Macy's Informs 'Mrs. Claus': It's a Parade; It's Not a Pulpit
: "Gather round, my lovelies. 'Tis that very special season. The turkey is roasting. The family is here. And a flamboyant, guttural-voiced openly gay male cross-dresser is having it out with a unit of a corporate retail conglomerate capitalized at more than $8 billion.
It must be Thanksgiving time in New York.

Making this year's celebration memorable, the actor Harvey Fierstein and the producers of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade engaged one another yesterday in a fierce and somewhat indirect debate over whether or not the parade is a sacred institution that should be regarded as above politics.
The festivities began when Mr. Fierstein wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times using the fact of his scheduled appearance in the parade as a rhetorical device to introduce a meditation on the politics of same-sex marriage. The Santa Claus in today's parade would be half of a same-sex couple, he declared, with him as the other half, 'dressed in holiday finery portraying the one and only Mrs. Claus.'
By the end of the day, it was clear that tradition would hold: Santa Claus would be on the final sleigh float, accompanied by Mrs. Claus, a woman. Mr. Fierstein would be on a separate float. But the confusion set Macy's, owned by Federated Department Stores, on a madcap public relations campaign to distance its parade from his opinions without addressing the topics he raised.
In the morning, Macy's officials quickly issued their first statement: 'The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the icon of the Thanksgiving Holiday. It has delighted and entertained families throughout the world for 76 years. The parade has never and will never be a platform for political and social issues and opinions.'"