Of course, a misanthrope would list misanthropic movies and shows. Not surpisingly, Havrilesky blew even that assignment. Some of the films she tried to frame as "misantropic" shows how little she really understands about them.

"The Boondocks," for instance, is one of the most inspiring animated shows made by Americans in the last decade, and the only one not made by a white nerd. Yes, Huey Freeman is a wanna-be Black Panther, but he's just sullenly bitter, not a school shooter. And he has to struggle quite a bit to keep that sullenness, even hallucinating some of it. Through the show, creator Aaron McGruder has become a unique voice in black entertainment, openly throwing the most ridiculous aspects of the culture back in the face of BET. The fantasy show where Martin Luther King angrily berates contemporary blacks for their laziness, faithlessness and mendacity should have gotten an Emmy nomination, or at least an Annie.

"Team America" has nothing to do with Christmas. Or with "South Park," which creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have continued to produce with bite and intelligence. Outside their difficulty using puppets instead of computer animation, their vaguely libertarian take on terrorism, Hollywood celebrities, American jingoism and Kim Jung Il was blunted and ill-focussed. I doubt the celebrities they mocked were even bothered enough to be offended.

I could go on, but there's no reason to. I hope someone sends Havrilesky the proper material to really understand such material - Michael Weldon's excellent books "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" and "The Psychotronic Video Guide." He actually watched many B-and-below-grade movies, knows how they fit into film history, and understands the counterculture/underground appeal of these movies. And maybe Havrilesky might absorb some of the gestalt that a qualified critic should have by reading Weldon's writing. Well, it's the holidays, might as well dream a fantastic dream...

Yes, this is an old piece. I believe it's been run every holiday since 2001. Well, it's better to run something like this, which still affects people, than (to take a pertinent example) the goat wash that Heather Havrilesky put out this Christmas.

This article also makes a salient point about Frank Capra. Much of his reputation lies on this film, probably the only one that non-film-students may have ever heard of. Capra was an immigrant to America, and like many such immigrants, cherished certain American traditions more than native-born Americans. They tend to be more patriotic and more conservative, too. The underdogs that George Bailey helps contain a large percentage of those immigrants. And Potter is most certainly a racist, calling them "spaghetti-snappers."

The problem is, a lot of the 1947 audience still posessed that racism. They had just finished fighting in Italy, after all. They wouldn't see Potter as a villain for turning down loans to Italians. So Capra had to have Potter accused of greater crimes - specifically, the creation of Pottersville.

Not even greed would make any intelligent banker create a Pottersville. Potter himself showed no real desire for "hot bars and cool chicks." And he'd know that such businesses, operating in the open in "his" town, would drop property values and drive away any profitable businesses. I'm not certain, but I don't think we even see Potter in the Pottersville sequences.

When Steven Spielberg borrowed this business for "Back to the Future Part II," he at least had the smarts to show his Potter - Biff Tannen - as a casino owner and all-purpose scumbag. It made sense for him to encourage Hell's Angels and drunken beer orgies in the streets of Hill Valley. That's the way a Pottersville would come into existence. The wheelchair-ridden Potter doesn't have the urge for that, and he isn't even criminal enough to employ leg breakers to really intimidate George.

Pottersville is entertaining, all right - in his book "Dark City" Eddie Muller calls the sequence the only time Capra ever entered the realm of film noir. But it's implausible. If Capra had remained realistic, Potter's reign would create a town like the multitudes of small communities now dotting America - dominated by a Wal-Mart with nothing else around it, main streets haunted by shuttered stores and closed factories, and electricity so expensive that no juke joint or whorehouse can afford to turn on the lights.

You were right about "a son," and you pointed the way to something critical. Most of these anti-Christmas, anti-holiday messages are full of self-preening ego.

"I" don't like my relatives. "I" don't like the incessant cheer. "I" will douse myself with "Witchfinder General" (whose director, by the way, committed suicide not long after making his dreary film - which was released in the US in a censored form under the title "Witchfinder General").

This is the result of Tom Wolfe's "Me Generation" brought to fruition. Why should "I" care about what anyone else thinks or needs? Wolfe saw it as blandly amusing. He was wrong. It underlies many of our contemporary ills, from destructive Wal-Mart corporate jackbooting to the Bush Family Evil Empire to murdering someone in a bar over a spilled drink. And as you may have guessed, I recognize this babyish, rampant egotism as the problem behind Havrilesky's writing.

Maybe it's too much for the NAMBY generation to extend any emotional appeal more than six inches beyond their own perfectly-tanned, ab-encrusted skins. As for me, I'm going to "darken" my holiday by making regular phone calls to a friend on the other side of the country, whose husband was hospitalized with a mysterious and possibly fatal disease this week. She and he are borderline poor, and all I can offer is dribbles of cash and heartfelt sympathy. But at least that's more than "a son" or certain other people would offer, either to individuals they know or the world at large.

At any rate, Rob, thank you, and whatever you may be personally enduring, may you know peace and joy in this season and through the year.