Paul Ryan’s Muslim beard

So this is apparently a real thing:

Outside the Beltway, the right is livid with new Speaker Paul Ryan’s trillion-dollar spending deal with Democrats.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter says Ryan, just seven weeks on the job, is ripe for a primary challenge. “Paul Ryan Betrays America,” blared a headline on the conservative site Breibart.com. And Twitter is littered with references to the Wisconsin Republican’s new “Muslim beard.” . . .

For any GOP establishment leader, outrage from the right is unavoidable, with the deal making that comes with the job often conflicing with the desires of the base.

But that anger has become especially vitriolic and personal recently.

As Ryan and Obama were putting the final touches on the spending deal, the now-bearded Speaker told the president that some on the right have accused him of being a Muslim, Al Hunt recounted in a Bloomberg View column.

“The president, who has long faced the same absurd allegation, chuckled,” Hunt wrote.

In all semi-seriousness, Ryan’s sudden decision to let his hirsute freak flag fly is . . . curious. I’m sure there’s a dissertation or three on the cultural signification of beards that I haven’t read so I’m shooting from the sociological hip, but is it not still the case in these United States that a beard is simply not a respectable fashion choice for a national politician? Doesn’t a beard in that context still generally code as some combination of hippie-vegan-so-called-intellectual-brie-and-cream-cheese-weird-minority-religion, with now a nice dose of specific Islamophobia thrown in for good measure?

Given this, what is Paul Ryan signaling by growing a beard immediately after being named Speaker of the House?

I’m just asking questions here.