The White House Christmas video says it all

The promise was that Joe Biden represented a return to normalcy and competence, but his administration lacks even the normalcy or competence to produce a Christmas video without politicizing the holiday season. 

In a sane world, producing a holiday video at the White House should not be either difficult or controversial.  Conservatives might well demand too strict an adherence to a Christmas theme, but in a country as increasingly diverse as the United States, it is reasonable for the President and the First Lady to acknowledge other holiday traditions and the overall season.  Whatever the case, there is no shortage of imagery and inspiration – from bright green holly to the red of a fireplace, the candles of a menorah, the lights on a tree, snow and snowmen, sleighs and reindeer, candy canes and more – to set the tone for the season without any politics or the baggage of our increasingly polarized country.  Add in a positive message, a remembrance of the year, an expression of hope for the future, and the need to love one another despite our differences, and anyone not named The Grinch would be happy – or at least nonplussed enough to avoid commenting.  This is the season that should bring us all together with our shared values, history, and tradition. A time to celebrate what makes us all Americans with a message we can all relate to, but the White House, under the leadership of First Lady Jill Biden, Ph.D., was unable to achieve this simple task, creating a video that means nothing to no one, botching the content and choosing performers that almost literally wear their progressive bonafides on their sleeves.  Seemingly without any irony or self awareness, the First Lady claimed this year’s video was a “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. Enjoy!” But enjoy, the people did not, for many, many reasons.  Ostensibly, the performance was based on the legendary Nutcracker Suite, but any direct connection to the classic is impossible to find.  Instead, we open on a black woman dancing down a hallway to a musical accompaniment on horns.  She’s garbed in nothing remotely resembling the holidays, some shiny sequin set up with black stockings and an old-fashioned hat.  Were it not for the decorations on the columned walls, we could be watching the overture for some avant garde Broadway play.  Things get weirder when not one but two androgynous women/men literally prance out of adjoining hallways, the first wearing some type of blue patterned jumpsuit with a purple flower on his/her head.  The second might be a woman dressed in a loose fitting business suit, but she/he passes by so fast we cannot say for sure.  We are only struck by her headgear, which might or might not be some kind of rabbit hat, like something out of a David Lynch film.

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.

Enjoy! 💕 pic.twitter.com/qXtCm4t37o

— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) December 13, 2023

At the end of the hallway, we are introduced to a smiling black woman in a long, 1950’s style blue skirt and a woman dressed as some kind of modern take on the nutcracker – the first actual holiday reference – but what they are doing there, we have no idea.  After a bad dissolve, we follow the woman in blue into a room with a Christmas tree, where everyone is dancing around, seemingly for no reason and without the slightest bit of group choreography.  There is a black man dressed something like a sailor turned nutcracker, whom we follow into some other room, also with a Christmas tree.  He promptly exits into yet another hallway, this one lined with trees, and joins the woman from the opening for a tap dance.  The other dancers join them as well, and finally we see someone with a candy cane, at least remotely close to what one might expect for the holiday season.  There’s yet another room with more dancing, then some solo dancing, some duo dancing, and another group dance, all seemingly randomly assembled, the same odd jumble of their costumes and lack of coordinated dance moves.  Then it’s over; literally, they do one of those transitions with a circle that spreads black over the screen like an old cartoon.  There’s no story, no message, no meaning that I can discern except that White House is huge, they spend hundreds of thousands on decorations, and Christmas is a reason to tap dance.  One might go so far as to suggest it has been intentionally designed to mean absolutely nothing, say absolutely nothing, and do absolutely nothing except showcase the purported diversity of the cast and send a subtle statement that the traditional concepts of the holidays no longer belong to all of us, only progressives need apply. It will not be surprising that reaction to this hodgepodge of gender neutral holiday tap dancing wasn’t universally positive.  “The United States of Bananas,” was one user’s take, suggesting that the country had gone mad to produce such a video.  “Looks like the WH switched from cocaine to acid,” another commented, combining the idea that someone must’ve been on strong drugs, to conceive, produce, and distribute this mess with the discovery of cocaine at the Executive Mansion earlier this year.  Some simply pointed out the obvious, “You are so strange. Bizarre. Freaky,” and “Imagine thinking this gives America the Christmas spirit.”  Others commented on the potential cost, but no one to my knowledge, saw this as a microcosm for the entire administration, their political and leadership problems contained in a few minutes.

First, they can do nothing right.  Everything, and I mean literally everything the Biden Administration touches turns into a disaster, large and small, sometimes ending with a whimper like a year of pushing a non-effective vaccine, forcing people from their jobs, and every draconian masking restriction under the sun, sometimes with a bang like wars in Europe and the Middle East.  The promise was that Joe Biden represented a return to normalcy and competence, but they lack even the normalcy or competence to produce a suitable Christmas message.  There is nothing normal about any of this save some of the decorations in the background, but even then one can interpret what’s happening in the foreground as an outright mocking of the holiday season.  The strange garb of the dancers, the use of music that is not immediately recognizable as part of one of the most famous ballets in history, the slapdash, nonsensical staging, the lack of anything resembling a coherent purpose could just as easily apply to some of the characters in the Biden cabinet (remember the crossdressing dude who stole luggage?) or a common occurrence at one of the President’s speeches, where he rambles incoherently and can’t seem to find his way off the stage.  There is no competence on display either, except that the performers actually know how to dance, individually if not as a group, much like Biden’s aides frequently have to disagree with their bosses remarks, correcting him over and over again to the point where it’s difficult to say who’s in charge.  The costumes are cheap.  The staging is weird.  The camera work, prosaic, what a film student could’ve shot with a $500 Gimbal.  The overall impact makes it seem like they had to do something, anything, and slapped it together in a couple of hours, but the same could be said for many of the President’s failed policies.  We have an infrastructure bill that has not produced any real new infrastructure.  An inflation reduction bill that saw inflation increase after it was passed and was largely a global warming bill anyway that pushes electric vehicles that no one wants.  I can imagine the White House begging someone to say something positive about this disaster, the same way they were begging taxpayers to take advantage of the subsidies earlier this year or more broadly, begging everyone to give the President credit for “Bidenomics.”  The problem you see is not that the video or the economy sucks.  It’s that you don’t appreciate the genius.

Second, they are politically tone deaf, literally clueless.  It doesn’t take an expert on the history of Christmas or holiday traditions in America to figure out what the average person expects in a Season’s Greeting message.  Somehow, however, someone in a position of power thought they wanted this disaster.  I’m reminded when the President celebrated the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act when inflation was at the highest level in decades, or when they claimed the Biden Administration saved the average person $.16 – yes sixteen cents – on their Fourth of July Barbecue in 2021, only to have costs increase 17% by 2022.  Of course, who could forget their insistence that Biden had saved everyone money on gas for their cars, after he drove up prices to record levels.  This was also after the Energy Secretary laughed in everyone’s faces about prices in the first place.  Mocking us appears to be a key part of their strategy, as if they want us to know they will do what they want and don’t care what we think.  Does anyone remember when they were mocking people unable to get the Christmas gifts they wanted by describing it as “the tragedy of the treadmill delayed”?  Ultimately, if President Biden loses the election next year, political scientists will laugh for decades over the entire concept of “Bidenomics” in the first place, a mock of epic proportions if ever there was one.  The term was coined when perceptions of the economy were miserable as consumers were reeling from the double shock of inflation and skyrocketing interest rates.  An astute politician likely would’ve taken their cue from Bill Clinton and focused on how they feel everyone’s pain and understand that everyone is paying the price while blaming it on everything except themselves, hoping basic empathy earns their trust – and, their vote.  Instead, the Biden Administration chose to take credit for the perceived malaise, bragging about what an amazing job they were doing when, rightly or wrongly, the average person thought they screwed it all up.  The equivalent of losing a big ball game and then holding a ticker tape parade as if you were the winner.  It’s almost as if they were daring the American public to disagree, flaunting their failure, and they did.  Similarly, the poorly conceived Christmas video seems to suggest, this is our White House, we will do with it what we want, you can take your perceptions of what the holiday season should be and shove them in places better left unseen.

Third, this Administration  insists on politicizing anything and everything.  The gender-neutral and gender-swapping performers along with the costumes were far more suited to a Drag Show in New York City than anything else, not reflective of the family values that still prevail in most households be they Democrat or Republican.  Based on the video, one would think the country was predominantly black and androgynous, something out of a science fiction or fantasy film.  The political bent extended even onto the choice of dancers.  The Rockettes, these are not.  Dorrance Dance proudly brands itself as a progressive outlet, showcasing “antiracism” right on their website.  Seriously, among a list of obvious pages, events, about, repertory, education, donate, and contact, “antiracism” is the second  most prominent link on the home page.  From there we are duly informed that “urgent action is needed,” told how we should “educate” ourselves, prompted to “take action for justice & change,” even instructed “where to spend” our money.  “For those who are investigating or have questions about white privilege, systemic racism, white fragility, and anti-racism for the very first time,” they declare, “antiracismforbeginners.com answers all the basic questions in a very straightforward way.”  They encourage visitors to “support” or “join” local chapters of Black Lives Matter, a group that chose a paratrooper as an appropriate image to celebrate the attack on Israel on October 7.  They ask people to “get involved” in abolishing both the prisons and the police.  They even list social justice protests people can attend.  Of all the dance troupes in all the country, the White House simply had to choose this one that wears its politics like a shield?  Anyone that follows the Administration should not be surprised, however.  This is the same Joe Biden that promised to unite the country and then branded anyone who disagreed as confederates, Neanderthals, and many another slur.  The same person that seeks to dole out government money based on race, and further divide us based on our backgrounds.  Why not choose a ridiculously, political and progressive dance troupe seemingly more focused on antiracism than their own profession?

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media lapped it up. CBC News claimed, “First lady Jill Biden offered up some holiday cheer Wednesday, sharing a video of tap dancers galavanting around the decorated White House. The group from Dorrance Dance wore colorful outfits meant to represent characters from The Nutcracker – a classic holiday ballet…Dorrance Dance, a New York City-based tap dance company founded in 2011 by Michelle Dorrance, said on Facebook the dance was choreographed by Dorrance and Josette Wiggan. On Facebook, the video received more than 50,000 views and many positive comments.”  Of course, all criticism came from conservatives.  “Biden’s video quickly amassed nearly 3 million views on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The video, however, was polarizing, with much of the criticism coming from conservatives and those politicizing the video.”  Funny how the choice of an antiracist dance company is not political.  Ultimately, the small things matter, leading to big things.  Here, a small thing tells you all you need to know about the least popular Administration in modern history, a well deserved appellation if ever there was one.