Yahoo Lifestyle Right-Wingers Really Didn’t Like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show
The Super Bowl halftime show has changed a lot since the late 1960s, when college marching bands took to the field for mid-game entertainment. But in recent years, one element of the show has been remarkably consistent: right-wing chuds protesting that the Black superstars performing are dull, untalented, or somehow not reflective of the American values befitting an NFL championship showdown.
At Sunday night’s Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, where the Philadelphia Eagles thrashed the Kansas City Chiefs, it was Kendrick Lamar — coming off five Grammy wins — who took the spotlight with an electrifying set that teased, then delivered, his now legendary Drake diss track “Not Like Us.” (Streaming numbers for the song, and Lamar’s entire catalog, exploded afterward.) The rapper was joined by Samuel L. Jackson in costume as Uncle Sam, SZA, Serena Williams, and dancers who aligned to form the stars and stripes, with Lamar in the center.
By any reasonable account, it was a punchy medley from a performer at the peak of his powers, thoroughly enjoyed by the crowd at the Caesars Superdome, who shouted out some of his best-known lyrics when prompted. To hear MAGA influencers tell it, however, Lamar is a nobody who got the gig as a diversity hire and couldn’t sell his Compton swagger. You really have to wonder if there was something wrong with their TVs.
“Hey NFL, Trump won,” wrote right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on X. “We no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend like people like it.” It’s not clear what connection Johnson believes Lamar has to Satanic worship. The Daily Wire‘s Matt Walsh, who has reliably trashed Super Bowl halftime concerts for the better part of a decade, was just as piqued, calling it the worst he’d ever seen. “Nobody can even understand what he’s saying,” he added in another of his many tweets on the subject. “And the vast majority of football fans haven’t even heard of most of these songs.” It’s a puzzling claim considering Lamar is one of the most popular musicians on the planet right now — just one pertinent reason he booked the gig in the first place.
Other critics on this side of the political aisle included failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake, who posted “Halftime Show 0/10” without elaborating further, and rocker Ted Nugent, known for his history of sexual relationships with underage girls, who wrote, “hey Kendrick Lamar you suck!” Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a retired college football coach whom Trump incorrectly claimed had once coached Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, went on Fox News to pronounce the halftime show “the loser” of the night, describing it as “god-awful.”
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a few months after the release of a House Ethics Committee report that described how he paid a 17-year-old for sex, offered a more confusing perspective: “The halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime’s response to Trump’s historic gains with black men,” he declared on X. While he did not clarify exactly what “regime” stands against Trump’s GOP-controlled government, it’s worth noting that Lamar was announced as the halftime headliner well before last November’s election.
Podcaster Ben Shapiro, a longtime anti-hip-hop crusader, responded by quoting an exchange between Trump and an Afghan reporter last week, writing, “Actually, it’s a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. The only problem is, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Florida man and commentator @Catturd2, another perennial halftime hater, claimed that he had to mute the show “to save my ears from bleeding.” (He also suggested that the Village People, a Trump favorite, would have been a better alternative to Lamar.) Conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec simply stated that it had been a “DEI halftime show,” dropping a racist dog-whistle reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that the right has repeatedly attacked. Reactionary misinformation spreaders Ian Miles Cheong and the pseudonymous account “End Wokeness” both suggested that rap isn’t music at all, with the latter saying, “I’ll die on this hill.”
Still, a handful of hard-right personalities found something to like in Lamar’s nods to America’s red, white, and blue. Omar Navarro, a wannabe politician convicted of felony stalking and facing charges of misusing campaign funds in his several failed bids to unseat Rep. Maxine Waters of California, gushed that it was “FINALLY a non woke Satanic halftime show,” because “Kendrick Lamar is showing off the American Flag.” He added: “I LOVE THIS.”
That’s at least one new Kendrick fan from Trump’s world — not that a man on top of the world really needs it.
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