MAGA melts down over Super Bowl halftime performance
Conservatives weren’t too impressed with the rapper’s performance, which featured appearances by Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, and Serena Williams.
Isn't that like a yearly tradition for them at this point. I honestly can't remember the last half time show they didn't bitch about
Annoying generalization and useless Internet noise what even is journalism
They saw like five tweets and they wrote a story about it. And here we are on the front page
Why would the pedophile Matt Gaetz be offended by a song dissing pedophiles?
But also fuck this type of partisan rage bait article. This type of writing is what divides us, even if it's saying things you wanna hear.
But also fuck this type of partisan rage bait article. This type of writing is what divides us, even if it’s saying things you wanna hear.
Hear, hear.
This kind of 'information' is like doing drugs, it feels good but it destroys your ability to function as a normal human being. Getting addicted to outrage and 'owning the
<other side>
' is playing into the divisive politics that allows the powers that be to divide us. Nobody is going to want to work with you if you're calling them a MAGAT and you're not going to want to work with anyone who's attacking you.Your enemy isn't the other middle class and poor people who've been convinced to wear a different color hat than you. If you can't see that and adjust your behavior appropriately then you still have a lot to learn and I hope we have enough time for you to catch up.
don't forget about Trump...and Musk.
So sick of these clickbait headlines. From the headline to the body "Melts down" -> "wasn't too impressed". BORING. Journalists need to do some actual work like they used to instead of just farming rage bait.
Shocking that MAGA wouldn't like someone who disses pedophiles.
Kendrick dropping truth bombs on the NFL’s biggest stage? Cue the MAGAverse hyperventilating into their flag-print fainting couches. Nothing terrifies fragile hegemony more than Black artistry that isn’t sanitized for their comfort. Oh no—a Pulitzer-winning rapper dared weave politics into the sacred ad-break circus! Next they’ll demand halftime shows be replaced with Lee Greenwood AI covers.
The meltdown’s a feature, not a bug. Conservatives need perpetual outrage to mask their cultural irrelevance. Imagine stanning a draft-dodging conman but seething when an actual poet weaponizes the mic. Stay mad—the future’s rhyming without you.
Remember, these are the free speech absolutes that are anti cancel culture. Right?
Headlines are short and easy to understand for sure.
Kendrick dropping truth bombs on the NFL’s biggest stage
What truth bombs did he drop? Some vaguely rebellious sounding lines? "The revolution will be televised?"
This was milquetoast at best. Actively harmful at worst. I really enjoyed the performance but he is doing exactly what he criticizes the record labels of doing. Taking black culture and commodifying it by turning it into a spectacle.
This was corporate spectacle and nothing more.
"Come, comrades, and claim your Che Guevara t-shirts. Indulge that half-buried discontent with the system by picking up these subversive punk rock accessories. For a fleeting moment, we’ll even add a trans flag poster—yours for nothing but shipping and handling. Put on the revolution you crave."
Kendrick’s performance wasn’t meant for you to dissect like some detached art critic sipping lukewarm coffee in a gallery. It was the spectacle—because that’s where the power lies. You want revolution without the mess, rebellion without the noise, but that’s not how this works.
Corporate stage or not, he hijacked their platform and made them pay for it. That’s subversion, not commodification. You’re so busy clutching your purity checklist that you missed the point: this isn’t about your approval.
And spare me the faux-radical cynicism about Che t-shirts. If you’re waiting for a revolution that doesn’t touch capitalism, you’ll die waiting. Meanwhile, Kendrick’s out there making people uncomfortable. What are you doing? Writing snarky posts? Congrats on your service to the cause.
What’s with the media’s obsession with the opinions of known trolls like Matt Walsh?! Fuck, stop highlighting his drivel and that of people like him. You’re giving them free advertising!
Maga melting down over a black performer isn’t news. It’s olds!
Welcome to seeing the white supremacist hegemony. They'll platform racists criticizing Black Art forms, but they'll actively avoid giving any room for those Black Art forms. You see it everywhere in what artists get radio promotion and algorithmic boosts vs who toils in the underground for years, or else releases a couple EPs, a couple of mixtapes, and then goes into a boring graphic design job because shit, they need food man.
You're right. I have to think pretty hard to name a single black artist because of how little attention they get in the media. Meanwhile, practically every white group formed by friends in high school gets a tour and record deal.
Conflict drives engagement
EDIT: This turns out to just be a folklore factoid after all, see the comment replying to this one
Forgive the tangential side-note: Although I get that "news" vs. "olds" was justified punning, I still want to mention what I think is interesting about the term "news", and seems to be in danger of being forgotten. I remember learning in school (pre-internet so I couldn't easily verify) that the origin of the word "news" was "North, East, West, South".
I’m sure that’s what’s you were taught, but it’s not true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/news-etymology/
It doesn’t work in other languages either.
The Dutch word for news is nieuws, but that does not form an acronym of noord, oost, west, zuid.
The German word is Nachrichten. Which is very far from Nord Ost Süd West.
I thought Kendrick was very good, and I don't listen to him or very much of that style music. He is amazingly talented and I thought a top tier showman. In the article, Jack Posobic said that he wished it was Creed (like In the 2001 half time) instead. Since this was the Apple Music streaming halftime show, I looked it up. #1 Streamer of last year was Kendrick, I didn't see Creed in the top 50. Also Billboard has Kendrick at #4 all year for Streaming, also no Creed. I know Creed had a big resurgence last year touring, but I was around listing to music in 2001 and we all voted that Creed sucks. I didn't like those people who liked Creed then, and even more so now.
but I was around listing to music in 2001 and we all voted that Creed sucks
Can confirm, was also listening to music in 2001, and Creed sucks
Given current events though, I wonder if Disturbed and System of a Down will be moved to make something new.
LOL, Creed?
Probably because of the xtian thing, but...still.
I remember when creed came out, it gave rise to a shitload of bands with lead singers that would go out of their way to sound like Scott Stapp. If you hated creed, this became very obvious and annoying
I've always noticed growing up that there seems to always be one band that music fans seem to randomly focus their hate on disproportionately, often for little reason beyond "because fuck you that's why".
When I first entered middle school, it was Quiet Riot. Then Winger. Creed. Nickelback. I'm sure I'm missing some in the middle, but you get the idea. There was always one band that everybody just focused their hate on, and god help you if you were actually a fan of the band because you were bullied relentlessly and labelled a "poser". And the thing is.....most of the time, these bands weren't that bad. They were mostly cookie-cutter, middle of the road bands who brought nothing really new to the table, but they weren't terrible either. But they got a disproportionate amount of hate for merely existing.
Yearah eehhvreahy bodeyh sauunded likeha thais rollen theah Ehhh's...
Why? It was straight up nationalist propaganda
Which part?
Maybe you don't know 1. Gang colors or 2. TV networks are bound contractually to always support the military or they can get their broadcasting licenses revoked.
Nothing spells freedom better than gov mandated propaganda
Kendrick killed it, who gives a shit what haters think.
I am not even a fan and I found the show enjoyable.
Taking shots at Drake when Trump is there seems kinda petty tho.
shots taken at trump:
Dude used one of the largest platforms available to cook that beef. Agree, def petty.
I enjoy kendrick and found the SB entertaining, but I can see where people can say it was a fine performance. Certainly nowhere close to worst of all time though
Right-wing commentators Eric Daugherty and Benny Johnson took their criticism to the extreme, describing the performance as “Black nationalist" and calling Lamar a “mumbling pagan Satanic cultist”.
This would only make me want to see it if I hadn’t already lol
And Kendrick Lamar is famously Christian and makes references to God frequently in his lyrics. Although, I doubt they consider the black church “Christian” since prosperity gospel megachurch bullshit strays so far from Christ that they probably can’t recognize an actual Christian any better than they can recognize a fire beat.
Prosperity gospel is by no means a white only thing. Unless he’s gone into detail about the church he attends you can’t know what version of Christianity he is part of.
Can you even be both pagan and Satanic?
"He's a mumbling pagan, Satanic, Jewish, Mexican, Socialist, Antifa, Chinese..." Beyond all the social abuses, I hate MAGA and right-wing pundits because they've robbed words of meaning, on a scale that forces adjustment unlike anything else.
He can be if you don’t know what a dictionary is and you get revenue by being divisive. The more charged the language, the higher the revenue gets.
If all MAGAts just spontaneously died that would be fucking boffo.
The opening was propaganda and the ads were propaganda. What do they have to complain about?
Yeah, I couldn't hear what they were singing though.
If your entire personality, beliefs, reactions, actions, debates, arguments and statements are all based on anger .... at one point nothing in this world will make you happy and you'll just be angry at everyone and everything.
Stay mad America .... we can't help you any more.
That Star Trek quote about and becoming comfortable like a leather glove still rings true
When one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like... like old leather. And finally... becomes so familiar that one can't ever remember feeling any other way.
comfortable, like... like old leather.
Quote from Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek .... wow, I've watched so much Star Trek in my life that stuff like this is probably ingrained in memory without me knowing it at this point. I watched all of TNG years ago and honestly, I don't remember much and hope to rewatch all of it again some day because of writing like this. Thanks for sharing this.
Mans was very angry at the Borg in First Contact.
You were helping? Huh, and well, to take a note from Kendrick: Damn.
I’m just mad he didn’t say the word “pedophile”
Honestly, I thought the nod early in the performance was all we were gonna get. I didn't think he was going to do ANY of that specific song. The fact the only thing censored was the word pedophile just makes more people that don't know what's up want to look it up.
Well of course.
They can't have either of those obviously.
Good to see.
Also, it's wild just how unpopular NFL is on Lemmy - there's just not a whole of discussions at all, even about the halftime show.
As an Eagles fan, I fucking loved that shit. But I can understand why Chiefs fans would have not enjoyed it, and everyone else would have been bored.
Kendrick fucking killed it, though. That was a great halftime show.
Sports is boring. The games are vaguely entertaining if you're actually playing them, but watching? Washing dishes is more engaging.
Hell, CSPAN is a better watch.
John Cleese said it best, the only imaginative part of american football are the ad breaks.
Watch rugby.
Fun fact: unpopular is not antonym to popular.
Unpopular implies active dislike or hate. Antonym to popular is "not popular", which also includes stuff that is not actively hated, but simply ignored.
ok, i confused my message by unneccesarilly and incorrectly bringing too narrow meaning of the word antonym into it.
so: unpopular is not the same as largely ignored. just because there is not that many fans of sport on lemmy, being created largely of tech-people, doesn't mean it is unpopular, as unpopular implies active dislike, which is not the case here.
to save some googling for anyone interested:
so we have so called polar antonyms, such as cold / hot or strong / weak, which do not cover whole spectrum of choices (there is some middle ground between hot and cold).
then we have complementary antonyms, which create two disjunct sets covering whole spectrum. these are basically logical negation.
they are often created by using a prefix from the other word. american / non-american, mortal / immortal, but also entrance / exit.
the terminology also differs between languages, it definitely does between my native language and english.
I always preferred CFL rules tbh
Congo has football!?
me too. it is a much more entertaining game.
Lemmy users only like round footballs, because it allows them to sneer at Americans for having a differences in their dialect.
If they take off the armor and play, then that's worth watching.
At the best of times, this place reeks of "sportsball" stupidity which covers the football aspect.
And I would be shocked if we had even 5% black representation which nukes the interest in tuning in for Kendrick alone.
Way to show your racism on your sleeve
Snowflakes
Bitches can stay mad.
"Melts down", like when a nuclear reactor goes critical, isn't the apt descriptor for this response.
It was more like, "Maga generally disliked or was otherwise uninterested in the super bowl halftime performance".
Where can I watch the halftime show? Gotta see him dunking on these pedos.
NFL'S yt channel
I like Kendrick Lamar and still found it kind of boring.
You didn't like the image of the American flag walking down stairs while he sang sit down, be humble? Most of the rest of the world found it pretty apt.
I think many didn't understand the meanings he was looking to convey.
Even one as simple as Samuel L Jackson representing the white gaze and reprising his role as house n***** from Django Unchained.
The guy is a Pulitzer prize winner. This wasn't going to be all glam.
Somewhere along the way, complaining about something you don't like, while that thing is occurring, became a meltdown. Personally, if you aren't screaming, jumping up and down, flailing your arms like a maniac, or in the least doing that thing where you force blood into your head and your face gets all blood flushed and if you keep doing it you pass out and crumble like a building made of peanut brittle, unless you did atleast one of those then you aren't melting down... But based off constant headlines, Complaining about something is a meltdown, then I have constant melt downs, and I really don't know what it is when I've had what I called a meltdown, but apparently is now much worse than what is defined as a meltdown. I have a meltdown when I hit every red light(I complain annoyingly about it), I have a meltdown when I buy diet instead of sugar soda, but I honestly don't know what it's called now when my face gets flushed, I start flailingy arms in the air, hollering up and down for whichever deity will bring down holy fire upon the video game that I just died for the 100th time for the same boss... Is that now a psychotic episode? Cuz I always thought psychotic episodes you were psychotic, and melt down you lost your composure, but complaining is a meltdown, so is losing your composure now going psychotic which used to be having a meltdown?
Stfu gang
Did anyone else notice how weirdly X it was? Sure, "Gen X" but also dancing in the X, and the hand to heart then out to wave gestures. Really felt like trying to downplay what Elon did versus highlighting it for what it was. The whole performance was weird in that way, and I wish he would have make a stronger point with the stage he was given or something.
The X, O, square, triangle set was probably a reference to squid games, a show with a strong anti-oligarchy motif. The show had repeated American imagery like Samuel L Jackson and the flag. If you interpret thr lyrics at those points, the show was definitively anti-establishment. If you interpreted it any other way, I suggest you watch it again.
One theme was that Kendrick’s life is like a video game so I’m pretty sure it was just the PlayStation buttons.
In a way, there were two themes: Kendrick rapping about his life while the choreography and Samuel Jackson as Uncle Sam making a statement that “The flag and America don’t belong to fascists.” (I guess a third theme was “Fuck Drake” but he couldn’t just not play the biggest song of the year that just won 5 Grammy Awards and has over a billion plays on Spotify.)
I’m probably reading too much into it — if that’s even possible with Kendrick — but a lot of what he criticizes Drake about applies equally to Trump. “Certified loverboy? Certified pedophile.” “I hear you like 'em young / You better never go to cell block one.” Kendrick obviously didn’t know Trump would be there when they planned the show but even if it was unintentional, I like that Trump and his ilk got to find out one of the most popular artists in America won a rap battle by mocking an adult for fucking teenagers.
It's about the lowest common denominator of viewship. I really doubt they understand that kind of symbolism or depth. IMO at the lowest level is the focus of cinematography, imagery, which really didn't feel impactful. Just disappointed how placated it felt, even as the performance as a whole was phenomenal.
