What a pathetic little man Mr. 9/11NounVerb9/11 is.
In a gesture that surely went over the heads of most of the gajillion or so viewers of the Super Bowl halftime show, Beyoncé's entourage of comely female dancers apparently so discombobulated Rudolph Guiliani by making an arm motion associated with Black Solidarity in the 1960's, that he was prompted to bawl out his outrage on Fox News:
"This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive," he said.
The subject of Guiliani’s dyspeptic outburst was the deliberate allusion in the superstar entertainer’s Super Bowl halftime performance to the Black Power movement of nearly fifty years ago, an attempt by the artist to draw parallels to the type of state-sanctioned police violence against people of color that led to the BlackLivesMatter movement:
Fist in air, the bandolier-wrapped Beyonce gave the Black Power symbol in front of a corps of dancers all donning black berets, another symbol of the militant political movement that formed 50 years ago this October.
It’s the same gesture, fist high and proud, that Olympic athletes raised in the 1968 games, setting off a firestorm of controversy.
Oh, and there was this, too:
[S]he and her dancers spelled out X, which could be a reference to Malcolm X.
Scary stuff! I know I double-checked the locks on my doors before I went to bed last night. We sure don’t want anyone like that popping up on the scene again.
Of course Giuliani was egged on by Fox News’ paid gang of idiots who never shirk from giving a megaphone to out-and-out racism, even if its rationale is utterly contrived. The criticisms alternated between “she should keep her mouth shut because she’s rich," and “she should keep her mouth shut because the NFL gave her a police escort to the game.” Of course, anyone not rich and deserving of a police escort to the game who brings up issues of police violence towards African-Americans is, to Fox News, aiding and abetting hate groups and criminals.
Setting aside the point that the line between modern Pro Football, particularly the Super Bowl, and Hollywood is so porous that the majority of viewers tune in to the spectacle chiefly to be entertained by the commercials, is Giuliani saying that any form of social protest ought to be relegated only to the movie industry? The idea that protest is something people should only do in Hollywood would admittedly be convenient for someone who idealizes a police state, but unfortunately for Mr. Giuliani despite his best efforts we still live in a messy old-fashioned democracy. The man who first notified his wife he was divorcing her by holding a press conference should be no stranger to the power of using the public airwaves to promote public awareness of an issue.
But the larger irony that seems to have escaped Giuliani is that, with few exceptions, the vast majority of the football players on the field whose talents were entertaining the lily-white San Francisco audience in their corporate stadium sky-boxes last night are African-American. To my knowledge no one has asked them yet about how they feel about Beyoncé's performance. My guess is that they know exactly what she’s saying and why she's saying it.