Big fun via Big Government and Breitbart.

Why let a holiday season come between the White House and making some political statements? The White House pegged controversial designer Simon Doonan to oversee the Christmas decorations for the White House. Mr. Doonan, who is creative director of Barney’s New York has often caused a stir with his design choices. Like his naughty yuletide window display of Margaret Thatcher as a dowdy dominatrix and Dan Quayle as a ventriloquist’s dummy. For this year’s White House, he didn’t disappoint.

These photos of ornaments on the White House Christmas tree in the Blue Room were taken just days ago. Of course, Mao has his place in the White House.

From the photo, it looks more like a Warhol print of Mao, which ain’t quite the same as pure Mao iconography but close enough, I guess. Laying aside the fact that spotting a right-wing dictator on ornaments in the Bush White House would have had Media Matters stumbling towards its fainting couch, isn’t the most likely explanation here that they really didn’t know what was on the ornaments? Why court PR trouble with a deliberate provocation via something this trivial? More interesting to me is the fact that Doonan evidently thought this sort of thing would be welcome in a Democratic White House. What an … intriguing assumption.

Obligatory atheist exit admonition: You know, if you listened to Hitchens, this wouldn’t be a problem.