Beyonce’s VMA performance was, in a word, amazing. It was flawless. It was militant. It was hard. It was beautiful. It was artistic. It was transfixing. And about half-way through, I knew people would have a “problem” with it. I even tweeted my prediction:

Somewhere, Rudy Giuliani's head is exploding #VMAs

— Kaiser@Celebitchy (@KaiseratCB) August 29, 2016

I tweeted that because there’s something specific to Beyonce that really riles up old, white, conservative men. Maybe it’s because she’s black. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman. Maybe it’s because she’s beautiful, adored and respected. Maybe all of the above. Earlier this year, Rudy Giuliani got SO mad about Beyonce’s performance at the Super Bowl Half-Time show. Bey’s performance was militant, for sure, and she even made some Black Power moves. Taken with her increased activism around Black Lives Matter, the Mothers of the Movement and Democratic-Party activism in general, all of that leads to one possible conclusion for someone like Giuliani: Beyonce is a terrible person, for reasons, and she’s probably insulting and denigrating police officers. So obviously, Giuliani had to comment about Bey’s VMA performance.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reacted angrily Monday to Beyoncé at the MTV Video Music Awards, decrying her performance in which the award-winning singer referenced gun violence “a shame.” The mothers of several victims of police shootings walked the red carpet with Beyoncé before the show Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, as “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt noted while showing a clip of her backup dancers dressed as angels before being shot down.

“Her dancers were circling around her and one by one, they fell to the ground, and there were red lights underneath them. And that was supposed to symbolize cops killing black individuals,” Earhardt told Giuliani, who responded, “You’re asking the wrong person because I had five uncles who were police officers, two cousins who were, one who died in the line of duty. I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department. And I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime and particularly homicide by 75 percent.”

Asked whether that offended him, Giuliani continued to address his record with African-Americans and policing as mayor.
“Of which, of which maybe 4,000 or 5,000 were African-American young people who are alive today because of the policies I put in effect that weren’t in effect for 35 years. So if you’re going to do that, then you should symbolize why the police officers are in the neighborhoods and what are you going to go about it? To me it’s two easy answers: a much better education and good job, and what the heck have you done like in Baltimore, when they all stood in Baltimore…”

Co-host Brian Kilmeade commented, “And Beyonce is an extremely popular and powerful performer, and when she does stuff like that, that message to the next generation is pretty indelible.”

“It’s a shame,” Giuliani remarked. “It’s a shame.”

[From Politico]

To be fair to Giuliani – WHY? – it feels like the Fox News people massaged the story so that he would get outraged about a specific thing. We don’t know for sure if Beyonce’s “murdered angels” were specifically the victims of police violence, or if Beyonce was making a larger message about violence against the African-American community, some of which comes from police officers, some of which does not. Beyonce left it up to interpretation, although I think the presence of the Mothers of the Movement probably said a lot about Beyonce’s interpretation. So, even if she was specifically referencing police violence against people of color… what does Giuliani’s rant have to do with anything? He has cops in his family, good for him. Personally, I don’t think anything Beyonce did was “shameful.” This version of Bey, the Political, Militant, Woke, Activist Bey, is my favorite version.

Photos courtesy of WENN.