There’s a reason MAGA conservatives were unable to articulate what they hated about First Lady Jill Biden’s White House holiday show, argues Salon’s Amanda Marcotte.
“It's plain bigotry,” writes Marcotte. “The first smiling face we see in the video is a Black woman. Throughout the video, many of the dancers read as people of color and queer people. Plus, the music is jazz, not classical. We are apparently at that point in fascist development where they reject syncopated rhythms as decadent and emasculating.”
Marcotte came to the defense Monday of the Dorrance Dance company’s tap dance to a jazz rendition from "The Nutcracker Suite.”
The video spurred angry vitriol from conservative commenters who called the video — in which dancers in gaudy costumes dance through the corridors of the White House — “grotesque” and compared it to smut, writes Marcotte.
But, writes Marcotte, critics were “stubbornly unwilling to offer any specifics about their objections.”
Marcotte was willing to be more blunt.
“MAGA has their reasons to beat around the bush, but that shouldn't stop the rest of us,” she writes. “Anyone with working knowledge of right-wing trigger points knows what fueled the outrage, and it's not just a general right-wing aversion to fun.”
Marcotte argues the outrage wasn’t quite as sincere as it seemed.
“This should be seen as part of the larger MAGA project to categorize increasing amounts of culture as ‘woke’ and therefore forbidden,” the Salon analyst writes. “They're gradually reducing the amount of contact Trumpists have with the outside world, until the only entertainment they're allowed is old Donald Trump speeches.”
She concludes that ultimately this socialized censorship is unpatriotic, pointing to the uniquely American history of jazz and tap, and its foundations in immigrant, queer and Black communities.
“It's all why, as silly as this right-wing rage over a harmless tap dance video may be, it's still important to take note of it,” Marcotte writes.
“This is part of the larger and growing culture war, aimed at rewriting American culture in their own image, while erasing the way immigration, racial diversity, and queerness have shaped it.”
