What sad, ridiculous people.

From the Washington Post:

Opinion Right-wing pundits tremble in fear of … tap-dancing

By Catherine Rampell
Columnist
December 19, 2023 at 6:19 p.m. EST

Hide your children, hide your wives. A radical force is sweeping the nation, threatening to destroy everything that God-fearing Americans hold dear.

That threat, according to Fox News? Tap-dancing, one of the most quintessentially American art forms there is.

Last week, first lady Jill Biden shared a festive holiday video of tap troupe Dorrance Dance performing their swingin’ spin on “The Nutcracker,” set to a jazz arrangement by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

A jazz arrangement by DUKE ELLINGTON AND BILLY STRAYHORN.

Festooned with wide smiles, whimsical headpieces and a healthy helping of sequins, the dancers percuss their way around the White House. Familiar characters from the “Nutcracker” — such as a rodent king and the young heroine Clara — sprinkle kinetic joy through the East Wing’s Christmas trees. The video opens and closes with saucy flourishes from “Sugar Rum Cherry” (performed by co-choreographer Josette Wiggan).

The piece is wholesome and exuberant. As a longtime admirer of Dorrance Dance, I watched the two-minute clip over and over when it was released and gushed over it with my dance-nerd friends.

Not every viewer was enthralled, though. Over in the right-wing mediaverse, people practically lost their minds.

The G-rated performance, which happened to feature some dancers of color, was “woke nonsense” and part of the “Biden freak-o-rama,” declared Fox News host Laura Ingraham. She said it was designed to “offend” the public and appeal to “flag burners and the America haters.”

“Anything connected to the American tradition has to be reimagined and then remade through a far-left lens,” Ingraham said of the troupe’s take on the Russian Christmas classic, adding that “it is kind of a big middle finger to Christians in this country, I think, and frankly to all Americans, not just Christians.”

Newsmax host Eric Bolling called the routine “replete with tasteless perversions” and “beyond woke.” Former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller lambasted its “freakishness.” The Federalist called the video an “abomination” and an attempt by the Bidens to slip “radical Marxism into the country’s Christmas celebrations.”

Who knew anyone could get so triggered by jazz hands?

The right-wing, of course.
Anything with an expression outside of their 1950’s version of America is something to be derided.

Some were pretty explicit that what set them off about the tap-dance troupe was that it has — gasp! — Black people in it. (“It’s diverse as hell. They had to do that. It had to be a DEI video,” said Newsmax host Rob Schmitt.) Most, however, objected to materials on the dance organization’s website devoted to fighting racism and lifting up Black artists.

“It is our job to tell the history of tap dance as a celebration of Black culture and also the never-ending struggle against systemic racism and white supremacy in this country — the origin story of appropriation in American culture,” writes the troupe’s founder, MacArthur “Genius” grantee Michelle Dorrance, who is White…

Well, there you have it. Diverse dancers. A troop interested in making the world a more inclusive place by fighting racism, and supporting Black artists…

How dare they!!