Hi Dennis;
Caught the first half of your program today. You apparently disapproved of the halftime show, and talked about it quite a bit, but gave no specific reasons as to why.
One caller did, however, openly calling the performance “Disgusting”. What did he mean? What is disgusting
about a beautiful woman with a lovely voice, who showed no more skin than you’d see at a women’s Olympic swimming competition, doing dance moves no more suggestive than Elvis Presley did 50 years ago and whose songs didn’t even rise to the level of bad taste let alone genuine offensiveness? Does this caller think the only appropriate female attire is a burqa, and the only acceptable female creative outlet singing church hymns?
Indeed, if her performance could be faulted for anything it’s that the material itself was pretty banal. Most of her songs sounded pretty much the same, and none of them rose to the point of being distinctive or memorable. The songwriting skills displayed don’t exactly rival the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, or, for that matter, even the Sex Pistols.
Also, Beyonce herself seems to be a pretty good role model. She waited until she was married to have her first child, is still married to her first husband and, I’ll wager, is faithful within that marriage. And she has the sort of smile that only genuinely good people possess, bad people or cynical people just can’t fake that kind of smile.
And one more point is that she, and pretty much all major female music stars, are expected to not only sing well, but be excellent dancers as well. That means they have to stay in shape and not let themselves get fat and flabby. Like them or not, these girls really do have to be multitalented and they work
HARD. I myself am not a particularly big fan of this style of music (I much prefer hard rock) but I can still respect the level of talent, drive, and discipline it takes to succeed at this level.
You’ve missed the entire point that Dennis made..that her performance was not child friendly…that our society these days has become hyper-sexual.
Child friendly? Her routine was no more risque than that of your typical high school cheerleading squad. Indeed, some of the ads were much more explicit than anything Beyonce did, but he didn’t focus on THAT. All Prager did was come off like some old fuddy-duddy, and rather a prude as well.
PS You are apparently new here. We need fresh opinions. Hope you stick around!
If Beyoncé’s “routine was no more risque than that of your typical high school cheerleading squad,” maybe it doesn’t indicate that her routine was child friendly, but that the routines of your typical high school cheerleading squads are too sexualized.
I watched the game at the Club. There were twenty or so guys and six women there. The “old guys” , I consider myself one of them, were stunned at Beyonce’ girations and attire were inapropriate for prime time, to us. The younger guys didn’t even blink. One guy turned to me and said: “Now you know why the moslems think we’re pigs worthy of killin’”. Me? Well, I was just waiting for a “wardrobe malfunction”.
I thought she and the other dancers had “thunder thighs”. They were well toned and probably walnut crushers. Large thighs are usually a curse of dancers of high energy music.
Maybe we should put cheerleaders in burqas?
I mean, really! The whole point of cheerleading is to introduce an element of sexuality into high school life. The cheerleaders are usually the prettiest and most popular girls, and their often skimpy costumes are designed solely to make them look desirable to the high school boys. And yet we don’t see anything wrong with taking little kids to high school football games (or college or pro games, which also have cheerleaders). To say that Beyonce’s act was somehow unsuitable for a nationally televised football game when the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders have been strutting their stuff in short shorts and halter tops for 40 years is just ridiculous!
Actually, in terms of good taste, Beyonce’s act has light years above the previous year’s Super Bowl singer, Madonna. She looked like she was putting on a show in a whorehouse. And her songs all sucked, too. She had a number of big hits in the 80′s, but she didn’t perform any of them, preferring to do her much more recent (and eminently forgettable) material instead.
I would just add that Beyonce shaking her bottom on TV is nothing much more that some harmless, albeit slightly tittilating, fluff. If you are not offended by the outfits or dance moves of your typical NFL cheerleading squad, you have really nothing to complain about vis a vis the halftime show.
But, on a more serious note, conservative politicians and thought leaders would have a lot more credibility on issues like these, the supposed sexual corruption of the culture, if they behaved better themselves. How many prominent conservatives have had pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, have had abortions (female) or paid for/benefitted from them (male)?
Indeed, let’s look at some of our prominent leaders, shall we? There’s ex GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, now on his 3rd marriage after cheating on his then 2nd wife with his now current 3rd wife. Former GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliana is also on Wife Number 3. Rush Limbaugh is on Wife Number 4 and the subject of this letter, Dennis Prager, is on his 3rd wife, too.
I mean, really! Stones, glass houses, anyone?