Entertainment

Huckabee Slams Obama for Letting Daughters Listen to Beyoncé

Published

11 years ago

January 14, 2015

In this Aug. 9, 2014 file photo, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks in Ames, Iowa. Huckabee is criticizing President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for parenting by what he sees as a double-standard, saying they shelter their daughters from some things but let them listen to Beyoncé. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

THOMAS BEAUMONT, Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has accused President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, of double standards in parenting, saying in an interview published Tuesday that the first family shelters its daughters from some things but allows them to listen to the music of Beyoncé.

The sharp rhetoric signals that, should he run for the Republican presidential nomination, Huckabee would make cultural and social issues the cornerstones of his campaign.

While promoting his new book, the former Baptist pastor told People magazine, “I don’t understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school … and yet they don’t see anything that might not be suitable” in Beyoncé’s lyrics. He also said Beyoncé’s choreography is “best left for the privacy of her bedroom.”

In his book, Huckabee describes the Grammy Award-winning Beyoncé’s lyrics as “obnoxious and toxic mental poison.” He also accuses Beyoncé’s husband, rapper Jay-Z, of “exploiting his wife” like a “pimp.”

The first lady’s office declined to comment on Huckabee’s comments.

During a 2012, $40,000-per-ticket fundraiser in New York, the president thanked Beyoncé and Jay-Z for their friendship.

“Beyoncé could not be a better role model for my girls,” Obama said.

Beyoncé sang at Barack Obama’s second inauguration, as well at Mrs. Obama’s 50th birthday party at the White House.

Huckabee’s latest book, titled “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” is full of criticism of Washington, New York and Hollywood and serves as a direct appeal to cultural conservatives, long part of his political base. Huckabee’s rhetoric is likely to win him more fans among conservative activists who have tremendous sway in picking the GOP’s presidential nominees in early nominating states such as Iowa and South Carolina.

Huckabee recently stepped down from his role as host of a weekend program on Fox News Channel. He ran for president in 2008, considered running in 2012, and has said he’s weighing whether to seek the GOP nomination in 2016.

If he enters the contest, he has a strong network of pastors in the early states who can help mobilize their faithful. That network helped him win the lead-off Iowa caucuses in 2008, as well as earn victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Huckabee is no stranger to such pointed statements. At a Republican National Committee meeting last year in Washington, he suggested Democrats wanted women to believe they were helpless without government-financed birth control.

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without ‘Uncle Sugar’ coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,” Huckabee said. “Let us take that discussion all across America.”

____

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed from Washington.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Related Topics:Beyonce'Jay-Z Mike Huckabee obama family President obama

Up Next

Ex-Prosecutor: Don’t Pardon Mark Wahlberg for Racist Attacks

Don't Miss

Gospel Legend Andrae Crouch Passes at 72

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

15 hours ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.