UM, NOAH? THEY EVEN DO INTERPRETIVE DANCE AT MEMORIALS IN RED-STATE AMERICA THESE DAYS

I've been away from the Internet for much of the day and I'm just getting caught up on the interpretive dance staged at the D-Day memorial service today. I've watched only a tiny portion of the very long video clip and the dance is really not my cup of tea, nor, I imagine, was it appreciated very much by many of the nonagenarian D-Day vets in attendance.

But I don't know how Mediaite's main GOP apparatchik, Noah Rothman, arrives at this response:

It was a symbolic display, alright. But the performance did not symbolize what those who conceived of it had wished. Instead of a solemn and contemplative remembrance of the costs paid in order to leave ensuing generations a free world, viewers were made to witness a display of cleverness.

In fact, we have been witnessing cleverness all month. How cleverly can the White House extricate itself from the political peril of the VA scandal? How cleverly can Obama's allies reframe the national debate around Bergdahl?

Roy Edroso has the right response to this:

Was Noah Rothman unaware that the interpretive dance at Normandy was France's doing, not Obama's, or was Rothman just hoping to lead his readers to believe otherwise?

And I hate to break this to Rothman, but a quick Google search reveals that interpretive dance, for better or worse, shows up at quite a few 9/11 memorial services here in the good old U.S.A. -- even in states where they don't like Obama very much.

Here's a 2011 story about triplets living in Anderson County, South Carolina, who were born on September 11, 2000; their school was going to include interpretive dance in a 9/11 memorial, and one of the triplets was going to be one of the dancers. Here's a 2011 story about a sunrise 9/11 memorial service in Matea Valley, Indiana, that featured interpretive dance. Here's the Carmel United Methodist Church in Hamilton County, Indiana, holding a 9/11 memorial service (I'm not sure what year) that includes interpretive dance. Here's a Flickr photo of three dancers doing an interpretive dance at a 9/11 event at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 2011. I've got one at Keuka College in upstate New York and anothr one in Jacksonville, Florida, and one in Flint, Michigan.

It's somewhat odd to me -- but cultural commemorations change. Apparently they've changed in blue, purple, and red America. And you know what? I don't think Obama has anything to do with it.