For those of you that know my and my musical inclinations, as well as my sociopolitical views, you may want to take a seat. I’m going to say something about Lady Gaga that’s not negative. Ready?
Her halftime show wasn’t terrible.
Is your mind blown? It should be! Me saying something positive about Lady Gaga on the forever interwebs is no small thing. Its along the lines of CNN saying something positive about Donald Trump, or Greenpeace saying something nice about Exxon. Its not impossible, but it just doesn’t happen.
I was ready for Gaga to turn her performance into a massive political statement and blast social and political conservatives like myself. I was ready to be hated and judged and talked down to on national television, along with the millions of folks like me that don’t kowtow to the agenda of the liberal elites.
I was prepared to leave the room in disgust. I was prepared to get an earful of garbage spewed out at me from the tv, and for all that mental preparation, all I got was a darn concert!
Sure, some say there was a “hidden protest” in her singing “This Land is Your Land” but really? If that’s a protest, I’ll take it with a smile. Sure it wasn’t Prince or Michael Jackson, but it wasn’t overt politics like Beyonce, nor smut like the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake incident (Does using the word “smut’ make me sound like an 85 year old grandma waggling her finger at someone?) but it really wasn’t a terrible show.
The politicization of football is an unfortunate reality, and one I hope will go away before it ruins the game, but really my point here isn’t really about that. It’s about me and what I had geared my mind for ahead of time. I’m not alone. Lots of folks like me in the conservative Christian camp were preparing for and expecting some gross spectacle of progressive values to get shoved down our throats. We were sitting there watching and waiting for something to offend us. I’m pretty sure some of us were even hoping to be offended so we could have something to be upset about.
We love calling easily offended college kids in their safe spaces “snowflakes”, but how much better are we when we preemptively rage and swear that we’ll be nowhere near our TV for halftime. That, or we threaten to boycott Budwiser over an immigration-themed commercial that was probably written months before Donald Trump was even elected, yet we’ll boycott because we think they’re making an anti-Trump commercial?
Yes there are some substantive reasons for us to say these things. Far-left progressives on college campuses shutting down free speech is a major issue that the Left needs to take responsibility for. It’s fine to disagree with what someone says, but not by trying to make it so they can no longer speak at all.
But, when I (and my like-minded brothers and sisters out there) am sitting and watching a football game complaining about how its becoming politicized and ruined by the left, I need to make sure and take a good long look in the mirror at myself. Lets not miss the forest for the trees. Not everyone is out to get us, at least not all the time, and if we don’t want a football game to be ruined by politics, lets not ruin a football game by missing it trying to find something political to be upset about.
Maybe, just maybe, that football game is just a football game, and that concert at halftime is just that, a concert.
~ Danny