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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) says the Obamas should keep their daughters away from Beyoncé.
Huckabee, who's considering a run for president, recently told People magazine that, while the Obamas are generally good parents, he doesn't get how they can encourage their daughters' love for Beyoncé.
Huckabee explained, "I don't understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school and making sure they're kind of sheltered and shielded from so many things — and yet they don't see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyoncé, who has sort of a regular key to the door" of the White House.
Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and their daughter reportedly attended Michelle Obama's 50th birthday party at the White House in January 2014. The first lady also reportedly took her daughters to a Beyoncé concert in July 2013.
This isn't the first time Huckabee went after the hugely successful singer. Last week, Huckabee drew widespread criticism for a passage in his new book, God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, that criticized Beyoncé and Jay-Z's performance of "Drunk In Love" at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
Huckabee wrote:
My reaction: Why? Beyoncé is incredibly talented — gifted, in fact. She has an exceptional set of pipes and can actually sing. She is a terrific dancer — without the explicit moves best left for the privacy of her bedroom. Jay-Z is a very shrewd businessman, but I wonder: Does it occur to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object?
Vox's Kelsey McKinney explained what Huckabee got wrong:
Huckabee is right about Beyoncé being talented, but he gets into several levels of muddy sexism with where he goes next. First, Beyoncé's "explicit moves" are mostly done on her own on a chair, and fully fit the themes of the song. Second, any idea that Beyoncé herself is not a shrewd businessman is completely misguided. The woman dropped an album in the middle of the night and no one knew. They are at least equally good business people, and Beyoncé is her own person. If she wants to dance on stage sexily, she will. The idea that Jay-Z controls her decisions is absolutely absurd.
Huckabee also isn't the first prominent conservative to criticize Beyoncé. Last year, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly criticized the singer's racy music and videos. He took particular issue with the video for "Partition," which implied Beyoncé was having sex with her husband in the back of a limousine.
In May, Daily Show host Jon Stewart criticized O'Reilly's remarks in the two segments below:
