Jerry Falwell Jr. was interviewed Saturday night by Fox News’  Jesse Watters on his eponymous show, ‘ Watters’ World’. Being December, it didn’t take long for Watters to turn to the ‘War on Christmas’. That unique conflict where there are constant reports from the front, but no one is fighting. The conversation turned to Melania Trump’s White House Christmas decorations. 

Of great concern to Watters and Falwell was the ‘attack’ on Melania’s odd choice of red Christmas trees —  on which some wags had photoshopped white bonnets to evoke ‘The Handmaids Tale’. Watters was moved to say:

“Liberals are still taking aim at Melania Trump’s festive and patriotic decorations,” Adding:

“This is like the Trump Derangement Syndrome meets the War on Christmas. These decorations look fine to me…The left is calling them evil, bloody, spooky. They called the hallway a murder forest.”

It’s just more hysterical hyperbole from the Fox folks stoking their rage machine. The ‘left’ did have some fun when the display was first revealed, but it has long moved on. The outrage exists solely in Watters and his kind’s imagination. And c’mon, red is an odd color for a Christmas tree.

Also, Christmas trees are never ‘patriotic’. They are a German tradition. popularized by the English Queen Victoria. Christmas itself was largely invented by Charles Dickens in his ‘Christmas Carol’. The festival celebrates the birth of a Jew in Judea. And it was a holiday rejected by the Puritans as too frivolous for the occasion.

So what’s American about it beats me.

Falwell replied:

“The first lady was here at Liberty University and she was asked a question about the criticism of her decorations. She said it’s the 21st century, everybody has different tastes.” 

A fair remark. Not one likely to cause disagreement or controversy. But Falwell couldn’t leave it there. He had to politicize the event:

“It’s such a double standard. If she were married to a Democratic President, she would be on the cover of every fashion magazine.”

But Falwell has the double standard accusation finger pointed at the wrong target. If Melania were married to a Democratic President, Falwell and his evangelical brown shirts would be calling her a whore and a slut. 

The last Democratic spouse, Michelle Obama, was slurred with all manner of accusations. And she was a woman with an Ivy League law degree, with no breath of either professional or personal scandal. A good mother, she never posed nude for magazines. She didn’t marry to obtain a more advantageous citizenship. Nor did she question the birthplace of a previous President 

So you can imagine what the conservatives would have said if Melania were a Democratic First Lady. They would have attacked her communist roots and her name change from Melanija Knavs. Her topless pictures would have been posted endlessly. Her route to citizenship would have been dissected ad nauseam. 

Was she married before Donald to gain a green card in 2001? Did she marry Trump just to become an American? Did she or Donald use his position to gain ‘chain citizenship’ for her parents? 

There would have been speculation about boyfriends, lovers, her sexuality, plastic surgery and the like. Did she sleep her way to the top? You can imagine the fuss.

And is there merit to Falwell’s claim? Do magazines only picture Democratic First Ladies on their covers? I imagine that magazines do whatever they can to increase circulation. And if Melania is not on their covers, it has nothing to do with politics, but simply it’s because she’s not a ‘draw’. Or, more likely, it’s her choice — to head off comparisons to her younger, nuder, magazine photos. 

Conservatives and evangelicals have no objective standards. Their benchmark for acceptable behavior depends on the politics of the person in question. What would be cause for damnation in a Democrat is cause for celebration in a Republican. 

Hypocrisy may not be a Christian value — but it is a Republican one.

The post What Would Republicans Have Called Melania if She Were Married to a Democratic President? appeared first on The Critical Mind.