Entertainment critics who were expecting a profanity-laced, anti-Trump rant like the one offered by Madonna during the Women's March on Washington from Lady Gaga during her halftime performance at Super Bowl LI were greatly disappointed. While Atlanta Falcons fans are spending Monday trying to figure out how their team managed to blow a 25-point lead, entertainment critics from several magazines and newspapers are trying to come to terms with a Super Bowl halftime performance that didn't make any political statements.
Variety claims Gaga missed an opportunity
One of the critics disappointed by Lady Gaga's refusal to inject anti-Trump sentiment into her halftime performance is Sonia Saraiya of Variety Magazine, who, on Sunday evening, wrote that many people believed that "the bisexual Gaga, an avid and vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, might voice the widely held frustration with the Trump administration in some form or another." Saraiya referred to Lady Gaga's non-political performance as a "missed opportunity" and then bashed the pop star for being too much of a pop star: "Perhaps pop makes you feel good," wrote a disappointed Saraiya. "Art chooses to say something."
LA Times apparently doesn't know the lyrics to 'Born This Way'
The Los Angeles Times also expressed disappointment over the non-political performance, with a Sunday evening headline stating: "Lady Gaga misses her Super Bowl moment to say something profound."
The article's author, pop music critic Mikael Wood, who had apparently tuned into a halftime show at a football game expecting a Pope Francis-style sermon from the Vatican or a Dalai Lama sermon from a Nepalese mountaintop, wrote that rumors about an anti-Trump halftime show "rang alarm bells for anyone hoping that the outspoken pop star would address the tumult that’s spread through America in the two weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in as president."
Wood didn't get his wish and so, quite naturally, he panned Gaga's performance, describing it as a disappointing 12-minutes that "lacked any edge or tension."
During her performance of "Born This Way" -- a song which has become an LGBTQ anthem -- Wood suggests that Gaga fumbled the ball.
"This was her moment to say something profound about American acceptance," opined the pop music critic, perhaps oblivious to the fact that the song itself is a profound statement about acceptance -- and completely oblivious to the fact that a family-friendly break in a football game doesn't need to be political to be entertaining.
