Kendrick Lamar’s Performance Inappropriate for the Super Bowl

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For those of the Christian faith, Sunday is the Sabbath. Many gather to worship, some reflect privately on their own, and others partake in sermons that occasionally wag the finger at those who are failing to live up to their spiritual potential. No one should mind being preached at while you are sitting in a church. But we should have none of that while we are sitting in a recliner in our own living room, attempting to watch a football game. 

I understand that the uber politically correct woke crowd loves shoving their agenda down America's throat. It happens in all kinds of inappropriate places. It might be a plastic straw ban in your favorite restaurant. Perhaps it is the endless employee manners seminars that urge all of us to keep comments to ourselves when our fellow employee identifies as a ferret. Most of us have been grinning and bearing it through such silliness for the last 20 years. 

But we need to draw the line when it comes to such ridiculous messaging and posturing in our favorite (and often quite costly) recreational spaces. 

I won't sit here and pretend that I am outraged or offended that some socially conscious message was at the heart of last Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show. But I can say as one of the NFL's top financial supporters for the last 40 years - I am in the top 1% when it comes to annual spending on NFL related expenses - the league should cool its jets on the Sunday sermons and concentrate on cleaning up the game and the behavior of its often troubled stars. 

I don't know Kendrick Lamar from Hedy Lamar, but I do know that when I tune in to watch a football game I don't need or want a pop star-authored political ad served up between the action. Apparently, the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist has used a highly successful, and I am told "catchy", song called "Not Like Us" to further his beef with fellow rap star Drake. While taking lyrical shots at other artists is not unheard of in modern music (Lynyrd Skynyrd vs Neil Young, John Lennon vs Paul McCartney, etc.), alleging felonious sex with minors certainly is.  

You folks need to Google the lyrics of that song, and I will tell you now, many of you will need an interpreter when you do so. You may also need to wash your eyes out with holy water afterwards. Any bets on how quickly I would be taken off the air if I recited those lyrics word-for-word during my afternoon radio show? The song drops the N word thirteen times and sprinkles in a half dozen F bombs just to keep things spicy.  

(Just for fun I thought about typing those lyrics out here, just to see how loud the collective heads exploding would have been all down the hall at Beasley Media Augusta, but I digress...) 

Here's a tip. If you are really concerned about someone having illegal sex with children, and the cops refuse to get involved, call “Dateline NBC,” “60 Minutes,” or (locally) “The Austin Rhodes Show” before you assemble background singers and a rhythm section to cut a rap tune about it.  

Leave other people's love life drama out of the mix as well. Talk about classless. Having Drake's superstar ex-girlfriend Serena Williams dance in a mini skirt on stage while he took his shots? I am beginning to understand why so many rap stars shoot at each other. 

Everyone from Vince Gill to Hank Williams Jr had a laugh with songs poking fun at George Jones's personal troubles, but nobody had Tammy Wynette drive a John Deere lawnmower across the stage in concert. That's just mean. 

My point, addressed to the NFL leadership, is this: When it comes to halftime entertainment, we don't want multi-millionaires telling us how downtrodden they are. We don't need scantily clad women bemoaning being sexualized by the media. We sure don't need profane musicians rapping out their personal conflicts with yet another profane musician.  

Tone-specific entertainment, such as what we saw on Sunday, should stand on its own, and be delivered to its target audience directly. Broadcasting such material, with an emphasis on casting broadly, is misguided, distasteful, and condescending.  

That was always how James Brown felt about it.