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The Super Bowl halftime show won’t be just entertainment next year. It will be a statement, seemingly delivered by the NFL itself.
“You there in the stands, with your hot dog and your Terrible Towel and your Cheesehead hat — pay attention to this!"
This, of course, is the performer who goes by the name “Bad Bunny” and who has landed the world’s most coveted halftime gig. The choice was a paw to the nose of conservatives in the NFL fan base, most of whom could have happily lived out their lives without knowing who this man is.
Heartland America is not too consumed with who wears what at the Met Gala, where Bad Bunny’s gender-fluid fashion choices often make headlines.
Nor can most Americans understand his lyrics, since Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a native of Puerto Rico, performs in Spanish. He said cheekily on “Saturday Night Live” that Americans who don’t speak Spanish have four months to learn.
About 14% of Americans speak Spanish in the home, and there are cities and towns where Spanish speakers are in the majority. The Hispanic population is growing both in Utah and across the U.S., and featuring a Spanish-language performer from a U.S. territory is actually kind of a nice idea.
And Bad Bunny, to the surprise and consternation of those of us who don’t closely follow pop music, is, in fact, a global superstar. Tens of millions of people love him. A writer for People magazine said of him, “To say the artist has taken over 2025 is an understatement.”
But giving this particular performer the stage at one of the most celebrated events in the U.S. was a terrible decision at this particular moment in time. It was, as a headline in The Hill put it, “an aggressive play call.”
Bad Bunny — who took his stage name from a childhood picture of him looking grumpy in a bunny costume — has been openly critical of the Trump administration and said he would not tour in the U.S. this year because he didn’t want there to be ICE raids at his concerts.
There’s no shortage of celebrities who loathe Donald Trump, of course — some have even left the country because of him. There are also plenty of Americans who voted for Trump but are not happy with the aggressive deportation going on. But polling by Pew Research Center shows a sharp partisan divide on Trump’s immigration policies, with the majority of Republicans supporting his actions. And emotions are running hot on the subject right now.
Into this mix, we now have Kristi Noem saying that ICE will be “all over” the Super Bowl, and some people at Turning Point USA are suggesting an alternative halftime show featuring Creed for conservatives.
To which reasonable NFL fans might say: Please stop.
Please stop with the politics on both sides. Can’t we just watch football and funny commercials and be one nation indivisible for a couple of hours in February? Eat pizza and wings, watch someone perform at halftime who won’t light up the FCC’s obscenity, indecency and profanity hotline the next day? Isn’t there some middle ground between Lee Greenwood and Bad Bunny?
Football fandom is one of the few things in America that is not remotely partisan. Surveys have shown that roughly equivalent numbers of Democrats and Republicans say they are NFL fans.
The league doesn’t choose the halftime performer itself — it’s a process that also involves producers Roc Nation and Apple Music, and the host city — so we can’t pin this on Roger Goodell. But surely somebody in the chain of command could bring a voice of reason, make an argument that the NFL, given its importance to Americans, could choose to be a unifying force, not a dividing one.
A writer for The New York Times suggested that it was conservatives making all the fuss about Bad Bunny, even while saying, “There is no doubt (Bad Bunny) will take the opportunity to make some kind of political statement” during the Super Bowl show.
We’re never going back to the days when halftime entertainment was marching bands forming the shape of the Liberty Bell (1967) or an eagle (1969), or a performance by “Up With People.” But we also shouldn’t rush toward the day when we separate into ideological silos during halftime of a football game. And yet here we are.
An ode to Ed Sullivan in another era at CBS
Amid the Bad Bunny uproar and the coverage of the partnership between Bari Weiss and CBS, I was interested to come across a recommendation from Laura Schlessinger, the no-nonsense talk-show host famous for her advocacy for children, marriage and morality.
Schlessinger recently watched a documentary on Ed Sullivan, the host of a family friendly variety show that aired from 1948 to 1971 on CBS. Sullivan is perhaps most famous for introducing The Beatles and Elvis Presley to the American public, but he also broke ground in his promotion of Black performers.
“Ed Sullivan was actively against racism before the civil rights movement, so he ignored executives who told him not to shake hands or put his arm around the black artists he brought onto his show. He was shaking hands and kissing the cheeks of his guests at a time when music labels weren’t putting Motown artists on the covers of their own albums. He changed the entire picture,” Schlessinger wrote on Substack.
She added: “We don’t know Ed Sullivan as a great civil rights uplifter. But that’s what he was.” She encouraged people to watch the Netflix special ”Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan” as a family.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re too young to know who he was. Watch it anyway to see what it means to be a good role model,” she wrote.
But I’ve got to warn you, watching clips from The Ed Sullivan Show can make you nostalgic for the time when men wore suits everywhere.
Recommended reading
Jay Evensen has weathered many a government shutdown. None of them have made any difference in America’s staggering debt load.
He writes: “You may argue about moral imperatives or for the government’s responsibility for the well-being of its citizens. But the items in question have price tags, and the nation has a debt load that is speeding out of control. Major ratings agencies already have downgraded the nation’s credit rating. Moral imperatives scatter in the face of a fiscal crisis.”
The full piece is here:
The government shutdown won’t tackle what’s really wrong with America
While free speech is important, it is the lack of foundational moral values that is driving so many of our problems today, Camille Williams writes.
“John Adams’ view that ‘Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,’ acknowledges that our political system assumes some cultural unity — solidarity — that binds us together. But when there are no common standards for measuring morality, freedom, equality, and toleration, persuasion is jettisoned in favor of power."
Free speech is not enough. We are a nation adrift morally
There are skeptics and then there are “super-distrusters,” Benjamin Pacini explains.
“Profound distrust sows the seeds of a kind of vengeful populism that can wreak real havoc if left unchecked. That’s because populist anger rarely stays abstract; it looks for scapegoats. And tragically, it often falls hardest on those who deserve it least.”
Read more here: Rise of the ‘super distrusters’
End notes
Lately, I’ve had to add two new shows to my weekend TV viewing schedule: Batya Ungar-Sargon’s show on NewsNation on Saturday afternoon and Trey Gowdy’s show on Fox on Sunday night. No más, as Bad Bunny would say. I’ve got leaves to rake.
You may know Ungar-Sargon from her writing in Newsweek or The Free Press, or her many appearances on TV. Here’s what she’s been up to lately, and why she’s a Democrat who supports many of Trump’s policies.
How Batya Ungar-Sargon went from coastal elite to ‘MAGA lefty’
And if you’re wondering why you can’t open social media without seeing someone opining on Bari Weiss, and have no idea who she is or why you should care, read this:
Who is Bari Weiss, and why does the reported sale of The Free Press matter?
As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.