The Super Bowl got a very tiny bit political this year with the pre-show performance of “America the Beautiful” by Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas Jones. The three women, who originated the roles of the Schuyler sisters in Broadway’s Hamilton, slightly modified the song to be more inclusive. When they reached the lyric “crown thy good with brotherhood,” the singers paused to add the line “and sisterhood,” to cheers from the crowd. Inevitably, however, some people in the audience read the change as a message to Trump:
It’s a sorry state of affairs when a mild nod to gender equality can be plausibly read as an implicit condemnation of the current administration, but that’s where we’re at. Among the people saluting the changed lyric on Twitter was none other than Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who endorsed his former castmates’ addition:
It wasn’t the first time the popular musical was a flashpoint in the culture wars—in November, Vice President Mike Pence, then vice president–elect, was booed by the audience at a performance he attended in New York. (The cast later read a statement to Pence encouraging him to “uphold our American values.”) Even if it’s unlikely to make much difference, this performance of “America the Beautiful” is yet another sign of broadening resistance to the Trump administration. When a broadcast as patriotic-to-the-point-of-jingoism as the Super Bowl starts implying that a president has gone too far, things are really off the rails.
