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Top Comments: Did You Watch The Superbowl/Halftime Edition [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-10

Did you watch last night? Mr. Brillig and I are not huge sports viewers unless it’s the Olympics or soccer, and then generally only when K2 is on the field. We watch the Super Bowl mostly for the commercials and the halftime show. This year however, we heard that the current White House occupant not only would be in attendance, but he picked the Kansas City Chiefs to win and suddenly became Philadelphia Eagles fans for a night. Armed with spicy guacamole, drinks and pints of ice cream, we settled in to watch for the evening! And I gotta say, it was a fun game… although not if you were a Chiefs fan, and my condolences on your loss.

Unless you’ve been hiding from the entire internet, radio, or television landscape for the past 24 hours, you know that last night’s Super Bowl Halftime Show is a MAJOR (not minor ;-)) topic of today’s conversation. Kendrick Lamar, winner of (among many awards) 22 Grammys and a Pulitzer in Music, was the first solo hiphop artist to have Halftime Show honors.

His performance was an absolute master class in the power of art and was in my opinion one of the greatest halftime shows I’ve seen. Sure, the sound mix really really needed to boost the vocals… even at quiet Casa Brillig we had a hard time making out the lyrics. But we understood immediately that there were levels and then more levels on that stage both lyrically and as a performance whole, and it was an unequivocal statement on race, class, power and gender. I also knew right away that, as a friend gave me language for earlier today, it wasn’t codeswitched into a nice palatable-for-white-people show.

No, we weren’t centered at all… although Uncle Sam(uel Jackson) made clear what White America expected out of Lamar, and Lamar said “no”. Serena Williams crip walking took back some of her power after 2012’s Wimbledon incident.

If you missed it, here’s a couple of write-ups: One from Ernest Owens at The Root, and another at Medium by Nettrice Gaskins. And here’s the official youtube recording of it (the NFL blocks embedding the video directly, so use the link!). Bonus watching it this way… a transcript!

I have spent the better part of today learning what I didn’t know or notice in the performance because It Wasn’t About Me, and my respect for Lamar has grown even more. I then kept trying to explain to my fellow Lack-of-Color people why it was important even though they were ‘tired of yet another rapper’ or ‘couldn’t understand it’ etc. Given the curated nature of my social media connections at this point, I wasn’t trying to engage with the MAGA faithful… no, these were Harris-voting folks who just couldn’t see past their discomfort to more understanding.

As an aside, here’s the list of Halftime performers in the 21st Century- definitely not ‘all rappers’:

2001: Aerosmith 2002: U2 2003: Shania Twain 2004: Janet Jackson 2005: Paul McCartney 2006: The Rolling Stones 2007: Prince 2008: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 2009: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 2010: The Who 2011: The Black Eyed Peas 2012: Madonna 2013: Beyonce 2014: Bruno Mars 2015: Katy Perry 2016: Coldplay 2017: Lady Gaga 2018: Justin Timberlake 2019: Maroon 5 2020: Shakira 2021: The Weeknd 2022: Dr. Dre 2023: Rihanna 2024: Usher 2025: Kendrick Lamar

So what did you think, if you saw it either live last night or today? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, or whatever else you’re thinking about tonight. After the day’s Tops, of course!!

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