Half-Hearted Halftime Outrage

Plus: Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison, endemic fraud in federal welfare, Ghislaine Maxwell won’t talk to Congress, and more…

Neither team scored a touchdown until the fourth quarter. The vast majority of the game saw Seattle running the ball into field goal range and New England failing to get that first down.

Half-hearted halftime rage. For people who need something political to argue about, the real action was obviously the halftime show. Puerto Rican headliner Bad Bunny performed in Spanish the midst of a sugar cane field, with cameos from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin.

The selection of Bad Bunny to headline the show sparked controversy in some corners of the right, partly for his history of liberal statements, partly because they think he isn’t popular, and partly just because he’s Puerto Rican.

In protest, the conservative group Turning Point USA hosted an alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock and a collection of country artists. This counterprogramming attracted about 5 million viewers, which is ample but still far less than the 120 million who watched the official Super Bowl halftime show.

Not even President Donald Trump seemed to have watched the conservative halftime show, judging by his negative review of Bad Bunny’s performance.

Your mileage will vary on how much you liked the show as a piece of music and showmanship.

As someone who listens to a lot of metal, I personally wasn’t all that bothered by not being able to understand the lyrics. The Spanish-language performance probably helped to tamp down a lot of controversy about any politics smuggled into the lyrics.

It’s probably not a great signal for the health of the discourse if the country even threatens to split into red-team/blue-team Super Bowl halftime shows. The endless partisanship and culture-war bickering is tiresome.

On the other hand, I was struck by how little outrage I saw on X following Bad Bunny’s performance. Perhaps having conservative-coded counterprogramming provided for a little short-term social peace. The people who would have been most upset by the mainstage performance were watching something else.

And indeed, the real competition to the Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t Kid Rock. It was not watching the Super Bowl at all.

As popular a television viewing experience as the Super Bowl is, only around 40 percent of households with TVs watch the Super Bowl. That means close to two-thirds of the country is doing something other than watch the game.

America is a big country, and there are lots of ways people choose to spend their time. The trends in media and entertainment toward more on-demand options make this truer every day.

The Super Bowl halftime show is just less of a stage today than it was 15 or 20 years ago. Whoever is on it says a lot less about where American culture is than in the past.

Bad Bunny’s performance didn’t signal the fall of America. It also wasn’t quite the triumph for multiculturalism that some liberal writers seem to think it was.

If the halftime show is less of a showcase of where the culture is, there’s less of a need to have some big culture war about it.

Jimmy Lai sentenced. The Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai was sentenced on Sunday to 20 years in prison for violating the jurisdiction’s “national security” law.

Lai has been in custody since 2020, when he participated in protests against the imposition of the national security law he’s now been convicted of violating. The sentence all but ensures that the elderly man will die in prison.

Lai first came to Hong Kong as a penniless 12-year-old refugee. From that lowly starting position, he managed to make a fortune in Hong Kong’s garment industry before starting the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily.

Lai has long been an advocate for free speech and free markets. In 2023, the Cato Institute awarded him its Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. His sentencing is a travesty of justice and a reminder of how important the right to speak freely is.

QUICK HITS

• The Wall Street Journal reports on endemic fraud in the federal government’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
• Noam Chomsky’s wife responds to the controversy over her husband’s chummy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
• A partial Homeland Security shutdown appears likely, reports Politico.
• Federal prosecutors were told not to investigate Renee Good’s killing.
• Ghislaine Maxwell won’t answer Congress’ questions from prison.

Reporter, Reason

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