NFL Chooses Singer Whose Hit Song Says US Is Not the Land of the Free for Super Bowl Anthem

Maybe they should just let the fans do it.

Only two days after a video went viral showing the crowd at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the solons at the National Football League went public with the news that the singer of the national anthem at this year’s Super Bowl would be a country crooner who scored one of her biggest hits with a song mocking the idea that America is the land of the free.

And there’s going to be more than one anthem to boot.

Adding another insult to years of injury to patriotic Americans, the NFL on Tuesday announced that Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles will be opened by a rendition of the so-called black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” as well as the Francis Scott Key classic most Americans are used to.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” will be sung by Mickey Guyton, the first black artist to be nominated for a Best Country Album Grammy, according to Variety. Kudos to Ms. Guyton, of course. She might well be a fine human being.

But it’s worth pointing out that the lyrics to Guyton’s “Black Like Me” are an ode to the apparently non-stop misery of African-Americans.

“It’s a hard life on Easy Street.
Just white painted picket fences far as you can see.
If you think we live in the land of the free,
You should try to be black like me.”

The song was released in June 2020 — the start of a long, violent summer of Black Lives Matter riots across the country. Days before that, Guyton published a tweet dedicating the refrain to George Floyd, the known drug user and suspected counterfeiter whose death in the custody of Minneapolis police was the catalyst for the riots.

This is for you George Floyd #blacklikeme pic.twitter.com/LibtOSgq39

— Mickey Guyton (@MickeyGuyton) May 28, 2020

All well and good, right? No honest person denies that there’s racism in contemporary American life — anti-white, anti-Semitic and anti-Asian as well as anti-black. And no one can dispute that slavery is a stain on the country’s history that can never be scrubbed away. Plenty of Americans of all races were outraged at Floyd’s death, and a police officer was convicted of murder in the case.

So maybe Guyton was just letting off some steam. She and her handlers were smart enough — and cynical enough — to cash in on a moment in popular culture when her song would have maximum appeal.

Maybe. And maybe Guyton buys into the current “systemic racism” hoax herself — the idea that the U.S. is irredeemably racist, policed by psychopaths in uniform with a criminal justice system designed to maximize incarceration based solely on melanin content in the skin.

A tweet she published in October 2020 leans in that direction.

I have to be honest when I found out I was having a son, there was instant fear. I’m having a black son. It’s heavy. I just pray we change this system so I never have to teach him what to do when he is pulled over by law enforcement. ??

— Mickey Guyton (@MickeyGuyton) October 14, 2020

With all due respect, Guyton can teach her son the same thing every American mother and father should teach their children about dealing with police: Be polite, be respectful, be honest, have a valid driver’s license and proof of insurance on hand and, for God’s sake, don’t resist arrest or pull a weapon.

It’s really not that hard to understand.

What’s a good deal harder to understand is why the NFL has chosen to politicize one of the biggest moments of its biggest event of the year.