I Wonder If I Was Wrong About Donald Trump.

For a collection of reasons, I do not follow sports.  I especially don't follow professional sports.  I don't even make an exception for about three hours, meaning the Super Bowl.

Of course I know when the Super Bowl is, like I know when Christmas and New Year's are, and on a day like today, it is impossible to avoid finding out the outcome of the game.  (Actually, I didn't fully know who was playing.  I was pretty sure it was Kansas City against someone.  It was, and they beat Philadelphia with less than two minutes to play, and the critical play was a penalty against Philadelphia.  The Philadelphia player called for the penalty said the call was a good one -- sporting and honest of him -- and he thought what he did wrong was relatively minor and might be overlooked.  But he admitted the call was right, and considering where Kansas City was on the field at that point, it's most likely they would have won anyway.  But really, who cares about that, and it's not what I wanted to discuss.)

People say a lot of terrible things about Donald Trump, and among them are that he's racist and sexist.  He is caricaturishly sexist, but the question I've considered is if he's really racist.  His flagrant sexism didn't get in the way of his other "functioning," and he was able to appoint or nominate people like Sarah Sanders, Nikki Haley, and Amy Barrett.  He also promoted his older daughter to a high position in his administration, but since he also implied he wanted to have sex with her, it's unclear whether or not that promotion was sexist.  And if he is racist, that didn't prevent him from nominating someone like Ben Carson.

The fact is, Trump doesn't really care about anyone or anything, except himself.  So I thought there was no evidence that he was racist, at least per se.  But today, I'm wondering.

The second most talked about feature of any Super Bowl (second to the game) is the halftime show.  There have been 57 Super Bowls, so the halftime shows have become increasingly dramatic and technological, and probably always with big stars, who sing and dance and have loud music and entourages of assistant performers.  Yesterday's featured star was a woman named Rihanna.  I've heard of her, but I've never seen nor heard her perform.  I read today that she's pregnant, which is a little weird (that they'd choose someone who's pregnant, although she might not have been when they first contracted with her, and that she'd agree to do her show while she was pregnant).  I watched part of her show on youtube -- the halftime show is of no more interest to me than is the game, so I couldn't be bothered to watch the whole thing -- and I'd guess, from what I could see, that she's probably about six, maybe slightly less, months pregnant.  She didn't do a lot of dance moves, but she and the other performers were on suspended and moving platforms (not small enough that she could easily fall off), but if she were my wife, I'd plead with her not to do it.

Here's the video: Rihanna’s FULL Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show - YouTube

So, Donald Trump, who doesn't care about anyone or anything, except himself, and always insults anyone who's not himself (or close and protected, even if temporarily, family members and associates) said he thought this was the worst halftime show ever.  Of course it's true that Donald Trump is always calling anything the best or the worst ever, and it's unclear what he really means by this, except it allows him to continue to run his mouth, which is his main activity.  (Most of it is output, but it's clear that there's noteworthy intake, too.)

But the question is this: if it was possible, which it probably isn't, to assume Donald Trump ever meant anything he said, and if it could be imagined he meant what he said about yesterday's Super Bowl halftime show, what made him think it was the worst one ever?  Having seen part of that one on youtube, and parts of other ones over the years, I can tell you that yesterday's was not the worst or the best ever.  It was fairly typical for Super Bowl halftime shows these days.  Rihanna's not a magnificent singer.  But she's not awful.  These shows are extravaganzas.  That's what they're supposed to be.  This one was an extravaganza, too, in its way.  But if we could make the very tenuous assumption that Donald Trump truly (I know, "Donald Trump" and "truly" should never appear in the same sentence) especially disliked yesterday's Super Bowl halftime show, why did he especially dislike it?  There are glaringly interfering dynamics, like Trump's 100% fixation on himself, and his preference for hyperbole (the best, the worst), but does this crack -- everything out of Trump's mouth is a crack -- mean that Trump is, somehow, in fact racist?  This raises questions like whether or not he can be bothered to be racist, given where 100% of his attention goes, but it could, in theory at least, make you wonder.

Perhaps as an aside, or perhaps to provide even a little bit more insight about this matter, among the many articles and columns about the Super Bowl yesterday, there's this one: Super Bowl 57 is the Blackest, most woke Super Bowl ever. Sorry haters! | Opinion (msn.com).  This is a magnificent column, and I could not stop laughing through the whole thing.  Enjoy.