Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Rihanna Turned Down Super Bowl Halftime In Solidarity With Kaepernick

Maroon 5 must have been so high on the pride of being asked to perform the Super Bowl LIII halftime show, they didn’t recognize the fire burning in the eyes of pop superstar Rihanna.

Girls like her don’t run ‘round with guys like Adam Levine and co. If it means supporting an institution that sidelines free speech in favor of cash and free-flowing racism. ‘Cause you can drive for miles and miles, and you can spend every day on Rihanna’s corner in the pouring rain, but you can’t get her to compromise her values. We love our Adam and his band, but in the mensch department they just got owned.

Us Weekly reported on Thursday night that the NFL and CBS, the network that airs the Super Bowl, were desperate to have Rihanna as their halftime star, but that the singer turned down the offer because of the NFL’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick. Searching for a second-stringer, the football league and CBS landed on Maroon 5, who happily accepted.

Who can blame them for agreeing to perform, arguably, the most iconic musical moment of the year? Who can say they would have been able to turn it down? Well, Rihanna can.

For the blissfully uninitiated: Kaepernick is the football quarterback whose choice, beginning in 2016, to sit or kneel during the playing of the national anthem at football games ignited a national controversy. Though Kaepernick explained that his choice was a peaceful protest intended to call attention to racism and police shootings of black Americans, he was faced with vitriolic backlash, including from President Trump. Kaepernick, who said of his choice, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” has not been signed to a football team since the 2016 season.

It sort of makes you reconsider the idea that politics and pop culture must be at loggerheads — mainstream cultural drama is frequently at the heart of political movements. And even when that’s not the case, look at Colin Kaepernick, and look at Rihanna. They don’t make for bad heroes.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.