Source: Tom Williams / Getty
The performance of “Lift Every Voice And Sing” at the Super Bowl got Rudy Giuliani and Megan Kelly mad enough to whine about it publicly.
The 58th Super Bowl was held Sunday (Feb. 11), at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, and carried all of the majesty people come to expect from the event. But the performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Andra Day before the game roiled the sensibilities of two major right-wingers: Rudy Giuliani and Megan Kelly. Both were displeased at the inclusion of the song, which has come to be known as the Black National Anthem.
The topic came up on the former mayor of New York City’s WABC radio show, prompted by his co-host Maria Ryan’s diatribe: “They’re going to do what’s called a Black National Anthem, and then America’s National Anthem,” she began. “Please stop dividing us. We can’t allow this. If you want to sing another song, that’s fine. I don’t care about that at all, but to call it Black National Anthem is dividing us. We’re all American citizens.”
The disgraced former lawyer for Donald Trump concurred. “This country is made up of people that come from places that have other national anthems, and it’s pretty damn insulting,” Giuliani added. “The people that are being persecuted the most right now in the country are the Jews, not the Blacks. Where’s the sympathy for the Jewish people?”
Kelly aired her grievance with the 1900 composed song by James Weldon Johnson in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “The so-called Black National Anthem does not belong at the Super Bowl. We already have a National Anthem and it includes EVERYONE,” she wrote. The former Fox News host has popped up infrequently over the past few years since losing her daytime talk show, infamously declaring that Santa Claus and Jesus are white.
Other X users were quick to blast her for the bigoted post, including author John Pavlovitz who wrote, “It’s good you’re too stupid to hide your racism.” A former congressional candidate, Christopher Hale also highlighted the irony of right-wingers’ despising the song, noting that it is a hymn: “It’s remarkable that there is right-wing backlash [about] the Black national anthem. The entire song is about honoring God,” he wrote on X.
