The NFL recently announced that Bad Bunny will headline the Super Bowl halftime show.
NFL.com: Global sensation Bad Bunny to perform at Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.
Today, Apple Music, the NFL and Roc Nation announced that 3x GRAMMY Award-winning global recording artist Bad Bunny will perform at the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. on Sunday, February 8, 2026, airing on NBC.
I will admit that when I heard this announced, I knew it was going to cause some controversy. Despite being a middle-aged white dude, and unlike apparently a number of politicians and commentators, I know who Bad Bunny is. I know he sings in Spanish, and I know he has been critical of President Trump. Ergo, it seemed pretty evident that in our polarized, culture-war-obsessed politics that this was going to cause a rightward backlash of sorts.
I am commenting on this low-priority story because the responses just seem, on balance, kind of ridiculous. (And because it allows me to place in the back of my head the other, more depressing political stories of the week–although this story fits into the broader narrative more than I would like!)
For one thing, the notion that the NFL and NBC (this year’s broadcast partner) is worried about Super Bowl ratings is a bit silly. I don’t think that TPUSA’s counter-programming is making anyone selling commercials at NBC to be quaking in their boots. Via The Hill: Turning Point USA announces ‘All American’ Super Bowl halftime show.
“The All-American Halftime Show” will take place on Super Bowl Sunday, during the big game on Feb. 8. A website for the event gave few other details about Turning Point’s plans, but indicated more information about performers and how the concert will be broadcast would be forthcoming.
Oh look! Following Hegseth’s lead, I see, in announcing a meeting and then figuring out the agenda!
Beyond that, I can’t decide if the “All-American” part is ignorant or insulting (¿por qué no los dos?).
Maybe TPUSA (as apparently, with many others) doesn’t realize that Puerto Rico (Bad Bunny’s birthplace and home) is part of the United States of, say it with me, America.
Getting back to my middle-agedness, I would note that I do not expect Super Bowl halftime shows to be appealing to my demographic. We had our run from 2005 to 2010 when the performances were by Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tommy Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and The Who. (And really, beyond just that window.)
If you look at the list of performers, it is pretty clear that for about three decades, the goal has been to get huge names, all of whom have rather clearly achieved a great deal of success, even if any specific artist may not appeal to any given viewer or set of viewers. Despite my eclectic musical tastes, I was not, to pick an example, super thrilled about The Weekend, but who cares? The last several decades beat marching bands or, Heaven help us, various “Salutes.” Do we want to go back to Up With People being the halftime regulars?
Bad Bunny is one of the most-streamed artists on Spotify (he is currently third, and was the most-streamed in the world from 2020-2022). He has global appeal, and the NFL is actively seeking to expand its international audience. BTW, if you look at that list and compare it to the list of SB halftime performers, there is a lot of crossover.
Nonetheless, Speaker Johnson (who is younger than I am, but puts off an incredibly stuffy old guy vibe) had this reaction.
Here’s the whole quote:
Johnson: Well, it sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience. And I think, you know, there’s so many eyes on the Super Bowl. A lot of young, impressionable children. And I think, you know, in my view, you would have Lee Greenwood or role models doing that. Not somebody like this.
First, BB’s popularity is empirically demonstrated above. So what is it about him that Johnson thinks “lacks appeal to a broader audience”? Hard to say, I guess. I am sure Johnson is concerned solely about the Spanish of it all.
Second, Lee Greenwood?!?! What is he going to do, sing “I am Proud to be an American” on a loop for 15 minutes? (Amusingly, even Greenwood himself seems to acknowledge that is what he would sing–that and the National Anthem.)
BTW, Spotify had Greenwood at 446,760 monthly listeners; it has Bad Bunny at 80,055,744.
That whole discourse made me think of an Amanda Marcotte piece in Slate: MAGA can’t expand its base — and Christian music tells us why. She may overstate her case a bit, but it resonates with Johnson’s Greenwood v. Bad Bunny comparison.
One of the things I have noted is that the Bad Bunny situation underscores, yet again, that the crowd that claims they want to bring humor back is pretty humorless.
Bad Bunny hosted SNL this past weekend, and in his monologue, he made a joke (you know, a story with a humorous climax) that people who didn’t understand what he was saying in Spanish had four months to learn. I thought it was funny enough at the time I saw it.
Not TPUSA!
Although my favorite was MTG:
Not only does she get all snowflakey about the joke, but she turns it into fuel for her culture war nonsense.
And “demonic sexual performances” is borderline parody.
Let me add this: as much as I try to avoid making comments about people’s personal lives, I am growing very weary of conservatives who want to wage culture wars, not living up to their own standards. Green is divorced amid rumors of infidelity on her part. Lee Greenwood, whom Johnson seems to think is a role model, was married five times. This also reminds me of a clip of Steve Bannon extolling marriage in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. Bannon has been married and divorced thrice. And there is, of course, the master of marital morality, the sitting President of the United States.
To be clear: people have complicated lives, and it isn’t for me to say what they should or should not do. But it is oh so very tiresome to be lectured to about sexual mores and general morality by people who do not live up to their own standards.
I suppose that the bottom line of why this all annoys me enough to write about it is that many on the American right keeping slinging accusations about others being snowflakes or not being able to take a joke or about their superior morality, and then when the NFL picks a highly popular act that they don’t like, they are are full of criticisms and attacks based, often, on nothing more than mere knee jerk reaction to something that seem kind of foreigny. Not to mention that I thought the GOP was the party of free enterprise. Is this not a business decision by the NFL, NBC, and Apple?
It just all feels like a microcosm of our times.
And I can’t help but think a lot of this reaction by people like Johnson and Greene isn’t part of a broader white nationalist message that someone who is from Puerto Rico and performs is Spanish doesn’t fit their views of what “American” should look like.
(So much for this being a semi-light diversion of a post.)
Back to humor, if you speak even a little bit of Spanish, you will find this to be amusing.
