Commentary

Jill Biden posts a cheery Christmas video & the right sees a dystopian nightmare

Jill Biden posts a cheery Christmas video & the right sees a dystopian nightmare
Dorrance Dance troupe in 2023 White House Christmas video Photo: Jill Biden

It’s Christmas, so it’s time for the right wing to go ballistic over how Democrats celebrate.

Besides the usual complaints about people saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” the Republicans have a new target this year: Jill Biden. The First Lady released a two-and-a-half minute video of the White House’s holiday decorations, featuring a troupe tap dancing to a jazz version of The Nutcracker Suite, composed by Duke Ellington.

You’d have thought that Biden took an ax to a nativity scene.

The howls of outrage from the right were only topped by the lengths that the MAGA faithful went to outdo one another.

“If you felt embarrassed and angry to see this woke nonsense at the White House during a time Christians have considered holy for 2,000 years or so, well, that’s the point,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham thundered. “They wanted to offend you. They did it on purpose because they think their supporters like that sort of thing, and they do.”

That was just one opinion from the right-wing stratosphere. There were plenty of others, equally unmoored from reality. Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, called the video “a crime against Christmas.” Andrew Tate, who is currently facing rape and human trafficking charges, said “If I believed in fear–I would be afraid.”

The Federalist, a right-wing publication that once ran a piece defending anti-gay judge Roy Moore for allegedly dating underaged women, decided to turn the video into a dissertation on the state of civilization: “The Biden Christmas video symbolizes our descent from a great nation to one marred by tyranny and lacking an identity,” it declared, calling the video an “abomination.

Of course, you didn’t have to go beneath the surface to find the racism and anti-LGBTQ hatred driving the comments. Fox News talking head Jesse Watters saw racism at work — against whites.

“They called Melania’s Christmas an all-white Christmas,” he said. “That would make Jill’s Christmas an anti-white Christmas because the dancing group … supports critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and the 1619 Project. Oh, and they also want to abolish ICE, abolish prisons, and defund the police.”

Fox’s Greg Gutfield branded the Dorrance Dance troupe that performs in the video “a Marxist organization.” Not coincidentally, for those looking to play off the worst impulses, some of the accounts trashing the video took a screenshot of a Black dancer in a moment when her mouth was open, making her look less like the happy, smiling dancer she is in the video and more like she’s screaming.

Then there were the anti-trans attacks, which were based solely on the obsessions of the viewers, as the dancers aren’t identified by their sexual identity. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who wants to impeach Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, stooped to a slur to complain at “tr**ny tap dancers at the White House.” Another commentator said, “The only thing missing is [trans influencer] Dylan Mulvaney.”

In the midst of the attacks. there were predictably hymns of praise for how tastefully things were done in the Trump era. “Melania’s was tasteful, seasonal, appealed to everyone and was absolutely breathtaking and gorgeous,” one X account user tweeted.

You remember Melania’s tasteful choices, like the year she colored all of the Christmas trees blood red. Or the time she was quoted as saying on a recording, “I’m working my a** off with the Christmas stuff that, you know, who gives a f**k about Christmas stuff and decorations, but I need to do it, right?”

Can’t get any more tasteful than that, can you?

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