London, UK. Singer Rihanna performs her 777 secret gig tour at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town in London. 19th November 2012/landmarkmedia/Shutterstock
I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud — but I am
not a huge NFL fan. I can actually count the number of games I’ve watched on one hand. I don’t get the rules of the NFL and have no interest in learning them. When the family watches the Super Bowl, I generally sit on the bench. That being said, I never miss the halftime show. I love the spectacle, the drama, and seeing the best artists in the world perform.
But now, my anticipation for Super Bowl LVII rivals that of any die-hard NFL fan. I’ll be screaming this February because… wait for it… the
Pon de Replay, Diamonds, and Umbrella star . . . Rihanna — she who has sold 250 million records worldwide and last performed publicly at the 2018 Grammy Awards — is returning to the stage.
And I’m not the only one awaiting her return . . .
After Rihanna posted a powerful pic of her brandishing an NFL-branded football on her Instagram, celebrities — and the entire planet — roared out their support.
Lizzo responded “screaming,” rapper Nadia Rose wrote: "LET'S GOOOOOO RIRI!!!!!!" with an American football and goat emoji, and Super Bowl halftime show alumni, Katy Perry replied with “hell yeah.”
Jay-Z, founder of Roc Nation — and also Rihanna’s label —
said: "Rihanna is a generational talent, a woman of humble beginnings who has surpassed expectations at every turn. A person born on the small island of Barbados who became one of the most prominent artists ever. Self-made in business and entertainment."
While Rihanna’s headlining has taken over all-news-Super-Bowl, something else was happening behind the scenes.
Pepsi, the company that sponsored the halftime show, said its farewell and chose to walk away from a decade-long association.
All products featured are independently selected by our editors. Things you buy through our links may earn us a commission.
However, music juggernaut,
Apple Music is more than happy to take the reins. They’ve recently expanded into sports, so this is the perfect addition to the streaming platform.
“We couldn’t think of a more appropriate partner for the world’s most-watched musical performance than Apple Music, a service that entertains, inspires, and motivates millions of people around the world through the intersection of music and technology,” said
Nana-Yaw Asamoah, Senior Vice President of Partner Strategy for the NFL.
Apple Music allows you to create your playlists, listen to popular music, and play your favorite podcasts. Their free 30-day trial only costs only $9.99 per month once the trial expires. And now that they're the official Super Bowl halftime show sponsor, I’m definitely starting my trial and sticking with the platform.
The NFL Super Bowl halftime show has seen superstar sponsors like Coca-Cola and Oscar Mayer, and let’s not forget headliners like Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Beyoncé + Destiny’s Child, Michael Jackson, and now . . . Rihanna with
Apple Music.
This time he specifically called out Right Wing Watch before sharing his thoughts on the tragic killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by police officer Kimberly Potter in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. After pulling Wright over — reportedly for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror, Potter claims to have mistaken her gun for her taser, and fatally shot Wright as he was trying to get away from her.
The incident took place less than ten miles from the courthouse where police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd last May, after Floyd allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill at a grocery store. Rather than see these two tragic deaths at the hands of police as indicative of a pattern of excessive force targetted at Black men over minor infractions, Dave Daubenmire found a new reason to dismiss systemic racism, blaming Wright's death on his theory that "a woman's got no business being a cop."
Radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire reacts to the police killing of Daunte Wright by declaring that "a woma… https://t.co/HB9tGyg3Fd
— Right Wing Watch (@Right Wing Watch)
1618426066.0
Dave Daubenmire is an angry man.
All he wanted was to watch enormous young men in tight pants giving each other concussions for a living. But instead, Fox decided to put his immortal soul at risk.
He has been called "America's most Christian football coach," but the world's angriest Christian would be equally accurate. Daubenmire, or "Coach Dave" as he calls himself, was once a public high school teacher and football coach in Ohio, until the 1990s, when the ACLU sued him for continually preaching Christian theology to his players.
After that horrifying instance of "frivolous litigation" — so frivolous that it didn't even involve trillions of dollars — Coach Dave left teaching to found Pass the Salt Ministries to "unite, organize, and mobilize the Army of God." His approach to this task seems to largely consist of ranting articles, videos, and in-person motivational speeches.
But last week he elevated his ranting to an artform with a flow of rage so intense and beautiful that it could only be divinely inspired. In a live stream on Monday morning, mere hours after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, Coach Dave had already worked up a head of steam that he could barely contain — switching between a tone of stoic scholarship and rapturous, earsplitting denunciation throughout his hour-long address.
"You didn't tell me… You didn't tell me there were gonna becrotch shots!" (Emphasis is our own… but he seriously spends half the video shouting.)
The phenomenon of "crotch shots" are of particular interest to Coach Dave, who wears a baseball cap with a cross embroidered on the front while he preaches — also available in camouflage from the Coach Dave Live online store. He variously refers to "crotch shots flying everywhere" without warning, and he identifies Jennifer Lopez as "an expert in crotch shots," yet he vehemently denies having seen the spectacle himself — "I didn't watch it. I can only imagine. I saw crotch shots today." While the halftime show put on by J. Lo and Shakira contained no nudity, or even an outline of genitalia, the visible existence of an anatomical space between a woman's legs seems to frighten and disturb him.
The horror...Getty Images
"Would anyone think that wasn't designed to arouse us."
The idea that network television, being "blasted" into our homes could contain images that could cause him to feel urges and temptations in his nethers, "itching, uneasy with desire," is not only unacceptable to Coach Dave, it's grounds for a lawsuit — "Why can't we file a class-action lawsuit, go into court and use this as our evidence?" You might be asking what possible damages Dave could claim for being exposed to "crotch shots," but that's because you're forgetting the highest value of all: the fate of his immortal soul.
As Dave puts it, "Could I go into a courtroom and say, 'Viewing what you put on that screen put me in danger of hellfire?'" When you look at it from that perspective, no sum of money could possibly measure up to the profound damage that Fox and the NFL have done to him, but Dave's suggested sum — "I want to sue them for about 867 trillion dollars" — would be a good start.
Of course, some Christians might try to calm Dave down by reminding him that Jesus preached to "love your enemy," not to sue them. In their view, Christ would want Dave to allow Fox to smack us across the face with J. Lo's ass and simply turn the other cheek. But Dave's writings make it clear that he does not agree. In an article entitled "What Are We Teaching Our Sons" Dave decries the "wussification" of modern culture and invites the reader in the first paragraph to "stop reading now if you think Jesus was a softie" — wise words.
PIctured: J. Lo and WhoeverAP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Coach Dave knows that this Super Bowl stuff is a big deal. "I think we're at war. I don't say 'oh, that's just a small hand grenade, if they come shooting missiles, then I'm gonna do something.'" No, Coach Dave is diving on that hand grenade by looking at the crotch shots, risking hellfire, and shouting at his fans, "They had a pole dance thing!" While his website refers to his "1st amendment rights" to force high school students to pray with him, Coach Dave knows that free speech does not include "J. Lo and whoever" doing sexy dances.
"That's discriminatory against the values I have in my house. You can't just do that! They w —won't even let you talk about homos on facebook… You mean, I can't watch it because there might be something offensive to me? They can't do that! The judge just can't say, 'Well, Coach, turn it off.'" Coach Dave, who clearly knows a lot about discrimination, has elsewhere argued against interracial marriage after a visit to the zoo because "you don't see eagles marrying buzzards," and "I don't think I saw one Oriental married to a black guy." Solid stuff.
Dave Daubenmire took his grandchildren to see the Christmas display at the zoo last night ... and the trip reinforc… https://t.co/RyvJA8raWH
— Right Wing Watch (@Right Wing Watch)
1577213764.0
In his article on modern masculinity, Coach Dave argues that "scalping Injuns was a wonderful life for a young man to live. Today you can't even use the name Indian," and later goes on to ask, "Is it any wonder we have gender-confusion in America?" and, "Do you want your son to be taught to be nice or to be a man?" And really, who wouldn't want their kid to grow up to be an angry, violent bully like Coach Dave—i.e. a real man.
Good luck with your lawsuit, Dave! We're all rooting for you.
I don't want to alarm anyone, but...THE LEFT IS CANCELING MR. POTATO HEAD THEY'RE CANCELING DR. SEUSS, AND NEXT THEY'RE GOING TO CANCEL YOU!
It turns out that the political Left in the US is actually made up of various literary estates and multi-national toy corporations that are intent on destroying your cultural values by erasing the biological sex of a plastic potato and ending the publication of racist caricatures in some obscure books you were never going to read. But these are just the latest instances of what the Right-wing outrage machine has identified as a violent attack on free speech.
What happened to the era when a governor could get away with years of sexual harassment and assault? Do they hate him because he's not "progressive" enough?
Or, rather, they get to keep their immense wealth and cultural influence, and they win a Russell award for their "bravery" but a lot of people are mean to them on the internet. Which is basically the same thing.
Conservatives are so concerned about this trend that the theme of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was "America Uncanceled." But it may shock you to learn that "cancellation" was not always the refuge of the Left alone. In fact, once upon a time Right-wing Americans were all about cancellation for such heinous crimes as "opposing a war" and "being gay."
Here are nine times that conservatives proved they love "cancel culture."
1.Ellen DeGeneres, 1997
In recent years it's become the "hip" thing to do to hate on Ellen DeGeneres, just because she was spotted being friendly with former president George W. Bush...who opposed her right to marry, launched an incredibly bloody war on false pretenses, and approved the CIA to engage in torture. She's reportedly cruel to employees and service workers, but that's not the point. The point is that conservatives were canceling Ellen before it was cool.
Back in 1997 Ellen was not yet the queen of daytime TV, but a rising sitcom star with her ABC show Ellen. Then the long-teased "Puppy Episode" aired in which her character came out as a gay woman; and a week before, DeGeneres herself came out in a Time magazine cover story with the headline, "Yep, I'm gay."
Christian conservative groups wrote angry letters to the network and advertisers, urging them to drop the show. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell called it a "blatant attempt to promote homosexuality," and Robertson labeled the star "Ellen Degenerate." Ellen's career took a sudden downturn and took years to recover.
Even Laura Dern — who just had a cameo in the episode — reported that she was unable to get work for more than a year afterward and had to hire a full security detail because of all the hate the episode was getting. Sounds like a much more successful canceling than anything that's happened to Ellen recently...
2.Jocelyn Elders, 1994
Speaking of '90s sex scandals that sound so quaint today, in 1994 Dr. Jocelyn Elders was the first Black Surgeon General — and the second woman to serve in that role. She had already courted controversy by promoting wacky ideas like giving out free condoms, valuing children more than fetuses, and the potential benefits of drug legalization, but then she went too far.
When asked — at a UN conference on the AIDS crisis — if children should be taught that "self-care" is a safer alternative to sex, Dr. Elders responded, "I think that is something that is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught."
Before they shortened it to The Chicks, Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer were the early 2000s country icons out of Texas known as The Dixie Chicks. Then on March 10th, 2003, in the lead up to the disastrous Iraq War, singer Natalie Maines said something so deeply offensive that country fans, music stations, and fellow artists around the country disavowed them and even destroyed their cassettes and CDs, reportedly by the millions.
The horrifying comments took place when they were performing in England for their world tour. Addressing an audience of thousands, Maines said, "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." Huh...
In an interview with Tom Brokaw, President Bush responded, saying, "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out." Which translates roughly to, "Nom nom nom, that's some tasty cancel culture! Keep up the cancellation, everybody!"
4.The Nation of France, 2003
Speaking of how much we all love the Iraq War, around the same time The Dixie Chicks were being canceled in 2003, France was refusing to support America's "preemptive strike." Despite the fact that invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein was guaranteed to finally and permanently secure everlasting peace in the Middle East — with no negative consequences — they didn't want to back us.
So we canceled the entire country from even being mentioned, replacing the word "French" with "Freedom" in the House of Representatives cafeteria. And that's why we call them "freedom fries" to this day...
5.Janet Jackson, 2004
Remember in 2004, when a "wardrobe malfunction," at the Super Bowl halftime show led to people kind of seeing Janet Jackson's chest for a few seconds? Did people even know that women had nipples before that?
They were supposed to remain forever hidden — a terrifying secret too grotesque for the human mind to comprehend. But then Justin Timberlake tore off a part of Janet Jackson's top in a choreographed stunt. So it was obviously necessary for both...or just Janet Jackson to be punished.
Speaking of Super Bowls, you know who used to play really well in them? Colin Kaepernick.
He used to be such a good quarterback that it's kind of weird that no NFL team has been willing to sign him since 2017. It's almost like he's been blacklisted, or "canceled." Huh...
Maybe it has to do with that thing he did where he supported Black Lives Matter and protested police violence against Black people by kneeling during the national anthem and instantly became the most hated man in conservative media, because...kneeling is disrespectful? To the troops?
7.The NFL, Nike, Keurig, 2017
Of course it wasn't enough just to cancel Kaepernick himself. Other players were soon kneeling too.
And while the NFL pushed back, it wasn't enough for conservatives. The NFL was canceled too! Time to ditch your jersey.
Then Nike signed Kaepernick to make a commercial about standing up for what you believe in. So it was time to cancel Nike!
Soon conservatives were sharing images and videos of themselves burning their brand new Nike gear. And if they didn't have any to destroy, they went and bought some. Sure it means giving Nike more money, but what's really going to hurt them is seeing you disrespect the merchandise that underpaid sweatshop labor worked so hard on.
This same weird reaction took place again when advertisers like Keurig caved to social pressure and started pulling their commercials from Sean Hannity's Fox News Outrage Hour. Videos of conservatives smashing their own expensive appliances started showing up on YouTube and social media.
If these futile gestures had done anything to hurt Nike or Keurig — who are responsible for an ungodly amount of plastic waste — that might have actually been a good thing. But it's the thought that counts, and that thought was, "Let's do some cancel culture."
8.BDS, 2017
The Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement, known as BDS, is an international effort to apply political and economic pressure to the nation of Israel to push for the recognition of the rights of Palestinian people currently living in Israel and the occupied territories. Adopting the tactics that helped to end apartheid in South Africa, BDS hopes to end the oppression of the Palestinian people.
While no mass political movement is without some toxic elements, efforts to paint the entire BDS movement as anti-Semitic are plainly in bad faith. Sadly, that bad faith is somewhat bipartisan, and when an anti-BDS bill was introduced to congress, more than a dozen Democrats cosponsored — along with more than 40 Republicans.
But because Israel's existence as a Jewish ethnostate holds a special value for many Christian conservatives — who believe it will play a major role in the coming apocalypse — and because the Israeli government has aligned itself with the Republican party, this is an issue where conservative cancel culture really shines.
Many states have passed anti-BDS laws requiring any employee or contractor working for the the state to sign a pledge agreeing to never boycott Israel, and some have passed laws punishing businesses who would not be willing to do business in Israel, or even in the controversial Israeli settlements that have been expanding into Palestinian land in the West Bank. So...criticism of Israel is canceled, brought to you by the party of free speech.
9.Young Pharaoh, 2021
This is where things start to get really ridiculous. Remember that "America Uncanceled" theme for CPAC?
Well conservatives know that they can't have that kind of message delivered entirely by old white men. It would seem like they just wanted permission to be bigots. So they made sure to invite some token members of marginalized groups to agree with them.
One of those people was Hip-Hop artist and free speech advocate Young Pharaoh, who is very critical of the democratic party and buys into a lot of the conspiratorial ideas that are catching on in the Right. Unfortunately the CPAC organizers didn't do quite enough research, or they would have found out that those ideas can sometimes go along with some really virulent actual anti-Semitism.
Young Pharaoh has been quoted as saying that Judaism is a "complete lie," and that Jewish people are "thieving fake Jews." So it absolutely makes sense that CPAC canceled Young Pharaoh's engagement at the anti-canceling event... It's just funny.
In the end, it's almost as though we all "cancel" people whose views are offensive to our values. By shunning voices and ideas we find repellent, we make more room for the stuff we like.
It's a tool for affirming and perpetuating values we agree with — whether of inclusion or of bigotry. It's just that conservatives are the ones who perfected that tool, and they don't appreciate it being turned against them.
Update 3/8/2021: While "Papa John" Schnatter pushed the bounds of human achievement when he announced that he had eaten 40 pizzas in 30 days, it turns out that not everything comes so easy to him. In an interview with One America News Network, Schnatter claimed that over the last 20 months — a time period during which he could presumably have consumed 800 Papa John's pizzas — one of his primary focuses has been removing a single word from his vocabulary.
If you haven't already guessed which word that is — the "N-word" — you just don't know John Schnatter. His other two goals in that time period were to "figure out how" the Papa John's board of directors had managed to paint him as a racist, and to "get on with [his] life." Well, he should be in the clear as long as he avoids saying anything that makes him sound like an absurd caricature of a bigot who compulsively spouts racial slurs. Oh wait...
Papa John’s ex-CEO says he’s been working for the last 20 months “to get rid of this N-word in my vocabulary” (h/t… https://t.co/JVeIvGospn
Ever since he was ousted from his own company following "racially charged" (read: racist) comments, he hasn't been the same.
If his 2019 interview — in which he claimed cryptically that "the record will be straight" — were not a clear enough sign of a shattered ego, the fact that he claims to have eaten 40 pizzas in the last 30 days really drives the point home.
Apparently this dietary onslaught is part of an effort to find fault with the company's current direction. He says the quality has gone downhill, and the oil from those 40 pizzas seems to be seeping from his skin and hair as he delivers an unconvincing chuckle and instructs his fans to "stay tuned, a day of reckoning will come."
Teary-eyed, he claims he wouldn't go back to his company now, but he hints at changes in management — the group that ousted him as CEO in 2017 — that might change his mind, insisting that they are doing "everything wrong."
While it remains to be seen if his ominous predictions are based on evidence, his track record doesn't suggest a strong chance. For the most part, his history in the public eye can only suggest a broken man, stripped of his legacy by his own hubris, and sitting sadly atop an unconscionable mass of hoarded wealth.
When he founded Papa John's Pizza in 1984, John Schnatter was only 22 years old, and he had no help from anyone…except his father, whose tavern served as his sole source of customers. Still, he did take risks and make sacrifices to get himself started, selling his 1971 Camaro and using the funds to buy used pizza equipment.
It's not clear why a 22-year-old bachelor fresh out of Ball State would choose to go by "Papa," but the most apparent possibilities are that he thought it made him sound Italian, or that it's a weird sex thing. What is clear is that, from that foundational moment with the Camaro, John Schnatter's life was forever changed — set on course for the tragedy it has since become.
Success consumed him. Within ten years, Papa John's Pizza had gone public and expanded to over 500 locations. America had never experienced pizza like this. The box proclaimed that it was made with "better ingredients," and while it's hard to imagine that slogan referring to the excessive sugar in its tomato sauce, or whatever they used to make the crust so difficult to eat, this pizza came with a pepperoncini and a little tub of garlic dipping sauce in every box. And a nation fell in love.
That sauce was almost pure fat and could turn just about anything edible. It was the best, most unhealthy thing to dip your pizza into since ranch dressing. It became such an iconic part of the Papa John's experience that, last year, the company started selling it by the gallon.
By all accounts, John Schnatter did whatever he wanted with the assurance that he could get away with it. You might think that a man who had built that kind of get-out-of-jail-free fortune on little tubs of garlic sauce would be humble about his success — that he would give thanks and want to give back to the society that had given him so much.
You would be wrong. Perhaps it was his proximity to that word "billion" — the godlike quality we ascribe to that highest tier of affluence — that pushed him to become defensive of his wealth. Whatever the cause, Schnatter began inserting himself into politics in 2012, when he decried the injustice of the Affordable Care Act and the "11 to 14 cents per pizza" that it would add to his company's costs.
The backlash seemingly did nothing to deter him from offering further political commentary. In October of 2017 he spoke out on the NFL players who were kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence. According to Schnatter, the league's inability to quash protests was the reason behind Papa John's poor sales figures, as they had an endorsement deal to be the "official pizza company" of the NFL. These comments soon brought about John Schnatter's ouster as CEO and the sad spiral that has followed.
Pictured: a relevant modern icon of tolerance
Bettmann Archive
In July of 2018, in a conference call that was intended to coach Schnatter on how to avoid future controversy, he seemingly sought to minimize his own mistakes by referring to the historic practice of lynching-by-dragging and pointing out that "Colonel Sanders called blacks n*****s and Sanders never faced public outcry." Unsurprisingly, this didn't go over well.
Schnatter stepped down from his position on the company's board the same day the story broke, was soon replaced as their spokesman, and has since been relegated to the sidelines, where he makes his bitter commentary about "a day of reckoning" and sells off his stake in the company he built, bit by bit.
Adam Levine is no stranger to the conversation surrounding his alleged douchery and is now in over his head now that Instagram influencer Sumner Stroh posted receipts to TikTok detailing an alleged affair with The Voice coach.
He's often even embraced it and, like many jerks before him, repeatedly tried to gaslight the public into loving him anyway. "You're a lead singer of a hot band," Cosmopolitan frankly asked the Maroon 5 frontman in 2009. "Does that automatically make you cocky?" "A little," the singer responded. "But in a playful, not arrogant way."
In an interview with Zane Lowe this morning, the singer — who has said in previous interviews that "no one knows how planes actually work" and that he "spends most of his life naked " — told the legendary radio host, among other things, that "there aren't any bands anymore."
"That's the thing that makes me kind of sad, is that there were just bands," he said, apparently yearning for the days of skinny jeans and Club Penguin. "There's no [sic] bands anymore, and I feel like they're a dying breed. And so I kind of, in a weird way, as far as...I mean, there are still plenty of bands, and maybe they're not in the limelight quite as much, or in the pop limelight, but I wish there could be more of those around." Is he right? Does the expansive success of Haim or The Foo Fighters' not count?
While even an entire article can't possibly cover every single vapid statement Levine has ever made, there are a few highlights that stand above the rest. Here are the douchiest things Adam Levine has ever said, as we add this latest Zane Lowe interview to the mix.
The Obnoxious Concert
Image by: Larry Marano/Shutterstock
Sporting an insufferable mohawk, Levine was heavily criticized for sporting low energy and a bratty attitude at a show last year at Chile's Vina del Mar International Song Festival. "Well, if you want to do my job, go ahead" he said at one point, heckling the audience as they sang along to "She Will Be Loved." "That was a TV show. Not a concert," Levine was heard saying backstage after the lackluster 15-song performance.
Fully aware of the civil unrest in the country, Levine and his band were late to the show, and Levine had asked that "no one look him in the face" prior to the performance. The blowback forced Levine to release a 2-minute statement, in which he claimed technical difficulties were responsible for his insipid and detached demeanor. "Performing I take so seriously," he said with a slight smirk. "There were some things holding me back sonically last night."
In one of Levine's most legendary interviews, the singer really leaned into his obnoxiousness during a 2009 profile with Cosmpolitan. "Why do guys cheat?" the interviewer asks at one point. "Instinctively, monogamy is not in our genetic makeup," Levine replied.
"People cheat. I have cheated. And you know what? There is nothing worse than the feeling of doing it." Elsewhere, Levine said his best feature was that he was able to "detach himself." "It's also my worst feature," he said. "I let myself off the hook to the point where it's a bad thing. People are hard on themselves. I'm not."
Back in 2012, Levine offered a plethora of callous and obnoxious quotes to choose from:
"I was the music dude that was naked all the time with the girls, and that's fine, no problem with that," he said at one point.
But the most inflammatory quote came when Levine spoke on Yoga.
The article read: "'You know what yoga's good for?' Adam Levine asks, pausing in mid-thought as he discusses his healthful lifestyle. He draws to his feet, balances in the private jet's narrow aisle, points to his crotch and thrusts his pelvis like a porn star. 'I'll tell you what yoga is good for: f****ing.'"
Back in 2018, when Levine was a regular judge on the hit NBC show The Voice, Levine faced some serious blowback after he threw a member of his team under the bus. Two of his contestants, 22-year-old DeAndre Nico and 14-year-old Reagan Strange, were in the bottom two leading into the show's season finale. Both had been given the opportunity to perform one more song and stave off elimination, but Strange was too sick to perform. "This sucks, man," Levine said on live TV. "DeAndre, you're an exquisite singer. I'm a little confused as to why you're in the bottom. That perplexes me. But I want to say this." At this moment, he paused, making DeAndre visibly uncomfortable.
"There is an unbelievably talented little girl right now who is not able to fight for her position on this show. And you were fortunate enough tonight to be able to sing. And man, you sang like a champ." He went on to actively encourage viewers to vote for Strange and said he had "a very special relationship with her."
Well, the audience heard Levine's cries loud and clear and ended up voting Reagan forward and eliminating DeAndre. Fans were furious. It didn't help, either, that DeAndre was Black and Reagan was white. Levine was eventually forced to release a statement, and in it called DeAndre "his boy" and said that they talked and that it was "all good." Whether DeAndre actually agreed has yet to be seen.
Adam Levine Thinks You Should Get Off Tinder - GQ Celebrity Life Advice
Levine had been accused of being a douchebag so many times that in 2014 he encouraged GQ to dedicate an entire profile to exploring the idea. "Okay. Let's get into this: What are the characteristics of a douchebag?" he said in the article's opening line while eating an egg white omelet and sipping a green smoothie. From there, the article traverses Adam Levine's off-putting behavior with relative bias. The interviewer pointed towards a few instances of Levine's past transgressions, like when he said he slept with a lot of women because "he loved them so much."
"There was a time in my life when I lived probably a bit more on the primal level. And it was amazing," Levine rebutted. "I didn't say it like that, I didn't say it like Fabio." He went on to explain that men are dumber than women and that he asked himself the hard questions on his 35th birthday. "Am I gonna be a kid for twenty more years? Or am I gonna be a grown up?" he said. In the end, it remained unclear whether Levine was actually aware of his toxic affectations.
Image by: Esteban Felix/AP/Shutterstock
We all can vividly recall how horrendous the 2019 Super Bowl Halftime show was. Maroon 5's nomination controversy was well-placed, with Levine and co. accused of blatantly ignoring the racial undertones that hovered over the performance slot. Rihanna, Jay-Z, and Cardi B had all previously refused the invitation and instead stood in solidarity with quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who had been removed from the NFL as a result of kneeling during the national anthem.
The Super Bowl was set to take place in Atlanta, no less, a booming musical and culture hub for Black art. Levine, on the other hand, accepted the invitation without hesitation. "We're gonna keep doing what we're doing, hopefully without becoming politicians," he told Entertainment Tonight. Kaepernick's attorney went on Good Morning America and called the response cowardly.
What resulted was what everyone expected, a tasteless spectacle brimming with toxic braggadocio and white male machismo. Big Boi and Travis Scott's fleeting appearances couldn't save the milquetoast performance from being utterly devoid of political awareness or even the slightest bit of mutual respect. Then, Levine decided to take his shirt off.
The Super Bowl is upon us, which means millions of people will be emotionally investing in the man-on-man performance of football.
Despite being a child of a die-hard sports fan whose identity hinged upon the successes and failures of his favorite organization (the Cleveland Browns, I sh*t you not–can you imagine an entire lifetime of being fanatical over the Cleveland Browns?), I don't understand the hype around football.
Albeit, when I was young, I pretty much refused to try to understand sports fandoms. But then I discovered the movie magic of the Sports Film, which somehow manages to capture the glittery allure of men bumping and grinding into each other over a coveted cylindrical object (aside from the obvious).
Only a Sports Film allows me to understand the awe of watching mere men perform strenuous athletic feats and rise to victory–not just over their opponents but always over myriad disadvantages and personal obstacles that beat so many of us down.
So I admit to not caring about the Super Bowl–seriously, who's playing? What time does it start? Where will it be played? Just kidding, none of these questions matter to me; the Amazon Rainforest loses the equivalent of a football field every six seconds due to deforestation, last year most of Colorado caught on f**king fire, and the current global health crisis is only growing worse.
But, to that exact point, change isn't going to happen unless we all practice a little more empathy. I would like to understand why large, beefy men in tight pants grabbing at each other is so integral to our national identity as Americans, as fellow humans in this rat race called life.
In service of that goal, it's far more productive to watch any of the following football movies than tune in to the Super Bowl game between the Carolina Stampeders and the Michigan Divers, or the Nevada Groundhogs and the Florida Snowpiercers, or the New Jersey Nunchucks and the Missouri Landlines, or, you know, that team that's playing against those other guys.
The horror...Getty Images
PIctured: J. Lo and WhoeverAP Photo/Patrick Semansky
NY Magazine
Pictured: a relevant modern icon of tolerance
Bettmann Archive
