Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Lineup Announced (2022)

[gr8oldies]

At first, I was somewhat surprised that the casual racist tropes of violence, "multiple baby daddies" and the like were thrown around here with impunity. Now...well, I guess it all fits. I mean, the flag of a traitorous breakaway republic is just "poor taste" because it's "disrespectful to some." The very real and visceral pain it causes many because of its history is far more than disrespect. It's not merely bad taste. Slavery existed elsewhere, and still does, so it wasn't really that bad, you know, in context. And fighting to keep that structure in place wasn't so bad, in context. And the people who remember the lynchings, the oppression, the violence, the hatred, the flagrant discrimination...they just need to understand it in context. Because it's the same as a frat house banner with a juvenile slogan or image, in context after all.

The semantic gymnastics used to justify ongoing racism and hatred by minimizing both what happened and the continued use of one of the most concrete symbols of that blight on our history is, if nothing else, impressive in its scope.

If you need a symbol as loaded with pain and hatred, violence and bigotry, as that banner to show your pride in being...whatever it is you are, there is something deeply, fundamentally broken about your values.

Well, the red states are going to ban any discussion of civil rights, Ruby Bridges, MLK except for the one line he said that Republican politicians remember on one day in January, not to mention the existence of LGBTQ people. My state wants to partner with Hillsdale College to open charter schools, even over the objections of local school district to teach "patriotism".

I was DXing on one of the SDRs and happened on a program (I'm thinking Hillsdale material) where someone was doing a monologue about the Civil War. Literally" "The Democrats imported black people to be slaves, and then the Democrats decided if they couldn't keep slaves, the Democrats decided to split the country because the Democrats...":. Literally hammering home: "Democrats--evil!" "Evil sinful Democrats" and, of course, Republicans good and holy. (The Southern Strategy never happened).

Flags? Got a guy in our neighborhood who flies a black insurrection flag whenever something goes against Trump or the GQP. He flew it when the QAnon candidates failed to take over city council.

The current crop of Republicans believe Democrats should never take even an ounce of power, and elections must be overthrown if they do.

I always thought of Tennessee as a welcoming state, but in a Smoky Mountain group which has nothing to do with politics, someone asked about moving here. Immediately the "we don't want any Brandon supporters, if you don't support Donald Trump, the state is closed.

 

[davideduardo]

The Washington Redskins changed their name. Many people objected. They argued that it was never offensive. Some folks like to call Black people the N word. They think it's acceptable.

I can't see that today anyone who is not Black feeling that using the N-word is anything but the supreme offense and insult. There is nothing ambiguous about that term, and never has been; it evokes images of men wearing bed-sheets lighting crosses on fire.

There used to be separate bathrooms for Blacks and Whites as recent as the 1960s. Is that the "variety of perspectives" you value?

As I mentioned, I was the "junior member" of the a group of mostly WJMO-Cleveland, Ohio employees who went to Newton, MS, in the early 60's to help with voter registration. Separate bathrooms was the least of the issues. I heard about the "good ol' boys" going "poling" (not "double l" as in election polling places) where they'd drive through the Black part of town with two morons in the back seat with a big long piece of dowel which they would push out the window to see if guys on the sidewalk could jump fast enough or be struck by the stick.

The same "good ol' boys" had guns, too. They let us know, by message, delivered to the (N-word) motel where we were staying. So don't tell me what I value or what I have lived.

America was supposed to be a "Melting Pot". Everyone originally came here from somewhere else. (Except of course the Native Americans who were punished far worse than any White Southerner).

Yeah, but it did not always work because different groups "competed" with each other. "No Dogs or Irish" was a sign some of my relatives had to deal with in oh-so-liberal Massachusetts about 175 years ago. But it beat dying from the Potato Famine back in Limerick.

As for the Civil War, it's hard to "Unite" people who wanted to separate. War is never pretty. The South could have avoided a lot of misery by choosing a different path...

There is a lot written about the root causes of separation. One theory, based on economics, shows how the progress of "the working class" in the rapidly industrializing North created a huge difference between the emerging middle class and "poor white trash" in the South; that theory can be employed to show why such Southerns would fight for Dixie even if they had no property, entitlements or, of course, slaves and plantations.

In today's "no shades of gray" environment, it's a chore to realize that there were all kinds of social undercurrents that went way beyond Black slavery in the first fifty or sixty years of the 19th Century.

 

[davideduardo]

I second that suggestion.

The thread has certainly lost its connection with radio.

Yet I am reminded of the considerable role that "race stations" (yes, that is what Black targeted radio stations were called in the 50's and into the 60's) did in advancing their people's cause. And it was not just the famous stations like WDIA in Memphis but also the ones like WENN in Birmingham or WOOK in DC, just to name two, that informed and united voices in that era.

And there were powerful Black newspapers, too. My mother's friend who often visited us, William Walker, edited the Cleveland Call & Post which supported the national desegregation movements and pushed for greater awareness. Like that paper, there were many both in the North and the South. The paper was Black owned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_Post describes what one Black newspaper did. Walker is buried near my parents, certainly a sign that not all was bad in that era.

 

[davideduardo]

The current crop of Republicans believe Democrats should never take even an ounce of power, and elections must be overthrown if they do.

I don't know or associate with any of that sort of Republicans. They are destructive and abysmally annoying, just as I see "the Sqad" to be. But there have always been fringe groups at the extremes of every political movement or party.

 

[Mikey Radio]

The thread has certainly lost its connection with radio.

To be fair, this discussion thread was never connected to radio.

It was posted under the National TV topics and was created to discuss the lineup of the Super Bowl halftime show. The spirit of your comment is correct - the current course of discussion has nothing to do with the original topic or title of the thread.