The right-wing ecosystem feeds off of hate and resentment so why should Christmas be any different for them than any other time of the year?
A bit of magic, wonder, and joy brought to you by the talented tappers of Dorrance Dance, performing their playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite.
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) December 13, 2023
Enjoy! 💕 pic.twitter.com/qXtCm4t37o
Personally, I liked the video. However, the usual suspects used it as another opportunity to attack President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
From Media Matters:
Right-wing media immediately began attacking the Biden White House’s Christmas celebration after First Lady Jill Biden posted a video to social media showing a tap dance company performing among the White House decorations in costumes meant to represent the holiday classic The Nutcracker. Many of the objections from conservatives seemingly criticized the inclusion of Black performers as evidence of “wokeness” or diversity, equity, and inclusion programs undermining holiday tradition, or claimed that the dance company itself is “anti-white.”
These bizarre attacks follow more than a decade of “War on Christmas” coverage from right-wing media, which claimed that Democrats would ban observances of the holiday and wove together isolated Christmas anecdotes to stoke outrage that they often covered over much more newsworthy events, including actual wars.
Certain comments included:
Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller: “This is a crime against Christmas.” [Twitter/X, 12/14/23]
Newsmax host Eric Bolling said, “The Biden family has perverted just about every single one of our institutions. Christmas is inevitably on their list, too.” Bolling lamented that this interpretation of The Nutcracker is “garish, and replete with tasteless perversions,” calling it “avant-garde and beyond woke,” and saying: “Nothing is sacred. Nothing is normal.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, 12/14/23]
. . . On Fox Business’ The Bottom Line, guest Monica Crowley attacked the Biden administration for choosing “a radical, left-wing, basically communist activist dance group to do this video for Christmas. …. Nothing screams ‘happy holidays’ like ‘defund the police.’” Co-host Dagen McDowell added, “We can assume, Monica, that Joe Biden and company agree with this group's platform. It has to be the reason they picked them.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line with Dagen and Duffy, 12/14/23]
In all honesty, who are some of these folks to criticize any Christmas celebration for not being wholesome or being perverted. Bolling was fired from Fox News for sending unsolicited pictures of genitalia to several female co-workers and Crowley is probably still bitter because she didn't get a prime gig in the Trump Administration after it was discovered that she plagiarized a large number of passages for her Ph.D. dissertation. As for Miller, well he's so evil that he probably cried at the end of The Wizard of Oz because Dorothy successfully got home. Even members of his own family can't stand him.
None of these folks are exactly the type you'd want to invite over for holiday cheer. All they know how to do is rage farm, i.e. exploit the prejudices and grievances of supporters for engagement or social status.
Amanda Marcotte of Salon magazine put it best.
Biden's haters dug up a statement of anti-racism from the troupe's leader, Michelle Dorrance, and held it out as some kind of gotcha. But they gotcha'd themselves, by dragging that subtext right into the daylight. Racism and homophobia are obviously what's fueling this tantrum. Getting outraged over an anti-racist statement is an unwitting admission of what they can't say out loud. (Well, most, anyway. There were a few MAGA types who flatly stated their objection: "This is gay as hell.") All the coded language about "weird" and "classless" and "smut" was just a thin veil over the real grievance: The people MAGA hates were up in the White House having a good time.
