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Giuliani slams Beyoncé's Super Bowl performance

Have a wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl and you'll live to see another day. But woe unto the artist who comes onto the field with a political message.

Beyoncé's naughty politics

Have a wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl and you'll live to see another day. But woe unto the artist who comes onto the field with a political message.

Woe to Beyoncé, whose Super Bowl 50 performance apparently was saturated with a pro-black power and anti-cop political subtext that has angered many a football fan and quite a few politicos, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani told Fox & Friends on Monday that Bey's performance of her new song "Formation," which was released Saturday, was anti-police.

Why was it anti-police?

For one thing, the song's video critiques police brutality. For another, Beyoncé's backup dancers sported Afros, black paramilitary outfits, and berets, a reference, experts tell the media, to the radical 1960s and '70s Black Panther Party. What's more, Bey and her dancers gave a black-power salute and then formed an X, a reference to civil rights leader Malcolm X.

This was especially naughty, you see, because anyone who celebrates that political group or Malcolm X clearly hates and loathes law and order.

"This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive," Giuliani said on Fox & Friends.

"What we should be doing in the African American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers," Giuliani said, "and focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, OK, we'll work on that." Giuliani concluded with a plea to bring back "decent, wholesome entertainment" to the Super Bowl.

Of pandas & zombies

The Super Bowl put a serious damper on movie box office returns last weekend - earnings were down by 8 percent, says Variety.

Kung Fu Panda 3 stayed atop the pile in its second week, making an additional $21 mil, according to studio estimates.

Joel and Ethan Coen's period Hollywood satire, Hail, Caesar!, opened at No. 2 with a disappointing $11.4 mil, and Nicholas Sparks' critically panned romance The Choice opened in third place with $6.1 mil.

It was not a good weekend for fans of Jane Austen and zombie movies: Horror comedy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made a paltry $5.2 mil in its first weekend, placing at No. 6.

Chris Martin's divorce

Coldplay's Chris Martin, who did not offend cops during his Super Bowl show, tells Rolling Stone he is grateful he and Gwyneth Paltrow could have such a pleasant breakup.

"I have a very wonderful separation-divorce," he says. "It's a divorce - but it's a weird one . . . I don't think about that word very often . . .. I don't see it that way. I see it as more like you meet someone, you have some time together, and things just move through."

tirdad@phillynews.com
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