also the Seahawks won
Weird melee of cultural jackassery. I did not hear the Bad Bunny Super bowl half-time performance — saw it visually, mostly. Seemed good. I recognized some Puerto Rico touchstones in it — a bit of an expansive celebration which you, curmudgeonly old white yokel, should be able to identify with broadly if not specifically. Ends with a display of all the flags of the hemisphere, including incidentally Canada and USA. I suppose this is a source of agitation — “It’s the USA only, bastard!”. I suppose if you want to be truly woke you need to shout out all the First Nations.
The much mocked “Turning Point USA” half-time performance, by way of commentary, I ended up hearing more audio out of. They have Kid Rock lip-syncing. I like a couple Kid Rock albums — right when he turned to country-rock, don’t like anything before that or after that when he decided he wanted to be the next Ted Nugent. They have some anti-trans country song by someone or other. They have a violinist. All a little bit of a “whatever” in and of themselves. But I am struck by how trying too hard and narrowcasting it is. They dedicate it all to Charlie Kirk. Bring up Charlie Kirk a lot. Oblivious or unconcerned that no one outside their orbit gives two shits about Charlie Kirk, even after they tried to pound it for political gain. In the last presidential election, much was made of Trump’s “winning the culture” more so policy, a breeze through various manly podcast spaces that had tapped out of politics and only go so in some weird anti-woke space. He pulled together a number of fragments there, broadly where I don’t know what “dead centre of the mainstream” is. They key to their political sway is they are not altogether political in a sense of making great announcements of philosophy. I suppose we can drop Bad Bunny and his show into the same equation only… more broadly supported.
For his part, Charlie Kirk had tweeted responses on half time shows. He liked Beyonce’s performance. I don’t know if maybe Beyonce had more than one show, because her’s was more overtly political and defiant a display. Elsewhere in comments, I see a little bit of revisionism on the “wardrobe malfunction” of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, mocking a right for being in a huff as usual — though that one is more understandable a point — brushing past and forgetting and not having now that it is convenient left-ward commentary on the power dynamics of the show and what the heck that even was.