The Los Angeles Times is livid at Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime show–apparently, because it wasn’t a far-left political statement.
Columnist Mikael Wood critiqued the show itself–fair game for an entertainment journalist–but his real complaint seemed to be that Timberlake was “a privileged white pop star summoning a ghoulish simulacrum of an unwilling black genius” for daring to plan a duet with a hologram version of the late singer Prince (which ultimately didn’t happen during the halftime show.)
Wood then attacked the lack of a political statement.
“The performance lacked soul, meaning, humor; it had no message, nor was it taking any stand — soft, hard or otherwise,” he wrote.
Wood clarified: “I don’t need every Super Bowl halftime gig to explode like the one in 2016 did, when Beyoncé showed up with a small army of dancers in Black Panther-style berets to do ‘Formation,’ the radical black-pride anthem she’d released one day before. Yet Timberlake wasn’t forsaking politics in order to provide joy, as Bruno Mars did a few years ago. Or as Coldplay did in 2016.”
“This was a show about the dull reality of entrenched power,” he added. “Predictable, witless, a waste of the attention with which we all rewarded it.”
The comments on Wood’s article were overwhelmingly hostile.
One commenter, mattnolen1, told Wood he was “tired of the smug, contrarian critiques. Implying that halftime shows need to be political is absolutely ignorant in my book. It’s entertainment! Do you not think we get enough political BS shoved down our throats throughout every second of every day?”
Another commenter, Meditativemalcontent, agreed: “Everyone at my party, black, white El Salvadoran, etc., loved the halftime performance – it was such a relief not to be bashed over the head with political dogma.”
Yet another commenter, kgnelson2112, added, “What was JT supposed to ‘say’? I hate Trump, Trump sucks? Black Lives Matter? If he didn’t make it political it wasnt any good?”
When the far-left finds fault even in an innocuous, apolitical musical performance at the Super Bowl, it’s clear they’re living on a different planet than the rest of the country.
