People Are Mad At The VMAs For This Totally Bogus Reason

On Sunday night, it was clear that the 2017 MTV VMAs was going bold with the political commentary from host Katy Perry and various presenters. However, it would appear that viewers were pretty peeved the 2017 MTV VMAs talked politics alongside the expected music commentary, and they didn't hold back from making their feelings about it known on Twitter.

There were stirrings of annoyance from Twitter when Perry mentioned during her opening monologue that Sunday night's awards ceremony would be "about the music" before proceeding to make a jokey reference to the deeply political TV show The Handmaid's Tale. It happened while she was pretending to decide what to wear for the big night of hosting. After going through a rack of clothing, Perry came to the final outfit, a white bonnet and crimson cloak reminiscent of the ones worn by the show's titular Handmaids. She pulled the outfit from the rack and held it up, showing it to crowd.

The next moment came right after this, when Paris Jackson took the stage and spoke out against white supremacy. Her quote, in full, went thusly:

"We must show these Nazi white supremacist jerks in Charlottesville and all over the country that, as a nation, with liberty as our slogan, we have zero tolerance for their violence, their hatred, and their discrimination."

These overtly political statements apparently irked some viewers, who took to Twitter to air their feelings about these moments.

Some viewers pointed out that they just wanted awards to be presented at the awards show, with politics strictly left out of the night's proceedings.

And one Twitter user was left feeling very heated by the blatant political messaging.

And some attacked Katy Perry specifically.

The show continued with political interludes, like one from a descendant of Robert E. Lee calling for unity and praising the Black Lives Matter movement, and another behind the scenes moment where attendees cheered while a "F*ck Trump" song played. While it's not new for awards shows to get political, or for an MTV awards show in particular to pile on the political messaging, it does feel somewhat new and odd that viewers would react so vehemently against the mention of anything political during Sunday night's VMAs. On a night like this and in a political climate like this, you might expect there to be some solidarity with what's being said during the awards show. This about-face in support from the viewership is interesting, to say the least.