Roy Exum
I may be among the smallest minority in the United States tonight at 6:30 p.m. Few people adore sports – outside of the Winter Olympics – than I do, but I’ll be one of the blessed few who will not watch tonight’s Super Bowl. Down my career path I’ve seen three in person, interviewed dozens who have played for the Lombardi Trophy, and marveled at spectacular performances, yet tonight my TV stays dark.
For that matter, I have not watched a pro football game, not one, all year. Albeit quietly, I haven’t cared for pro football in the last eight or so seasons. When the overt-racist Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem at the start of NFL games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in 2016, in all honesty that was pretty much it for me.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the game and will watch more college football on any weekend during the fall than darn near anybody, but sacrilege, be it to God, country, flag, the police, government or other great American institutions, doesn’t settle right with me. That’s why pro football and the NBA are no longer on my TV. Protests are fine in the right setting, but to desecrate our flag, our national anthem as a platform is just as wrong as it can be.
This week a column by the New York Post’s brawler of a columnist – Phil Mushnick – has gone viral across the web over the fact Snoop Dog, a controversial rapper who’ll be tonight’s halftime entertainer for Super Bowl LVI, is not quite the face of what pro football ought to stand for. Snoop Dog is about as un-American as anybody I can name.
WARNING: The gently guised lyrics that Snoop Dog demonstrates in his column are vulgar. Please do not read Mushnick’s column (below) if you are easily offended because at its close you will be:
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PHIL MUSHNICK ON SNOOP DOG’S HALFTIME SHOW
By Phil Mushnick of the New York Post, January 29, 2022
Keepin’ it real. Let’s do it together.
Last Saturday [Jan. 22], during CBS’s telecast of the Titans-Bengals playoff game, a commercial for Corona beer aired, starring Snoop Dogg, who, despite countless arrests for guns and drugs, has become a must-have to endorse products.
So what if he luridly degrades women as one of his stocks in trade if he can sell beer?
The night before that ad ran, NYPD officer Jason Rivera, 22, was shot dead with an assault rifle while responding to a domestic violence call in East Harlem. His partner, Wilbert Mora, 27, died from his wounds four days later.
And as I watched that Corona ad, I got to thinking about Snoop Dogg’s violently anti-police, pro-crime vile and vulgar “artistry,” mindful that Roger Goodell appointed and anointed Snoop Dogg the headliner at this year’s Super Bowl halftime.
Perhaps Goodell, also in the interest of keeping it real, would like to rap along with a “song” by Snoop and J5 Slap entitled, “Police.” Ready, Roger? It reads thusly:
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“All you n—as out there,
Take your guns that you using to shoot each other
And start shooting these b—h-ass
mother-f–king police.
That’ll impress a mother-f–king n—a like me.”
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But Snoop’s Super Bowl selection doesn’t just meet with the approval of the NFL and “It’s All About Our Fans” Goodell. The halftime show and Snoop’s appearance is sponsored with the full, proud commercial and financial support of Pepsi, which seems eager to become the soft drink of hardcore.
Back to that charming, ahem, song. Ready Team Pepsi? It’s Karaoke Night! Here we go:
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“Dipping through the city with a Glock in a Range Rove
If you sleeping probably not with the same hoe
Rock the same clothes rich n—as do
And rock by the same code till I’m a rich n—a too
I be in the club with the stick in my shoe
You call the f–king police like a bitch n—a do.”
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Five NYPD officers have been shot in the first 20 days of this year. And the fellow chosen by the NFL and approved by Goodell to star in this year’s halftime produces, records, sells and profits from “artistry” advocating streets filled with the blood of cops and threats against those who would help solve the shootings of cops and civilians.
More? We’ll give this part to NBC’s NFL pregame panelist, Jac Collinsworth. Sunday, after NBC presented a Super Bowl halftime promo narrated by Snoop Dogg, he said, “That was our friend, Snoop.”
Is that right? He’s our friend? Come on up to the mic, Jac. Now, in the name of keepin’ it real, pick it up with this, the refrain from “our friend’s” charming ditty (with Master P), “Snitches”:
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“Snitches, snitches, snitches
N—as be running they mouth just like b–ches …
Snitches, snitches, snitches
I got a slug for ya’ll mother-f–king snitches.”
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Hey, Corona beer marketing department, your turn. Ready? Snoop Dogg has a video in which he sings a cover version of NWA’s “F–k the police” while holding his crotch in a courtroom. It’s an easy one. Just repeat after Snoop:
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“F–k the po-lice! F–k the po-lice!”
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I invite — dare, challenge — everyone — Goodell, the NFLPA, NFL team owners, the executive board at Pepsi and Corona, NBC Sports, young Collinsworth — to demonstrate the courage of their convictions to join with Snoop Dogg in any of his dozens of similarly depraved enterprises presented as entertainment.
And now, just for added kicks, look up the lurid lyrics of two other Goodell-certified entertainers who will perform at this Super Bowl halftime, Eminem (“Just Don’t Give A F–k”) and crotch-grabbing Kendrick (“B–ch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”) Lamar.
This is what Roger Goodell thinks NFL audiences, of all ages, are worth on a Super Bowl Sunday. These acts are far beneath him as he has already admitted that he can’t repeat what Snoop Dogg raps. But he feels as if Snoop Dogg is perfect for you and yours — and professional football.
And it’s not as if previous Super Bowl halftime shows under Goodell’s classy, dignified guidance haven’t caused those who know right from wrong to ask why they’ve been dismissed as unworthy, disinvited as out of step with marching that points all of us backwards.
Why, under Goodell, have halftime shows been diving lower and lower? And why has he allowed such uncivil performers to be attached to a championship ball game?
Meanwhile, the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been removed from a Washington State school’s required reading list because it contains racial slurs.
And Goodell, the shameless $63 million per pandering phony, slaps “Stop Hate” and “End Racism” along the backs of end zones and players’ helmets, then invites Snoop Dogg to be the star of the Super Bowl.
Maybe Snoop will be granted a police escort to the stadium. For his safety, of course.
Officer Rivera was 22. Officer Mora was 27. Just keepin’ it real.
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For the record, I’m not drinking any Corona or Pepsi, either. I can protest quietly, too.
royexum@aol.com