Republicans are furious about the “Cupid Shuffle.”
They accuse the IRS of wasting taxpayer dollars by teaching employees how to line dance, allegedly on company time. And GOP lawmakers say they can prove their claims: They have a video.
The House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, released a video of an African American IRS employee teaching a group of IRS workers how to dance the “Cupid Shuffle.”
The IRS shot the video as a spoof at a 2010 agency conference in Anaheim, Calif. where “Down, Down, Do Your Dance” was the line dance song of choice.
“Get in line now,” one African-American IRS employee shouts to a group of IRS workers who were being taught a line dance. “Chop, chop!”
“After countless hours of hard work and one broken leg,” the moderator says in the video, “the employees end up picking up on the shuffle and have fun.”
It’s unfortunate that a black IRS employee is at the center of the video and highlighted by Republicans showing her teaching a group of black and white IRS employees how to line dance. Some radical conservatives will undoubtedly attempt to link President Barack Obama, America’s first black president, to dancing and wasteful spending.
In the future, however, it would probably behoove the government’s black employees to show some restraint and consider the consequences of these actions before videotaping this kind of behavior since they know Republicans are just waiting for any excuse to lower the hammer on Obama.
As expected, Republicans quickly seized on the video as a part of a widening probe of the IRS, which is accused of wasteful spending on conventions and training programs. A House committee said the IRS spent $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012.
ANALYSIS: GOP Uses Taxpayer-Funded Hearings to Criticize the ‘Cupid Shuffle’ was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
