Tokin' Woman Rihanna Smokes the Super Bowl

Rihanna is the name on everyone's lips these days after her sheroic performance at the Super Bowl, balancing in mid air while dressed as a pregnant vulva with an army of sperm dancing around her, just like the woman/goddess she is. I mean, even Gladys Knight only had three pips. 

The billionaire singer and fashion icon rose from modest beginnings in Barbados, where she sold clothes from a street stall, to sell 250 million records worldwide. She is the second-best-selling female music artist of all time (second to her fellow Tokin' Woman Madonna, someone she admires and emulates, along with Bob Marley). She has branched into successful fragrance, fashion, and beauty products businesses, and launched several charitable foundations. 

The singing sensation was caught by the pot-parazzi smoking a blunt at a hotel in Hawaii in 2012. That morning, she tweeted to her 12 million followers, "Waken...Baken...Good morning." Later she wrote, "Kush rolled, glass full... I prefer the better things," a lyric from Drake's song, 'Up All Night'. A week earlier she tweeted, "4:20... Hi." That year, she dressed as a pot fairy for Halloween and rolled a joint on the bald head of her bodyguard at Coachella. For her single "Diamonds," she used imagery of diamonds being rolled into a joint. 

A 2013 article in USA Today titled, "Marijuana's celebrity stigma goes up in smoke" was adorned with a photo of her wearing a pot-leaf shirt at a concert in Berlin to represent a new generation of celebrity stoner. "And then there's Rihanna, who readily flaunts her affection for the illegal flora, posting pictures of her Valentine's present (a bouquet of weed), 25th birthday cake (adorned with a gilded marijuana leaf) and Christmastime tush tattoo (yep, another leaf of weed)," the article stated. Rumors that she founded a brand of marijuana called MaRihanna in 2015 at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Jamaica turned out not to be true. 

Rihanna played a Rasta computer hacker/weed smoker on the all-female, multiethnic jewel-robbing team in Ocean's 8, and won an Oscar nomination this year for her song "Life Me Up" from the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She appeared pregnant on the cover of Vogue and gave birth in May 2022; her halftime show served to reveal her second pregnancy. This February 20, she will turn 35. 

Reportedly the singer turned down an offer to headline the Super Bowl in 2019 in support of Colin Kaepernick's protests against police brutality. Kapernick is currently a producer of the Hulu documentary series "Killing County" exposing police violence in Kern County, CA, the district represented by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And he's got a nondairy Ben and Jerry's flavor "Change the Whirled" that I can report is delicious. Ads at this year's Super Bowl included a "Breaking Bad" spoof to peddle Pop Corners chips, and a Michelob ULTRA ad that ripped off "Caddyshack," a weed-friendly movie staring Very Important Potheads Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield.  

As I write this, Nikki Haley, another woman of color, has announced her run for President, taking on a man who has called for the death penalty for drug dealers and called Rihanna's performance an "epic fail." As South Carolina's governor, Haley signed bills legalizing CBD and hemp cultivation, but said she wasn't ready for marijuana legalization. Perhaps Rihanna can convince her.  

UPDATE 2/15/23: Now it's reported in Rolling Stone that Trump has been floating the idea of bringing back firing squads, hangings, or the guillotine, and broadcasting executions, connected with his call to execute drug dealers. So, as Jimmy Kimmel joked, while he thought Rihanna's halftime performance wasn't appropriate for television, he "wants to chop human heads off after an episode of 'Young Sheldon.'"