During the half-time show of the 50th NFL Superbowl between the Denver Broncos and North Carolina Panthers, Coldplay put on a star-studded show that included fans on the field, surrounding the tie-dye lit stage, a marching band, dancers and pretty much every other spectacular thing you could expect at a Superbowl half-time show.
The performance also included feature guest performances from pop singer Bruno Mars and R & B Queen Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. Bruno’s performance included his chart-topping single "Uptown Funk," which then led to Beyoncé’s new single "Formation." The track was previously released on the Internet two days prior to her performing it at the half-time special.
Decked out in all black leather Beyoncé and her dancers, who were adorned in black barrettes atop of their Afros, began to perform the song, which in lyric made no mention of being anti-law enforcement or made any racial suggestions. Yet, the backlash from Beyoncé’s performance was immediate and directed with such clarification it became the hot topic on conservative media outlets across the nation.
TheBlaze’s Tomi Lahren was one of the first to express her dissatisfaction with the performance and criticized Beyoncé for her tribute to the Black Panthers and Black Lives Matters movement. Ms. Lahren started off the segment of “Final Thoughts with Tomi Lahren” by listing and identifying the “hands up, don’t shoot,” “Burning down buildings and looting drug stores,” and #Oscarssowhite inaccurately as a movement “to politicize that black lives matter more.” She went on to attack Beyoncé for inciting a racial divide between whites and blacks during the Superbowl performance. After accusing Beyoncé of race baiting she inaccurately defined the black panthers as an anti-white pro-black violent organization. The talentless Ms. Lahren also took time to mention Beyoncé’s husband, Jay Z and his past as a drug dealer to which she again inaccurately stated he was for 14 years.
Not only is Ms. Lahren misinformed and clueless as to what Ms. Carter-Knowles performance at the Superbowl was about, she is also one of the biggest hypocrites in media today. The 22-year-old conservative-know-nothing publicly supports Donald Trump- the biggest race baiter in the country today. In September of 2015, Lehren credited Donald Trump as being a political anomaly who she “Americans are tired of the polished, limited, talking points, created by the other candidates.” Lahren said. “We want guts. Americans like me are tired of this thin-skinned, poor baby; don’t hurt anyone’s feelings crap.” She added. “To Mr. Trump, Mad respect to you for what you’ve been able to do.”
Yet Trump, who is chauvinistic and expresses bigoted views is just telling it like it is, if you let her tell it. In the same segment, she gushes to Trump, “I Love You.”
Clearly the views and opinions of Ms. Lahren are conservative propaganda that aim to push an agenda to discredit and disenfranchise people of a certain community: minorities.
The irony in Lahren’s statement about how Beyoncé used the opportunity at the Superbowl to race bait the current relations between law enforcement and the African-American community, is that she has previously made disparaging remarks about a particular group of people. On July of 2015, Lahren insinuated that Islamic extremism has steadily become accepted throughout the religion. “I’m sorry, but radical Islam is becoming the rule, not the exception,” she said. “Yesterday’s moderate is today’s terrorist.”
She then took aim at the president and current administration while trying to incite war against an entire religion. “Be a leader, someone” she shouted. “Show them what a B1 bomber looks overhead,” she demanded. “Put the fear of God in their desert!”
Another critic of Beyoncé is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also accused Beyoncé of politicizing an issue at the Superbowl. “You’re talking to middle America when you talk about the Superbowl,” said Giuliani. “So if you can have entertainment, let's have you know have decent wholesome entertainment and not use it as a platform to attack the decent people who put their lives at risk to save us.”
In another display of irony Giuliani has a friendship with the presidential candidate, race baiting, provocateur, Donald Trump, in which Giuliani has admittedly been politically consulting. While he has also stated that he has expressed to Trump that the Donald, can at times, take things too far, the hypocrisy behind his shaming of Beyoncé is all too surreal. It should also be noted that under his mayoral run in New York City, there had been several instances in which police have used excessive force on people of color.
One of those instances was the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was standing on the front stoop of his building was shot to death by NYPD officers. The officers, who shot at Diallo 41 times, stated they thought the black wallet he was attempting to pull out of his back pocket was, in fact, a weapon he was reaching for. In that case, Giuliani maintained support for the officers.
While one may wonder what performance these critics were watching one thing is for sure, Beyoncé never incited any anti-police propaganda. The message of the song never incited any such rhetoric nor did it promote an anti-white message either. The message was clear “Stop Shooting Us”. The problem with this rhetoric that her message was anti-law enforcement or anti-white is that it's misunderstood or spun to be something that it is not. The same can be said about the Black Lives Matter movement. Lahren has falsely alluded her audience to believe that “Black Lives Matter” is a statement of superiority, while failing to address the rioting of white sports fans who were flipping vehicles over after the victory of the Denver Broncos at the Superbowl.
The message of Black Lives Matter is, in fact, the opposite of that. Their message actually calls for equality in a society that continues to indirectly deny them of that. Their purpose is to acquire justice for the unjust actions of law enforcement across the nation.
Beyoncé’s song is about black people embracing their culture, not looting stores and burning buildings down—something neither Lahren or Giuliani seem to care to understand.
