Beyoncé Super Bowl controversy part of larger scheme to co-opt Black Lives Matter
Feigned outrage over nearly imperceptible political statement clearly intended to throw off the scent
A supposed political protest allowed as part of the halftime show of a Super Bowl is, by definition, not a political protest.
I sat there and watched the halftime show of the Super Bowl Sunday night. Was I paying the closest attention to it I possibly could? No, I wasn’t. I knew there was no way Beyoncé could suffer a wardrobe malfunction, after what happened with Janet Jackson in ’04. They probably had Beyoncé’s tramp outfit glued to her skin.
It didn’t make sense to me that Coldplay was performing, nor did it make sense to me that they had Bruno Mars on there performing “Uptown Funk,” when I’m pretty sure he did the exact same thing last year — or was that some terrible dream I had?
It didn’t make sense for Coldplay to be performing both because Coldplay is too soft to be playing the halftime show of a game where guys on roids crash into each other over and over again, giving each other CTE, then beat the crap out of their wives and commit suicide, and also because Coldplay hasn’t been that popular for years now.
Keep in mind, like any good black person, I fuxwit Coldplay. I haven’t heard Parachutes since I had two eyes and hope, but I’m still willing to defend it. It’s better than much of what CACs have had to offer since. If this were 2009, I’d be all for Coldplay performing at such a high profile event, if not the Super Bowl.
But the fact that they had Coldplay essentially headlining, and Beyoncé and Bruno Mars as guest performers, seemed kinda suspect to me. Similarly, I see they’ve got Coldplay on the cover of the next issue of Rolling Stone, but Kanye West, a disgraced pop star of similar vintage, had to mock up his own Rolling Stone cover, in a desperate, ultimately failed attempt to con his way onto a cover.
Notice how they treat old white artists no one gives a shit about compared to how they treat old black artists no one gives a shit about.
And there was Beyoncé going right along with it. If she’s Miss Black Lives Matter now, how come it wasn’t the Beyoncé halftime show featuring Coldplay and Bruno Mars? Her own career doesn’t even matter. Did she even ask to be upgraded to headliner, with Coldplay reduced to guest performer, or was she concerned about the effect it might have on her career?
Literally, I was not aware that there was a protest element to Beyoncé’s performance in the halftime show until I read about it on Twitter on my lunch break the next day.
Apparently, it didn’t consist of anything other than Beyoncé’s 48 dancers (perhaps an homage to Bay Area native MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”-era entourage) dressed in black hooker outfits, which — as Vox points out — could be construed as a tribute to the Black Panthers and, by extension, Black Lives Matter.
They may or may not have thrown up the new limp-wristed version of the black power salute John Carlos and Tommie Smith gave at the 1968 Olympics, where your arm remains bent at the elbow, as popularized by Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. If they did, I must have blinked and missed it.
Bruno Mars, as I recall, had on a black leather jacket. Who was he supposed to be, the Bay Area’s own Huey P. Newton? Chris Martin of Coldplay had on a white t-shirt. He must not have gotten the memo. He may have been there representing racist CACs who show up to Black Lives Matter protests to declare that all lives matter.
The day before the Super Bowl, I saw that the new Beyoncé video had the Internets going nuts as if it were Paul Wall circa 2005. I wasn’t about to investigate further, because it was Saturday and I had better things to do. Even during the week, I might check Twitter once or twice during the day to see which ‘70s-era musician died, and that’s it.
A new algorithmic timeline is the least of Twitter’s problems. Twitter’s real problem? The people on Twitter. Notice how people seem to disappear from Twitter when they’ve got something going on in their lives, only to reappear when the checks stop rolling in. How many times has Jay Z ever used Twitter?
The most important people on Twitter are guys who have multiple pictures of themselves doing the ol’ grip ‘n grin with people who really are important, who couldn’t sit around on Twitter all day if they wanted to.
What little I was able to observe of the chatter surrounding “Formation” carried the faint whiff of deseperation, not unlike the conversations that took place during that Jay Z Tidal b-sides concert last year. Essentially, you had a lot of people who are entirely too old to be sweating a Beyoncé video on the Internets rearing for a fight with whoever had the sheer balls to say they didn’t like the new Beyoncé video. But no one other than hardened, grizzled Beyoncé stans chimed in, because what year is this? No one cares enough to argue anymore.
And so there was a wish fulfilment element to the minor controversy that erupted Monday, when a few random CACs on Twitter complained that the alleged protest element of Beyoncé’s performance during the halftime show was offensive to white people and the police — to the extent that those two groups don’t overlap.
As was the case with the Bernie Bro controversy, in which male Bernie Sanders supporters were supposedly harassing women on Twitter, this may have been the work of one dumbass kid running multiple “sock puppet” accounts, or it may have even been members of the Beyhive pretending to be racist CACs just to have someone to argue with.
No serious person could have complained about Beyoncé’s performance, because what was there to complain about? There’s a plausible deniability element to political statements as vague as wearing a certain color outfit. Beyoncé can claim that she had her dancers wear black because it looks like some of them went to Red Lobster before the show (rather than after) and the color black has a slimming effect on TV. It’s not like she actually said anything that would betray her thoughts on Black Lives Matter, the police and what have you.
The easiest way to say fuck the police is to actually say fuck the police, but that may have damaged her career. MIA flipped the bird at a camera during the halftime show a few years ago and was supposedly fined $16 million. Because she’s married to the Halfrican American son of an heir to the Seagram’s fortune, she may have actually had the $16 million to pay the NFL. There’s no way they didn’t tell her beforehand what the fine was for trying to pull some shit like that.
A few days before the “Formation” video hit, it was announced that Jay Z and Beyoncé were donating $5 million to Black Lives Matter. I suppose I should have known shenanigans were at play.
According to Mark Dice, from whom I get my news, “Formation” makes fun of people who believe in the Illuminati. Which makes me wonder if Beyoncé was trying to tell us something.
I wonder, are Beyoncé and Jay Z donating $5 million dollars to Black Lives Matter from their own pockets, or did George Soros give them $5 million to donate to Black Lives Matter as part of the promo for the forthcoming Formation tour?
It wouldn’t be the first time Jay Z supposedly bought something with someone else’s money. “Formation” was released exclusively on Tidal, the streaming service supposedly owned by Jay Z and the group of 30 or so artists he cut in on the deal, but in reality the majority of it is owned by JP Morgan Chase.
To paraphrase DJ Khaled, they want you to sign up for a garbage streaming service to support the artists, but that money is really just going to the TIs. (Mos Def tried to warn us.) And let’s not forget that picture of the office full of white people who run Tidal. Not a brother in sight.
The real purpose of donating a few milli to Black Lives Matter, other than to stir up unrest, for the Illuminati to use as an excuse to round us all up and throw us in FEMA camps, may have been to preempt any complaints that Beyoncé has co-opted Black Lives Matter.
She’s about to go out on a Black Lives Matter-themed tour from which she’ll make way more than the $5 million she donated, which probably didn’t come from her own pockets anyway, the proceeds from which will go solely to maintain and expand her collection of wigs.
If anyone complains, she can simply point to the $5 million she donated and then ask what they ever did to fight police brutality. Whether or not any of this will actually do us any good is neither here nor there.
Originally published at www.byroncrawford.com on February 9, 2016.
