We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Legistansky, culture
editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show at
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The assault on your ears that just occurred was courtesy of none other than
a slightly and I say slightly with a just a hint of mockery. Christopher
Bedford, who's slightly hungover, is here slamming on his keyboard because he just
poured a little hair of the dog and is ready to go. I actually
thought you were going to start over. Oh no, no, yeah with
it. Yeah, that's usually hard. Nobody ever knows how these intros are
going to go. Some are better than others, I will say it.
Chris is here too, in Christmas pants, by the way, Brooks Brothers
Christmas pants corduroys, so very festive. Someone's brought a point seta into the
office, so we're feeling like Christmas. And that wasn't you decorating for your
little Christmas party. No, that was not me, that was someone else.
It's probably Molly who actually makes us leave the Christmas lights up all year.
I tried to take them down before the full twelve days of Christmas had
elapsed once and Molly Hemingway was like, now you're leaving the strand up all
year. That's because Molly doesn't. She follows the old code of not getting
ready, not letting in the Christmas lights, I think until Christmas Eve.
She's one of those people. Yeah, but I'm not against the tradition.
I am against how self right. Just all the followers up the tradition are
they're kind of like, oh, they love it. It's so performative.
Not Molly, not Molly, not Molly bet It's like, how do you
know if someone's a vegan because they tell you every two seconds. Yeah.
So, actually this is a good place to start, because Chris suggested we
talk about the Jill Biden tweet of a highly produced video from the White House
from her Christmas decorations, which have it's become a tradition that the first Lady's
Christmas decorations since Milania Trump have become are now part of the sort of daily
political football game that we play here in this country, and Milania's decorations obviously
were I think unfairly derided year after year. The Christmas decorations this year have
i think probably fairly gotten derided. And I'm not saying that as a partisan,
because of course, I feel no need to defend Malania Trump nor attack
Jill Biden other than for any political reasons other than the fact that Milania Trump
was legitimately gorgeous and was unfairly smeared, and doctor Jill Biden has some I
think some weird habits, perfectly presentable, lovely woman, but these decorations are
so fake and plastic that they perfectly match the fake and plastic nutcracker What did
they call it? A playful interpretation of the Nutcracker suite that was posted from
Joe Biden's Twitter account just this week. Chris, I think that's I want
to start right there, because you suggested we talk about this video, and
I actually thinks it's worth watching for everyone because there's something very off putting about
it, and I think it's the fakeness of the whole aesthetic. Yeah.
Well, first of all, Emily, it's doctor Joe Biden doctor Joe Biden,
our next Surgeon General. As what PI Goldberg once said, Yeah,
there's a weird feeling to it when you watch it. It seems like the
characters who are dancing through it could be you know that scene in The Shining
when everything's starting to come apart and they see like the bear in the hotel
room and the weird stuff's going on, like the ghosts, like the weird
things that have happened in the hotel start to resurface. Yeah, any one
of those characters could have danced by that scene in The Shining. It's got
kind of like a David Lunch feel to it. Yeah, that's what I
was thinking. Yes, just was really off putting, creepy, somewhat sexualized
in a weird manner. You know. Malania was maligned for her Christmas decoration.
She went pretty hard with red, which is a traditional, especially in
Europe, Catholic color, and she's Catholic first lady. But one of the
things I loved about it was how traditional a lot of the actual decorations were.
When you walked through the White House, she had like a manger that
would have been in place in the Vatican. It was maybe twelve feet high,
just stunning. I don't really see that in this And I don't mind
Christmas geared towards kids a little bit, and some of the decorations, like
I've got some campy stuff outside. My wife is actually worried. Father Hathaway
this past Sunday was selling people. It was actually great homily. You know,
it wasn't one of those just feel good. It was hey. By
the way, Christmas spirit is not measured. And how long the line is
for communion, but for how long the line is for confession. We are
preparing, you know, don't be drunk when God comes. Obviously missed that
one. Last night. I was kind of saying, but there's one cool
thing. He said, why do we have all these blow up Rudolph's and
Frosty's. How about a blow up John the Baptist. He's the real person,
And apparently there is a blow up John the Baptist you can get.
And he leaned into the microphone and said, call your neighbors to repent for
Christmas. And Sarah knew that moment you were target that I was going to
buy a blow up John the Baptist for next year's Christmas with a big repent.
Now, I actually don't mind like some of the I actually kind of
like some of the secular celebrations of Christmas. There's something that's really amazing that
something happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago that brought so much pure joy into
this world that people who are secular, people who don't aren't even Christian,
can still feel it. Like it changes the whole mood of winter across all
of Christendom. I'm happy for people to celebrate it. I like the ascetic,
but I just feel like there's an ugliness that was in this video,
in this art a like you said, a plastic fakeness. It wasn't It
was like it was devoid of Christianity, and it wasn't joyful. It was
weird. I know that there was a time and place where like tap dance,
sitting clowns and stuff are like really cool. I'm kind of part of
Christmas, but not anymore. It's just it was the whole thing, was
David Lynchian strange. Yeah, well, a couple of points on that.
The reason I thought it was entirely fair to talk about this video is because
it's connected to something deeper and as I was watching it prepared to be like,
oh, why are all these people freaking out about this video? It's
you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's not that big
of a deal, but it does I think bear some deeper symbolism in that.
The thing that I was trying to put my finger on is you're looking
at these decorations that are kind of pastel and really cheap looking, and that's
I did go to the White House last Christmas, and I thought the decorations
that the Bidens did, and who knows how much you know, sway the
First Lady themselves or anybody sort of political in the White House has over the
decorations anyway. But I thought the decorations were lovely. I thought they were
totally fine. I was actually surprised by how traditionalistic they were. But in
this vie, Christmas tree is so nice this year. In this video,
you you see like these it looks like candy Land almost, but like a
really I was just thinking candy Land, like David Lynch does candy Land into
a fever dream to make you feel off. If that what it is,
If this was happening in your dream and you woke up, you would you'd
be frightened. You would probably consider it having been a nightmare. You know.
Some of those dreams are just on the line, but this one was
like the unease. And some people were talking about sort of the like the
gender ambiguity of the different tap dancers and the video and yeah, maybe there's
something there. I don't know. I mean, I think dance has always
had some dance and theater has always sort of played with sex and gender.
But in in this case, what really struck me was how cheap the decorations
look. It's like, this is the White House and this is a video
that you were intentionally putting out to the world. It reminded me of this
Walter Kern column he wrote about how everything you're getting for Christmas this year basically
is cheap and falls apart and nothing works anymore. That might even have been
the title to Calumn Something extended, like nothing works anymore. And this is
a huge bugaboo for you, Chris. This is something that you and your
friend Daniel Turner Over are probably spent a lot of money on kids gifts this
year. Yes, Sannah Man, he's been working real hard in those Malaysian
factory. Yeah, Okay, well, Chris, that's what in the decorations.
It's like, we can't even have nice things in the most intentional white
house decor of the year. It has to look like garbage, Like this
is what they're putting out to the world. And it feels like to me,
we're just getting conditioned to accept the sort of fast fashion all around us,
and we don't have to get into a conversation about H and M.
Because I know a lot of people who really like their H and M.
And every once in a while you get a piece of clothing from H and
M that survives for years. Now, that is an exception to the rule,
I would say. But at the same time, it's like we're just
living in the cheapest times. We have no gratitude for what we actually do
have, and it's weird at Christmas for all of that to kind of come
to a head. I mean, I think the gender bending aspect of this,
or the gender fluid or ambiguity, is part of it, and it's
important when it comes from you have to consider the messenger. Because Jill Biden
the Democrats have removed innocence from a lot of things intentionally, literally drag Queen
Story Hour, the weirdness of some of the White House intern videos. They've
made gender performative and gay cross dressing things that an icon of their campaign of
who they are, who they stand for as a Democratic Party. And these
people that they've run the art world, they run the theater world. They
run talking to anyone who's over conservative or Christian nature. Left in the classical
music, left in the Kennedy Center circles, left in theater, it's a
wasteland. It's like you're targeted. These places have been taken over for political
posturing. In these art troops, like performatively political mediocrities, like midwestern,
mid sized city orchestras have been taken over by like Black Lives Matter, George
Floyd says, say her name stuff. It's it's infiltrated, every single aspect
of it. And for a long time, I mean since since mid mid
twentieth century, basically since after World War Two, there's been a certain malice
in art that's been introduced in the art. Malice for the regular people at
malice for those who who get who are made uncomfortable by it. And they've
perfected it, they've got they've done it so well. I mean, there's
something, there is something in this video. I don't think I'm just being
one of those like right wing reactionary people like I am hard to tell anymore
I am. But for example, I've never I never got on the Daily
Alarm. While years of the Daily Caller, I never criticized the president for
taking a vacation, which is like it's just a seasonal back and forth,
like every time the other party is in the White House vacation, it's becomes
like dereliction of duty, as if, as if, like America is safer
if Barack Obama's in Washington or if Joe Biden is in Washington. But you
watch this and I'm reminded of that line the Tucker said at the Daily Calor
News Foundation gala, which is, if something feels creepy, someone feels creepy,
they are We're animals. We have this sense. You know, when
you get in that uber and the guy looks at you funny and you're like
weirded out and creeped out, it's because he's being creepy. It's most often
not in your head. And when you watch this video, you see it
there's some kind of just underlying malice towards Jenny. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe
I'm just being totally crazy, but it could be a little both. To
be fair, just because your paranoid doesn't mean they're not to get you,
to get you. I wasn't at the Daily Caller gala that you just mentioned,
but Chris, it was a hard invite. Chris Is introduced Tucker at
the American Principles Project ball last week, and Chris started by telling Terry Schilling
over at app and this is in front of the whole room. I thought
Tucker was kind of an odd choice for the speaker tonight's ball, given that
he founded the conservative movement's premiere pornography website, the Daily Porn Site. And
that was an excellent line. You told a story about how you one time,
like out of all sincerity around like twenty eleven, twenty twelve, early
in my DC career, you walked into Tucker's office asking if he could help
you, just sweet and innocent tie your bow tie. And he looked at
you and said, shut the f up because he thought you were messing with
him. Yeah, he was dead serious. He was angry, just wld
me to get the f out of there. So good and I did.
I Actually it took me like a couple of hours to realize why he was
angry, because we're in a big crossfire viewer. When you've been yeah,
when you've been made fun of for years from wearing a bow tie, I
guess it like gets deep inside of you. And he thought I was making
fun of him. You know, Neil Patel, who's just started Tucker Carlson
Network with with Tucker as executive. He ended up having to save me that
dick. I never tied a bow tie. And we had to go to
some gala in DC, and he came into the bathroom and saw me with
like a drink there trying to tie it in the men's room, and he
came back in and out like forty five minutes later, and I was still
there trying to tie this thing and sweating at this point, and he came
up and he goes, all right, don't tell anyone about this, and
he ties it on my neck and watching and he just d the story hundreds
of times. He just sort of slides behind you and takes your hands with
the pottery, but with a bow tie. I hadn't had somebody tie a
tie around my neck since I was like seven or eight, like my dad
like cout me my hair for church and tie and the tie on. Uh.
It was since then the way I actually learned. So if you ever
had you've never had a tie bow tie? No, but I've watched people
try to tie bow ties before and it seems unamenviable. You look at the
instructions and step that makes sense, step that makes sense, step that makes
sense, magic step, step that makes sense, and that that magic step
is the hardest one. I actually learned from will Upton because he was seriously
overserved and slow moving at a Christmas party one year, and for some reason
he thought it'd be a cool party trick to show that he could tie a
bow tie with his eyes closed, and his hands and thumbs were so slow
moving that I was actually able to watch it and learn. You have this
weird habit of dropping names that nobody like. It's if you are in Chris
Bedford friendship circles, you know them, but other people like, oh yes,
will Upton was inebriated at a party once and had slow moving hands.
I don't know what grew up in was a fixture of early twenty ten Christmas
party scenes Chris Bedford Christmas Party, I speak, King of Christmas part I.
It was kind of it's kind of cringing now to look at it.
I had a spreadsheet. We used to swap invitations like who can who can
go drink Manhattan's on Google's dime? At the Christmas parties in DC used to
be pretty over the top. Two I think that really changed with Trump coming
in. It's absolutely true, and that's a I never went back either.
Yeah, and that nobody should have any sympathy for us. But it is
very true that the DC party set in general has totally dried up because it's
really segregated by partisanship. And I'm glad that we're not drinking on Google's dime
anymore. To be I don't need I mean, I don't need to.
In twenty ten, when I was making daily collar wages, I needed to
get fined free alcohol. I wanted to drink anything more than like a forty
ounce. Now I don't have to hang out with those people there were Did
you ever go to the train one at Union Station? Yeah? It was
excellent. They rent out a hall, platform, have music, have food
stands, and they had they have a which president was it. Roosevelt's old
train car or presidential train car was there and you could go in there.
So all this is to say, there's the benefit of some of those events
was that you actually did mingle with people you know at the time who were
at like Huffington Post or it was just things were different. Nothing Post invited
the Daily Collar to their office opening. Yeah. Yeah, this was back
before before the Empire. This is like obviously inside baseball ster, but there's
something interesting about it, and it actually reminded me, Chris. One of
the first things that you actually helped me publish when this was probably twenty fifteen,
I think it was Christmas twenty fifteen, and it was when the sort
of conversation about cultural appropriation was rampant on college campuses. I just graduated and
there were all of these like micro stories of people getting canceled for wearing headdresses
or going as Pocahontas for Halloween, or you're going to Coachella wearing a headdress,
or having a Sinko demile party where you advertise tequila. Like this was
happening all across college campuses. Nobody was really paying attention, and you helped
me publish a piece in The Caller actually about cultural appropriation for a Christian holiday
like Christmas. Like, if the Left wants to take this argument about cultural
appropriation to its logical conclusion, then you are all like brutally appropriating and carelessly
and thoughtlessly appropriating Christian culture for your secular Christmas celebrations. And I've thought about
that a couple of times over the years, and I don't take back a
word of the column. I think it stands. I think it's good,
and I think this was in the piece. It's good that this is an
access point for people that maybe when the one time of year they go to
churches on Christmas and favor Yeah, I agree. I agree. We're going
to be in real trouble when the secular world just moves on from Christmas.
No, I agree with that. We already are in trouble. I agree
with that. I do think I did used to have to work on Christmas
at the Daily Callar because it was lower and it was easy. You just
every time you had to work a holiday, you just wait. You'd write
the story Barack Obama doesn't mention God in Christmas address, and you'd wait till
the speech was finished. You'd publish it and you send it to Drudge.
Back then was still a good guy and that was it. And then people
like bed forgot a Drudge link. And then I'd go I'd go back to
sneaking nips with my younger brother at the Christmas table and taking the dog for
a walk to the bar. And then every time I got to north of
my family, I just say, I have to go work. So yeah,
that's one way to do it. They are removing it. The reason
intentional, yes, And the reason I was thinking about the calum when you
were talking about the Christmas video is that, Yes, I think it's good
as an access point for you know, non believers into a Christian holiday.
If it's the one time you're going to church or you're watching It's a Wonderful
Life and people are talking about Christ. I think that's a huge benefit from
a Christian perspective. It makes some of these celebrations like the Jill Biden White
House tap dancing video really really unsettling. Well, thank goodness, we still
have a moral force in America Hamas that is shutting down Christmas, secular Christmas
celebrations across the nation. You know, this is the morality, the las
just pouring through and being like haram. Secular Christmas tree lighting is haram.
Yeah, they're really doing the Biden administration's work out there, keeping everyone in
line. But that's the thing, like the materialistic and godless Christmas celebrations.
You know, I actually do go back on back and forth on whether I'm
in favor of that being a gateway towards something, because every time you see
it, every every year, I think it gets more unsettling and weirder,
and I just don't really know what to do about it. I think it
is still a net benefit. It's a good opportunity to sort of evangelize,
and Chris evangelization is a thing that we do in Protestant circle. We used
to. I was kidding the Jesuits were are evangelists and they kind of went
they went whacking. They do. They do great work. Did they do
the White House video? Yeah? I might have. They would have found
some kind of legalistic way about how that's the real Christianity. But anyway,
the heaps of Chinese junk that we throw at each other or that we throw
under a tree and you know, wrap with uh, that's run rule I
have with our Christmas gift mind is and are things like. So Sarah's really
likes to decorate and she takes holidays very seriously. She has special plates for
them. And I love it because God lover one. It looks great,
two makes you very happy and it's excellent. But I have a rule.
It's like, we're not we're not decorating our Thanksgiving table lighting with something that
was made by slave labor in China. It's going to cost a little bit
more. But that turns out there's a little I think I've talked about this.
There's a little old lady in DC who makes table liners yep, by
hand, and it's like as opposed to twenty dollars, it's like eighty dollars,
but it's made in America. It's nice, and it's not using slave
labor, and it's not using the people are harvested with the Chinese Communist Party.
Now we try to do that with our gift giving, which might mean
a few less things. Now, granted I broke that rule because you cannot
get made in America jed Jo's and Christmas needs jed Jo's Little Boys Christmas,
I think, But in general, just trying to be conscientious using Etsy going
to it's actually kind of fun. There's Christmas markets and trade fairs is one
in the Eastern market. A lot of breweries have Christmas markets these days.
You go and there'll be people who are selling things that they made and nobody
there. They're not at the breweries. A lot of these people You're probably
not going to bump in to them on church on Sunday, but they're like
a local candlemaker doing this, someone who knits children's teddy bears. And it's
a good way to make your Christmas shopping local gifts that support local artisans,
and also have a beer while doing your shopping. Okay, well, good
to pro tip you. Sometimes you just dispense lifestyle and not sometimes, like
I think thirty percent of what you do on this podcast is just dispense unsolicited
lifestyle tips. One of the hardest things about being married to me is that
I've got strong opinions on everything, like there's really nothing wrong. My gods
don't really I don't really know about that. God bless that woman. I
mean, I mean, seriously, God bless that woman. Well. Chris
will be back next week, the week after that, and the week after
that. And the week after that, but specifically in the next couple of
weeks with Christmas themed podcast bear So Again Radio at the Federal Stock Cooma.
Should we talked about it. We have to air grievances, but we want
to record a couple of podcasts next week, so maybe Food Christmas Food and
Donnie and but email Emily your ideas. Yeah, Radio at the Federalists dot
com. We'll be back with more soon. Christopher Bedford, Executive editor over
at the Common Sense Society, thank you as always great to be here.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour, and Emily Dashinski,
Culture editor to here. The Federalist will be back soon with more.
So that would be the lovers of Pretty Anxious for the Friend. I heard
the fame voice the reason and then it faded away.