, in the process demanding that all of you kids get off of his lawn.GamePolitics has the story, complete with money quotes:

Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don’t deal with reality – ever. So they don’t know what day it is; they don’t know temperature it is; they don’t know what their neighbor looks like. They don’t know anything… because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they’ve created their own reality…

Bill O’Reilly telling HIS audience that OTHER PEOPLE are divorced from reality is…. pretty delicious-tasting irony really. I so wish I could find and link the study that found that people who watched Rush and O’Reilly were less likely to have an accurate view of the day’s events than those who just watched CNN. Or for that matter, the Daily Show.

The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing?

Because they had to quit their job to freeze their ass off outside of Best Buy to get a PS3?

Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that…. Now you have the “knows” and the “know-nots”, because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines….. you’re not going to know anything…. You’re gonna fail.

Ah, yes. Because somehow, playing Splinter Cell leaves you much less better prepared for the workplace than, say, watching ‘I Love Lucy’ – which something like 50% of America did in the 1950s. Seriously, does anybody not get that the best way to be part of a technological workplace is to… use technology?

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life – the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America…

…. my iPod…. told me to kill….

did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them?

It’s actually quite easy. See, they’re nerdy and quiet, and won’t tell anyone who disagrees with them to ’shut up’.

I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

Good news, Bill. People are attacking each other to get PS3s. So that’s progress, right?

Perhaps I should be relieved. Usually we hear that video games will turn us into mindless Columbine psychopaths. Hearing that we’re merely apathetic actually feels like… well, a change, at the very least.

Original comments thread is here.