Dana Perino Outraged That M.I.A., ‘Not Even An American,’ Performed At Super Bowl
It is the biggest secular holiday of the year, so naturally much of today’s The Five revolved around last night’s Super Bowl events. The crew particularly stopped on the first case of indecent conduct during the Halftime Show since Janet Jackson exposed her breast to America: British/Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. giving the finger to the camera, as she does in the music video for the song being performed, “Give Me All Your Lovin’.” Most found it vulgar on its face, but Dana Perino objected not to the gesture but to M.I.A.’s presence at all: why would Madonna perform with a rapper who was “not even an American?”
RELATED: The Authenticity Hoax: M.I.A. vs. Lynne Hirschberg
Perino’s comments came during a discussion Greg Gutfeld began with a description of M.I.A. as an “okay singer who marries catchy hooks to adolescent agitprop,” or “Betty Boop reading Mao’s Little Red Book.” He went on to explain M.I.A.’s outspoken comments against wealth while marrying a wealthy heir, and concluded that, hey, “it beats the Black-Eyed Peas.” Bob Beckel suggested it was reasonable for the FCC to fine the network, though Eric Bolling noted that there really isn’t anything that the network could do to prevent something like that, as “it’s lip-synced… you can’t have a seven second delay.”
Perino then got her turn, and she argued that it was all-around terrible. It seemed to have been meant as an off-hand joke comment at first, and may have continued to be as she chided Madonna (who hasn’t exactly spoken with anything resembling an American accent for some time) for squandering an event co-headlined LMFAO, Cee-Lo Green, and Nicki Minaj by featuring a weird foreigner. But she pressed on with it long enough for her point to be at least somewhat serious, comparing the performance to the pre-game crooning of “America the Beautiful” by Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert (Wikipedia tells me these are country singers) and Kelly Clarkson‘s version of the national anthem (Clarkson must make up the America points™ from Perino she loses for supporting Ron Paul by winning a reality TV contest with the word “American” in it). “Why can’t we have some America in our football?” she demands, before the conversation turns to Patriot Tom Brady‘s wife… Brazilian Gisele Bundchen.
Surely there are plenty of problems with this argument on its face, if taken seriously, starting with the plain fact that there is so much to hate about M.I.A. that has nothing to do with her nationality! The fact that she takes herself entirely too seriously for someone that presses random buttons on a cheap 1980s Moog and calls it a “song;” her vocal and, as far as anyone can tell, complete ignorance of politics; cover art that looks like what appears on the screen when your Super Nintendo cartridge breaks mid-game. It is not an unpopular opinion in many circles to call her a hypocrite in her personal life; professionally, “Betty Boop reading Mao’s Little Red Book” is right on the money. Even pointing out that her calls to violence and references to terrorism are anti-American would be better than to call her plain unAmerican. That she wasn’t born in a certain part of the world or does not arbitrarily subscribe to a particular culture Perino upholds above all others in the context of football is a pretty bad place to start.
It’s bad because it assumes that where one is born has something to do with whether one is an American or not; it reduces American culture to an arbitrary act of nature and not a state of mind that millions of loyal Americans swear to uphold every day as they become U.S. citizens. It also ignores the history of the Super Bowl Halftime Show: one that has featured such cornerstones of American music as The Who, The Rolling Stones, U2, and Phil Collins, and has had themes such as “Salute to Caribbean” and “From Paris to Paris of America.” America the state of mind is large, it contains multitudes, and it is above all inclusive. Excluding foreigners from our biggest holidays isn’t exactly how America got to be the world’s last superpower.
Plus, Perino leaves a very salient question open by alienating MIA as the “non-American” portion of the Halftime Show: do you really want to highlight that America is to blame for LMFAO?
The discussion via Fox News below:
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
