Last Sunday, Kendrick Lamar delivered a Super Bowl halftime performance that reviewers swooned over, both understated and bombastic, marrying a simple clean set with audacious rhymes.
Not everyone can be happy, though.
Whenever there’s a performance by a prominent Black musician at America’s most prestigious sporting event, a reflexive outcry from a certain subset of folks arises.
They don’t say that they can't tolerate a Black person on television, couching it in euphemisms such that, if you accuse them of racism, they’ll clutch their pearls.
“Oh, but I just wish it was more kid-friendly.”
“I just couldn’t understand the words.”
This year, a spate of right-wing criticism coalesced around not knowing the songs.
While it’s true Kendrick performed mostly tracks of his new album, it seems doubtful that all would be OK if he simply spit a few verses of “m.A.A.d city.”
That said, it’s so easy to just criticize these folks as racist, collecting a choice number of responses to paint them with a broad brush as anti-Black.
Which is wrong, because if you did, you’d be ignoring that they have a solution to this problem of theirs, one that has no racial undertones whatsoever.
Next year, the NFL needs to hire the guy who said the N-word.
That is cultural unity. That is post-racial art. That is a collective call for Morgan Wallen to save the day at Super Bowl 60.
The right’s next Super Bowl halftime choice is… something else
Why?
Well, isn’t it obvious?
If musicians (white or Black) are too often promoting the wrong values, America needs someone who hasn’t been repeatedly arrested for throwing violent tantrums and/or driving while drunk. Nothing to do with race, you see.
If irresponsible men are lifted up by our culture (white or Black), the Super Bowl needs a man who would never leave his pregnant girlfriend.
And if racial division is too often highlighted (white or Black, of course), well, this country deserves a musician who would never be filmed using a racial slur.
That’s not Lamar, who has never been arrested, is still married to his high school girlfriend, and doesn’t drink. It’s clearly Wallen, a popular country star who was twice arrested for drunken outbursts once for DUI and allegedly cheated on his pregnant fiancé… that is someone America can get behind.
Again, nothing to do with race, but, just to be absolutely certain, we should ask the guy who spent an entire year working to blacklist companies for their DEI practices (in a campaign that had nothing to do with race).
“If I could pick the next Super Bowl halftime show performer,” Robby Starbuck, a conservative influencer wrote, “It would be Morgan Wallen. Why?”
Yes, why?
Well, because, duh.
You see, while some people may not have known who Kendrick is, clearly, everyone knows Wallen.
Because if Kendrick’s 88 million monthly listeners on Spotify is proof that less than a quarter of the country knows him, Wallen’s 36 million is 36 million! That’s so many people.
And If Kendrick’s 2.4 billion streams on “Humble” show more than half the world hasn’t listened to his most streamed song, Wallen’s 1.1 billion on “Last Night” must mean he’s massive. A billion streams!
Starbuck offered a raft of other reasons, including the fact that he would put on a good show (Morgan Wallen’s repeatedly canceled shows, leaving his fans hanging) and could bring a lot of “big guest stars.” (do not, do not, do not, compare SZA’s monthly listeners to Wallen’s, she only has 50 million more, barely nothing).
But Starbuck wasn’t the only big-time influencer who just felt that, well, maybe, country music was getting shafted.
Wrote golfer Paige Spiranic: “Hear me out a country music halftime show next year."
"How do you not have Luke Combs or Morgan Wallen??. arguably the two biggest singers in the US right now. Makes no sense!!” asked another.
Maybe they have a point. The last undeniably country music star to perform at the Super Bowl was Shania Twain in 2003, which means that the NFL considers country music fans a group not worth catering to.
Except, there does seem to be a phrase for pressuring large corporations to alter their practices to appease a smaller class that feels it has been historically, willfully overlooked.
But also, just don’t immediately suggest the N-word guy after watching a Black person on your TV.
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