“Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, who has deep connections in the music industry and Hollywood, had been pushing the league to align with groups working to combat social injustice, including those endorsed by celebrities…In August 2019, the N.F.L. struck a deal with Jay-Z’s entertainment company, Roc Nation, to produce the Super Bowl halftime show and help the league support social justice efforts. In one swoop, the league had a foothold in the music business, a seal of approval from one of the country’s biggest Black celebrities and a way to reach a younger, more diverse audience….”
The stupidity and crassness of this boggles the mind. A sports league’s product, image and appeal to fans relies on the game, not who performs at the half-time show of the last game of the season. Meanwhile, genuine fans, who watch sports to escape politics not to be immersed in them, are likely to be at best annoyed by such pandering and posturing, and at worst alienated.
The pandering hit Defcon 5 this year, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell went for the 2026 “It isn’t what it is” title by claiming that anti-Trump, anti-I.C.E., cross-dressing, Spanish speaking rapper Bad Bunny would be a unifying presence at the Super Bowl. The Axis news media rushed to defend the indefensible choice, with some actually claiming that Americans were “rushing to learn Spanish” before the game. Riiiight. (How ironic: we have millions of Spanish-speaking “migrants” here who can’t make the effort to learn the primary language of the nation and culture they live in, but Americans will learn their language just to enjoy a Super Bowl half-time show! ) Bad Bunny was so “unifying” that Turning Point USA’s protest “All-American Halftime Show” got at least 25 million views on just YouTube and Rumble alone, with the numbers still climbing. The organizers have already announced that there will be an alternate show in 2027.
Well played, NFL!
Morons.
Of course, the NFL’s popularity to a great extent has always depended on morons: morons who are willing to get their brains and bodies crunched for cash (the mortality tables show that NFL players sacrifice more than five years of life for their short careers); morons who get a thrill from watching violent collisions and tackles, morons who are driven to the gang- and cult-like comradery of football fans. Roy Blount Jr, a great sportswriter, wrote in his book “About Three Bricks Shy of a Load,” that one of the best arguments for football was “pandemonium.” He wrote. “What a great thing football is, that it allows us at rare moments to be pandemonious.”
Yeah, I guess that explains the appeal of riots too.
My relatively few intelligent football fan friends call their obsession a “guilty pleasure,” like following professional wrestling. Hey, different strokes, man.The thing is, people used to say the same about boxing.
In that vein, Chuck Klosterman, a football fan despite his obvious intellect, argues in his new book “Football” that the sport is doomed, and has begun its “death spiral.” Americans, he claims, who today spend billions for NFL tickets, and fan paraphernalia, will eventually consider the game an anachronism, like horse racing, boxing, littering, indoor smoking and calling women “honey.”
Klosterman doesn’t exactly say football is doomed because it’s unethical, but that’s where his analysis ends up. Interestingly for a football fan with a three-digit IQ, he supports the moron theory of the game’s popularity with the masses. Noting that a typical game has about eleven minutes of actual action, he writes, “The intermittent moments of nothingness add to the pleasure. You can hold an entire conversation by talking in between plays without losing focus on the game itself. You can think about what you just saw or what might happen next. You can check your phone or drink a beer or daydream about something completely unrelated. Your mind can relax without detaching from engagement.” At the game, of course, you can scream, chant, get in fights, drool over scantily-clad cheerleaders and drink yourself into oblivion. Football is a game for the ADD afflicted, which is, increasingly, the majority of the public.
Nonetheless, the clock is running out. The ethos of the country, Klosterman says, and its favorite sport (I could debate that label, but not today) are on a collision course. He gives two reasons.
First, Klosterman argues that TV advertising simply doesn’t work any more The NFL’s more than $5 billion in estimated television advertising revenue makes no sense: this is why all sports TV advertising is increasingly turning to gambling. Eventually advertisers, he believes, will stop spending money on television spots. Klosterman doesn’t emphasize this but I will: the close ties between all professional sports and gambling will not end well, especially for football. Some day soon a field goal kicker or a quarterback will be caught shaving points in a high profile game. Like basketball, football is easy to rig. That scandal (or scandals) will grease the skids for the NFL.
The second reason, no surprise, is CTE. Fewer Americans let their children play football now as the dangers of accumulated concussions become undeniable. Violence is a major reason why football is so popular, and there is no way to make the game less dangerous without making it less violent. Klosterman foresees football’s pipeline drying up as the country’s values diverge from the sport’s. Football, he writes, “will never completely disappear, in the same way you can still hear jazz on NPR and you can still smoke Lucky Strikes inside a casino.” Pro football, however, will cease to be a major sport.
I hope he’s right.
Ethics Alarms 
We probably should be happy for something taken over by progressive propaganda to inevitably wither away and fail – as all successful ventures broken by progressivism inevitably do because progressives don’t create anything successful or lasting but only tear down and parasitically leach off the successes of others.
But we should also slightly mourn the destruction – because there is something inherently good in seeing teams vie against each other in grueling circumstances. I say that knowing that CTE aspect of the game is worthy enough of it ending.
But don’t think that the progressive brain trust will also mourn the passing of the latest crop their locust-like selves move on from. They’ll be happy that anything extoling rough hard work gets dismantled.
As Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time, none of the kneelers, including its cynical originator, over-the-hill quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ever explained coherently what they were kneeling about. What “police brutality”? Oh, you know, Mike Brown, whom Black Lives Matters says was “murdered” on its website. What social justice issues? Oh, you know: it’s time for white people to be discriminated against to make up for slavery. The left turn was a greed-induced mass virtue signal to blacks, clueless young fans, and Democrats. (It helped that President Trump vociferously attacked Kaepernick and Co., so the kneeling appealed to the Trump Deranged too. (See Dissonance Scale, Cognitive)
Simply put the “activism” does not have to do necessarily with “social justice” and social justice is psychological code for DEMOGRAPHIC REPLACEMENT. Once this is seen, the entire picture changes.
The “message” of Don Señor Bad Bunny and his ultra-vulgar spectacle is understood simply by seeing it for exactly what it is. It is undermining cultural porn-slop the purpose of which is to pervert not merely the mind, but something deeper. Once it is allowed, without critical restraint and opposition into the political body it works like an acid the purpose of which is subversion. This is not art in any elevating sense of the word, but it definitely is enactment of arrival on the scene — and it can have nothing but bad effect.
Learn Spanish to understand what is said?! He does not speak Spanish. It is an extreme low-level mumbling that I cannot even think how to translate. Spanish is an extremely sophisticated language both intellectually capable and artfully beautiful. Reggaeton dialect is as ugly, even more ugly, than rap-English.
I sympathize for what comes next in the declining social and spiritual world of America. The tide of opposition to the acutely vulgar in the ethic of conservative opposition cannot complete with the tsunami of popular revolt.
Who did this?!?! Who allowed thus?!?!
Si, Si, Si! Verdad!
I could not distinguish a single word that came out of his mouth.
Your aunt would pass out if she could.
I remember an interview with Thomas Sowell where he explained why low-class and vulgar became the ‘authentic’ black culture. He said in the 1950’s and 60’s there was debate about what was ‘authentic’ black culture. A black professor insisted that the culture of black professionals; physicians, teachers, bankers, etc should be the standard for black culture. They should shape the ideals of how black Americans should aspire to act and behave. White leftist academics insisted that no, it should be the poorly educated semi-criminal culture that was the ‘true’ black American culture. Guess who won that debate? In similar fashion the W.E.B. DuBois v. Booker T. Washington debates decided that black Americans should be funneled into manual labor instead of higher education.
My pet theory is that the leftist coastal elites are racist and aristocratic. They really feel that minorities are mentally inferior to whites, but they need them for near-slave labor and for votes to maintain power. They really fear poor and middle class whites, who could easily take the place of their idiot children if we actually allowed a meritocracy to rule. So, the elites need to eliminate the educational opportunities and reduce their share of the voting pool of poor and middle class whites. I mean, I could be wrong, but it does seem to explain the observed behavior of society for the last 30 years.
There seems to be skullduggery afoot.
You aren’t far from the truth.
Alizia,
I agree with what you wrote. I saw part of the hafltime show and, frankly, I didn’t get it. Any of it. And, I consider myself to have a cultural IQ above room temperature. I suspect the ratings numbers are gonna be enlightening.
What was this Bad Bunny guy trying to do? Tell the story of Latin American cultural heights before that dirty, diseased ridden Italian and his ships sailed for the Spanish Crown, stumbled upon a whole new set of lands, and systematically raped, pillaged, and plundered his way across the New World? Was it some sort of celebration of egalitaian societies living peacefully and harmoniously with the land until West European ghaslty ideas of land ownership and territorialism came along and stole it from the indigenous populations (ignoring that whole human sacrifice to Chok Mul thingy)?
I am not sure how you sell “inclusion and mutual respect” by inviting a known Puerto Rican separatist* anti-US rapper to perform at the Super Bowl who says he planned to sing the entire show in Spanish, literally and figuratively flipping the international symbol of contempt at the host culture, viewers, and country, but that’s just me. Frankly, Pit Bull is more popular and would have been more enteraining. But, he is Cuban and hates the Castro Brothers so we can’t have that . . . Even Lady Gaga couldn’t save the NFL from itself.
As for Bun Bun’s music, I simply find his gutteral mumblings ridiculous and unlistenable (is that a word?) Reggaeton makes my skin crawl just as much as poorly articulated singing in English does. I liked some of the early hip hop and rap because it was (to me, anyway) the heavy metal and/or hard rock version of blues and soul. Then, it got boring and vulgar and I lost interest.
What message was the NFL trying to send? Was it, “Hey, Latinos! We’re down with your heritage and pop culture so we’re bringing in this cool Puerto Rican dude by the name of . . . (Rog, what’s this guy’s name again . . . ?) Bad Bun Bee Tuna? Yeah! That guy! It’s gonna be so cool! Come share some tacos al carbón, guac, and Tecate! ¡Pa’rriba la partria!”
Apparently, the Bud Light fiasco was lost on the NFL and the Super Bowl planners. Here’s a suggestion: If you’re gonna alienate 90% of your market with some stunt like this, you better be prepared for the blowback.
jvb
*PS: Bun Boy should check out his country’s history. It is a corrupt and inept political system that lives solely off of the US largesse. Were it not for tons of Dollars flooding the country, it would fail in about 120 hours. Every time a referendum is proposed to become a US state, it fails by some huge margin. D.C. should say, “Cool. You don’t want us and our backing? Great. We’re gone. Have a nice life.”
Me too. Puerto Rican independence? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! Ever heard of Haiti?
There’s still one major pipeline of football players gushing into the pool of NFL talent: poor black kids. Before integration, football was staffed by poor Italian and Polish and Slavic kids from western Pennsylvania. Playing football beat the hell out of getting black lung in a coal mine. Now, football is the legal way for poor black kids to strike it rich if they’re too short or too bulky to play basketball and can’t hit a baseball.
Regarding Bad Bunny’s bizarre halftime show. The sound was terrible. Was he speaking Spanish? Hard to tell. I couldn’t make out anything coming out of his mouth. Subtitles would have been helpful. And it really was Havana Social Club style Afro-Cuban stuff done really poorly. And this was supposed to introduce Americans to Latin American culture? What about Xavier Cugat, Harry Belafonte, Desi Arnaz, Santana, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estephan, Havana Social Club, Flaco Jemenez, Shakira, just to name a few. And when did Latin American culture involve guys grabbing their crotches and women twerking? Isn’t that cultural appropriation from black culture? And isn’t Lady Gaga Italian American? Where’s the authenticity?
And sugar cane? Ninety-five percent of the sugar cane grown in the Florida Everglades is harvested mechanically. Very little sugar cane is grown in Puerto Rico. But we need to be introduced to the fact Puerto Ricans are good with a machete?
“Subtitles would have been helpful.”
Subtitles would have rendered the football game rated R.
Caramba!
Yes, the crutch grabbing and twerking is just creepy. That’s what multi-culturalism had brought us to? The NFL should be embarrassed.
Multiculturalism has always been aimed to bring everyone down, not up.
The influencers passed over literally every other cultures’ high-arts opportunities to pull out the most depraved options to extol. Then told us we were racist and anti-diversity when we rightly turned our noses.
“But we need to be introduced to the fact Puerto Ricans are good with a machete?”
Thank goodness it wasn’t a Haitian pop-star.
You make a very good point, Michael. The show had nothing to do with football. It’s simply a pop music concert, the point of which is to get as many pop music fans as possible to watch. It has nothing to do with football or a national event. It’s simply a pop music show. The NFL gets all the football fans to watch the game by showing a football game. They get non-football fans to watch by hosting a pop music concert. Why show Kid Rock when all his fans are already watching the football? Why not double your viewership by going after a totally different demographic. They keep saying how Senor Bunny is the most downloaded artist on Spotify. Choice made! I don’t think they needed to pay Jay Zee to make that decision. An intern could have done that research in two minutes.
But boy, that whole thing was tacky and poorly produced.
I have to say, I got a kick out of the vignette of the guys up on power poles. Were they up there stealing power and causing shorts?
My Haitian machete comment was a dig at their 19th century overthrow of their French plantation elite.
All the Cubans I grew up around had, and were handy with, machetes.
No doubt.
No doubt.
So were the Haitian revolutionaries.
“And when did Latin American culture involve guys grabbing their crotches and women twerking?”
The X-chromosomal Units were grabbing their…um…junk, too.
“And sugar cane?“
Cane was to Caribbo-Hispanics what Cotton was to Southern slavery; the parallel which exists will only register/resonate with the oppressed, the terminally woke/guilt inundated, and the savvy handlers who play them with spectacular aplomb.
“(Both) sugar cane and cotton were used to establish profitable, labor-intensive industries, drawing parallels between the historical exploitation in those industries.”
PWS
Though I am the most contemptable type of male in ‘merican culture, I hope at my neighborhood Dollar General that my middle age large mature black woman with great nails and presence never stops calling me “honey”.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show sign language interpreter is making history
They didn’t put up subtitles but they had a sign language translator? Who was historic because she was Puerto Rican?
DEFCON 5 is the normal peacetime DEFCON. You probably wanted to use DEFCON 1.
I think pretty much every Super Bowl Halftime show since Tom Petty has been garbage. So…
One of the 25 million TVs tuned to the TP-USA alternative was ours. The music was solid (if a bit too heavy on the country-rock), we could understand it all, and only one song that I heard (a number by Lee Brice that directly addressed the “T” in LGTBQ) had anything overtly political or social.