New U2 Anthem Is Cuckoo for CoCo-Pufters and CosPlay Revolutionaries

Kelly Rae Robertson, "U2 is getting victimhood wrong"

How a band that once honored the victims of 9/11 is now distorting what victimhood means.

Twenty-five years ago, in the first Super Bowl halftime show after the Sept. 11 attacks, popular rock band U2 did something that sent chills racing through an entire nation — maybe the world.

They opened with “Beautiful Day,” that soaring anthem of hope and resilience.

Lead singer Bono emerged from the crowd on the field, singing the first verse straight to the fans before stepping onto the heart-shaped stage. The music lifted the Superdome like a fragile promise that light could still break through darkness.

The tone shifted. When “Beautiful Day” ended, the music fell away — and Bono began singing “MLK” a cappella. It sounded like a prayer. Behind the band, a massive black scrim spanning the entire stage fell from the ceiling like a solemn veil.

As Bono sang, names began scrolling upward in bold letters: American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, FDNY, NYPD, and the ordinary office workers who had simply shown up for a Tuesday morning. Nearly 3,000 names, grouped by the horror that claimed them.

Then the backing vocalist, known as Edge, struck the first chords of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and the stadium roared — a deep wave of sound you could feel in your chest. The names kept scrolling as the music built. As the song surged toward its climax, Bono yelled “America!” — a raw, defiant cry that pierced straight into the soul.

When every name had been honored, the scrim fell. Bono opened his jacket to reveal the American flag sewn into the lining. No speeches. No slogans. Just raw, unifying grief and quiet respect.

I still watch that performance whenever I feel my world starting to shake. It hits me like a wave every time — goosebumps rising, heart pounding, tears coming fast. It pulls me straight back to those months after 9/11 — when the country was steady on its feet but broken open with grief.

In those same moments, I reach for reminders of how fragile life really is — and how lucky I am to still be here.

One of them is the documentary One Day in America: 9/11. You see people watching the towers burn — some frozen, others screaming, others running. Survivors tell stories of smoke-filled stairwells, floors on fire, people moving as fast as they can without knowing what they’re running from or toward. Firefighters haul heavy gear up endless flights, knowing they may never come back down.

One group of FDNY firefighters paused in the chaos, shook hands, and told each other what a pleasure it had been to work together. One survived — the one being filmed. The rest died that day.

Then there’s the mother of Mark Bingham, whose son called her from United Airlines Flight 93 to say the plane had been hijacked before the line went dead. She called back and left a voicemail — her voice steady but breaking — telling him the plane was most likely going to be used as a weapon, urging him to find others and fight to take back control of the plane. “I love you, sweetie. Good luck. Bye-bye.”

I can’t listen to that voicemail without my throat tightening.

That was the America I remember. Flags on every car, fluttering until they frayed. Yards lit red, white, and blue. Flight 93 passing over my hometown before crashing just 80 miles away. Funeral after funeral for fallen firefighters.

The brief talk of canceling the Super Bowl lasted only minutes. The decision to play was made — and U2 rose to meet the moment. They started with hope and delivered something sacred.

At the time, my own life was scraping by. That spring, after four long years of poverty, I graduated from Duquesne University. My blind, diabetic mom and I knew the fear of the heat being shut off in a Pittsburgh winter after my father died when I was 14. Instead of taking a full-time job with just a high school diploma, I fought to fulfill his wish that I go to college.

I was making $35 a night as an agate clerk at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review — and $35 for every article I wrote. It wasn’t enough.

To surprise me, my mom skipped paying bills one month to buy me tickets to see U2. After being a superfan since the early ’80s, I finally saw them the day after graduation, on May 6, 2001. It felt symbolic.

They played “Beautiful Day,” and it felt like a promise — that life would get better.

Now, in 2026, U2 has released “American Obituary,” a song about Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three who was shot and killed during a federal immigration operation.

They frame her as a victim worthy of the same kind of moral weight they once gave the innocent dead of Sept. 11.

They are not the same.

The people whose names scrolled behind U2 that night had no choice in their deaths. They were murdered at their desks, on hijacked planes, or in collapsing buildings — blindsided by evil.

By contrast, this was a volatile, active law enforcement situation. By all available accounts, she made the decision to insert herself into that confrontation.

When U2 honored the innocent that night — and Bono cried out “America!” — they honored people simply living their lives.

Turning that moment into a lens for modern political narratives feels less like tribute and more like reinterpretation.

Nothing compares to the moral weight of 9/11. Nothing.

True victims deserve remembrance. But so does clarity about what we are remembering — and why.

U2 once understood that distinction. It's sad they no longer do.

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