The Halftime Panic

Why Bad Bunny Broke the Myth of “Real America”

No one is calling you a racist for skipping the Super Bowl halftime show. People skip halftime every year—for beer runs, bathroom breaks, or the quiet dignity of ignoring pop culture altogether. The charge of bigotry does not arise from apathy. It arises from the tantrum that follows it.

What turned Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance into a cultural bloodbath was not that someone changed the channel, but that an entire wing of the American right treated the performance as an existential threat—evidence of civilizational collapse, national betrayal, or cultural invasion. The reaction was not passive refusal. It was panic dressed up as patriotism.

The modern right has made a habit of converting every popular cultural moment into a battlefield. Movies, music, sports, beer cans—nothing is allowed to exist without being conscripted into a permanent culture war. And when culture refuses to obey, the response is not reflection but invention: alternate realities, alternate histories, alternate Americas.

The central fiction animating this outrage is the idea that there exists a single, “real” America—one that hunts, fishes, listens to country music, speaks English exclusively, worships loudly, and knows instinctively that everything unfamiliar is hostile. This America is treated as a silent majority, even as it increasingly behaves like a resentful minority.

The complaints about Bad Bunny’s performance tend to orbit three alleged offenses: language, sexuality, and nationality. Each collapses under minimal scrutiny.

Language: Spanish Is Not an Insult

The loudest grievance was linguistic: “The whole performance was in Spanish.” This was presented as proof that something foreign had been imposed on a supposedly English-speaking nation.

History, however, refuses to cooperate. When Shakira and Jennifer Lopez performed at the Super Bowl, both sang in Spanish. The republic did not fall. The Constitution remained intact. Notably absent was the apoplectic fury currently on display.

The truth is simpler and more uncomfortable: the language was never the issue. What rankles is the experience of not being centered. Not understanding lyrics can be mildly frustrating—but frustration does not justify the vitriol we witnessed. Discomfort is not oppression, and confusion is not an assault on national identity.

America has never been monolingual in practice, only in myth. Spanish has existed on this continent longer than English has existed in many of its states. Treating bilingualism as sabotage is not patriotism; it is historical illiteracy.

Sexuality: Selective Amnesia in High Definition

Next comes sexuality. Bad Bunny is queer and performs queerness openly. For some, this was evidence that the show was “un-American.”

This argument would be persuasive if it had ever been applied consistently—which it has not. The Super Bowl stage has been graced by openly gay, queer-coded, or androgynous performers for decades.

Lady Gaga performed without controversy. Michael Jackson was celebrated long after rumors and speculation swirled. Prince—not gay, but unapologetically androgynous—delivered what is widely regarded as the greatest halftime show in history, shredding a guitar through “Purple Rain” in an actual downpour.

Even the Red Hot Chili Peppers built an entire aesthetic on sexual ambiguity without triggering a national meltdown.

So again: sexuality is not the issue. Visibility is. The offense is not queerness, but queerness that refuses to apologize, assimilate, or disguise itself as nostalgia.

Nationality: The Wrong Kind of “Foreign”

The complaint that Bad Bunny is “not really American” collapses fastest of all. He is, in fact, a U.S. citizen—born in Puerto Rico under the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917. This is not a loophole; it is law.

More importantly, the Super Bowl has never been a citizenship test. Performers who are not American citizens have headlined without incident: Rihanna, Coldplay, The Who, Paul McCartney, U2, and The Weeknd all performed without provoking a nativist uprising.

Nationality, like language and sexuality, is a pretext. The pattern is unmistakable: the outrage only activates when the performer is both nonconforming and unwilling to flatter conservative nostalgia.

The Alternate-Reality Pageant

Enter the counter-programming: a “patriot” performance promoted by Turning Point USA, featuring Kid Rock and marketed as the “real America.”

Kid Rock is not talentless. His wealth alone refutes that claim. But elevating him as a moral counterweight—an avatar of authenticity, faith, and national virtue—is absurd. He is not Moses descending the mountain; he is a millionaire entertainer who built a career on rebellion before rebranding it as righteousness.

He definitely has some colorful language in this video.

Kid Rock - Balls In Your Mouth - 7/24/1999 - Woodstock 99 East Stage (Official)

The presence of Charlie Kirk hovering behind this spectacle makes the purpose explicit. This was not a concert. It was a signal: a declaration that culture must be partitioned, that America must be split into “us” and “them,” and that class grievances should be drowned out by symbolic warfare.

This is not patriotism. It is misdirection.

What This Is Really About

Strip away the excuses and the argument collapses into something simpler and more revealing. This is not about language, sexuality, or nationality. The hypocrisy gives that away. This is about power—specifically, the loss of cultural dominance by a generation and worldview accustomed to being centered by default.

Music has changed. Audiences have changed. The country has changed. And the most unsettling realization for some is that their discomfort is no longer decisive. They are not the audience culture waits for anymore.

That realization produces anger masquerading as grievance. It demands alternate shows, alternate narratives, alternate Americas—anything to avoid admitting that the world is moving on.

And the numbers tell the quiet truth. Both the official Super Bowl broadcast and even the Puppy Bowl outperformed the “patriot” alternative. Movements that constantly announce their explosive growth rarely need to explain why no one is watching.

The future is not conspiring against anyone. It is merely indifferent to nostalgia. And that, more than any halftime performance, is what truly enrages.