STEVE DOOCY (HOST): The outrage is growing over Beyoncé's performance at the Super Bowl. Did she pay tribute to the Black Panthers?
BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): Yes.
DOOCY: And what does she really know about the Black Panthers? We're going to run down the facts coming up.
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DOOCY: Beyoncé's Super Bowl performance was not a smash hit with everybody. One group is holding an anti-Beyoncé rally next week outside NFL headquarters, calling the performance racially charged and outrageous over references to the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement. So what's going on here? Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. is here to explain. So Peter, for the folks who did not watch the halftime show, what happened?
PETER JOHNSON JR.: Well, at one point during the show, Beyoncé and her dancers, they formed an “X” on the field. And some have interpreted this as a tribute to Malcolm X, the assassinated civil rights leader. Beyoncé and her dancers were all dressed in black. At one point they raised a fist like the black power salutes that we saw during the civil rights movement and even at the Olympics, and then wore black berets. Now why black berets? Some critics have likened those black berets to what the Black Panther Party wore in the '60s and '70s. And we see a photo of them. They, for the most part, were a criminal, violent group, dedicated to Marxist change in America, and responsible for a lot of violence, including a lot of black-on-black violence in the African-American community throughout the United States. So that's what stimulated this.
DOOCY: Okay, but the outrage is not just over the performance but also she's got this new single out called “Formation” with a video.
JOHNSON JR.: Yeah, and it's a compelling video and I've watched it several times. The video for the song “Formation” features a scene of an African-American boy wearing a hoodie before a line of police officers with the words “stop shooting us” on a wall. This outraged members of the National Sheriffs Association. They turned off the TV when Beyoncé appeared during the Super Bowl, saying they consider this song absolutely anti-police. A lot of other people, people like Peter King, have tweeted “Beyonce Formation video & #SB50 act was anti-police, shameful. Repeats big lie of Michael Brown innocence. Cops deserve support, not criminals.” So Twitter users were also angered and they quickly pointed out that Beyoncé actually had a police escort to the Super Bowl stadium for the performance.
DOOCY: I saw that. Okay, but what about Beyoncé's supporters?
JOHNSON JR.: They're saying Beyoncé's a great artist and Beyoncé says that she's proud of the message of both the video and the performance. And supporters say the music video speaks to her heritage as a black woman. And I've watched it and it does. One supporter tweeting “When she sang about Single Ladies, you were all hailing her as a queen, but now that she's singing about being black, it's #boycottBeyonce?” Here's the point. The point is that there are a lot of civil rights leaders that Beyoncé could emulate and talk about. Black Panthers are not someone that need to be emulated.
