Just when you thought the Beyonce Hate Fest was dead and buried, like the proverbial ghoul that rises from a misty, cob-web-riddled crypt, here comes Rudolph Giuliani. Beyonce’s performance at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards show is what raised the former New York mayor’s ire. Beyonce walked the red carpet at the VMAs with some of the women featured in her Lemonade video, including the mothers of black men murdered by police. That was bad enough. But then Bey took it one step further during a performance at the awards show, according to Politico:
“ … ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Ainsley Earhardt noted while showing a clip of her backup dancers dressed as angels before being shot down … “Her dancers were circling around her and one by one, they fell to the ground, and there were red lights underneath them. And that was supposed to symbolize cops killing black individuals,’ Earhardt told Giuliani … “
Welp, that didn’t go over well with Giuliani, who spoke of his family members who served as police officers and rehashed his record as mayor of the city, lowering crime and making places like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant safer places for African Americans. And because of that, Giuliani proclaimed:
“I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime and particularly homicide by 75 percent."
...
“ … maybe 4,000 or 5,000 were African-American young people who are alive today because of the policies I put in effect that weren't in effect for 35 years. So if you're going to do that, then you should symbolize why the police officers are in the neighborhoods and what are you going to go about it? To me it's two easy answers: a much better education and good job, and what the heck have you done like in Baltimore, when they all stood in Baltimore," Giuliani said, referring to the unrest in the city last year following the death of Freddie Gray. "I was sick when I saw all the politicians sitting, standing in Baltimore after the police situation and saying, nobody’s done anything for this community in 50 years. Well, that is a heck of a thing to say, because they’ve been in charge for 50 years. And they have failed the community. I didn't fail Harlem. I turned Harlem around. I didn't fail Bedford-Stuyvesant, I turned it around. Go there now. Go walk in Harlem. Then flash back to 25 years ago and go to Harlem before I was mayor, and one was a place where crime was rampant and no national stores and now there's a thriving community in Harlem."
And there you have it: Giuliani’s now-familiar mantra of why cops are in black neighborhoods in the first place; of how those who really believe that black lives matter are not Black Lives Matter, but people like him and the police who occupy black communities.
Adding insult to Rudy’s injury, Beyonce won the 2016 Video of the Year Award for her song Formation. You remember Formation. Beyonce performed it at Super Bowl 50 with her dancers wearing Black Panther-type black berets, complete with black fists raised in the air. The video showed Beyonce on top of a New Orleans police car submerged in flood waters, a nod to Hurricane Katrina, as well as a little boy dancing in front of a row of riot gear-clad police officers. Graffiti on a wall says “stop killing us,” and the police officers raise their hands instead of their weapons, a la “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
Sleep well, Rudy.