The teams taking the field in Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl are of little interest to fans outside of New England or the Pacific Northwest, but the contest between competing halftime shows may make the big game at least remotely worth watching.<\/p>\n
The NFL chose Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rap superstar with global appeal, as its headliner, sparking outrage from MAGA cultists who don\u2019t know (or refuse to accept) that Puerto Rico is an American territory, making Bad Bunny an American citizen despite his brown skin and \u201cradical leftist\u201d penchant for singing in Spanish.<\/p>\n
Turning Point USA \u2014 the \u201cChristian-values\u201d cash machine founded by the late Charlie Kirk and now run by his widow, Erika, as a post-assassination ATM \u2014 is countering Bad Bunny with a \u201cfamily-friendly, patriotic alternative\u201d headlined by Kid Rock.<\/p>\n
Rock is a longtime Trump lickspittle who has seen his middling career as a white rapper\/Lynyrd Skynyrd graverobber revived as a \u201cMeth Elvis\u201d for MAGA bootlickers. The TPUSA \u201cevent\u201d will also feature Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett, three rhinestone stars of Corporate Country Radio most Americans have never heard or heard of. What, did the cantankerous remains of Ted Nugent turn down a slot?<\/p>\n
Pop-punk pioneers Green Day will kick off the musical festivities at an official NFL opening ceremony. It\u2019s a safe bet the San Francisco natives will play an updated version of \u201cAmerican Idiot,\u201d their 2004 hit released when it seemed certain George \u201cDubya\u201d Bush had a lifetime lock on the dubious distinction of worst president ever.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s doubtful that Kid Rock will perform his 1997 song, \u201cCool, Daddy Cool,\u201d which includes the following lyrics, which I swear I am not making up:<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung ladies, young ladies, I like \u2019em underage\/Some say that\u2019s statutory, but I say it\u2019s mandatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
While these cringy sentiments rhyme with the Epstein Files, they don\u2019t ring as \u201cfamily friendly.\u201d Besides, TPUSA\u2019s target audience seems committed to \u201cproving\u201d they can make the files \u2014 and the more than 5,000 references to Trump they contain \u2014 disappear simply by \u201cpatriotically\u201d refusing to look at them.<\/p>\n
TPUSA\u2019s \u201cAll-American (All-White) Halftime Show\u201d will be available to stream for free on the \u201cnonprofit\u2019s\u201d YouTube, Rumble and X channels and broadcast on TBN, OAN, Daily Wire+ and other right-wing propaganda outlets the vast majority of Americans don\u2019t watch.<\/p>\n
Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cradical leftist\u201d performance will be broadcast on NBC, Peacock and the Spanish-language channel Telemundo to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Bad Bunny was Spotify\u2019s No. 1 global top artist for 2025.<\/p>\n
Under his \u201cMeth Elvis\u201d jumpsuit, Kid Rock is Kid Rock.<\/p>\n
A confession: I don\u2019t have much interest in either halftime show. The only two I ever watched all the way through were Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2008 and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 2009 (when my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers won the franchise\u2019s sixth Lombardi Trophy on James Harrison\u2019s \u201cpick-six\u201d and Santonio Holmes\u2019 circus toe-tap in the end zone).<\/p>\n
Harrison and Holmes are Black, as are the majority of players in the NFL. That apparently makes them apes to the current president of the United States.<\/p>\n
Trump said he wouldn\u2019t attend Sunday\u2019s game because California is \u201ctoo far\u201d from Washington, D.C. Anyone who believes that likely also believes that Kid Rock \u2014 born into wealth and raised on a six-acre estate in suburban Detroit \u2014 is a rags-to-riches \u201cAmerican Badass.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chicken-in-chief is skipping the Super Bowl because the thundering chorus of jeers and boos he stood to face could\u2019ve pushed kickoff past midnight \u2014 especially after the oaf of office chose Thursday to post an \u201cAI slop\u201d depiction of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.<\/p>\n
Apes!<\/p>\n
Even for the crudest, cruelest, dumbest president in American history, this is a staggering new low of open, ugly racism from the alleged \u201cleader of the free world.\u201d In any other era, a local dog-catcher\u2019s political career could not survive such a childish, stupid and hateful attack. In the Trump era, it was just another Thursday.<\/p>\n
Initially, the White House defiantly dismissed the outrage as \u201cfake,\u201d then pivoted to pinning the now-deleted racist post on a mysterious rogue staffer. If you believe that, you likely believe that as a teenager, Kid Rock sang \u201c\u2018Sweet Home Alabama\u2019 all summer long\u201d while chilling by the pool at his wealthy parents\u2019 six-acre estate.<\/p>\n
We should thank Trump for his latest racist \u201cmonkeyshines\u201d as heartily as we condemn him. Every time he indulges his inner middle-school bully, he does decent folk a favor by moving the goalposts for what his remaining supporters are willing to live with and defend. Anyone who defends or applauds the racist, hateful behavior of this sorry excuse for a human being is a sorry excuse for a human being.<\/p>\n
Like the ancient Romans, Americans love \u201cbread and circuses.\u201d No matter who is playing for the Lombardi, Super Bowl Sunday is the \u201chigh holy day\u201d of American sports. Just about everybody tunes in.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s competing halftime shows reflect a society mesmerized by spectacle and comfortably numb to scandal. After almost 250 years, our republic is an empire in decline under daily attack by a soulless, self-obsessed Caesar. And the response of his dwindling but devoted cult of followers?<\/p>\n
\u201cCool, Daddy cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
NOTE: At least one Chief is in the championship game. Former Lakeland star CJ Dippre is a tight end for the New England Patriots and a welcome reason to watch the game. As a Steelers fan since birth, I\u2019m faced with the challenge of cheering on CJ while praying the hated Patriots lose to the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, will probably be asleep in his recliner by halftime. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The teams taking the field in Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl are of little interest to fans outside of New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1590,201,182,139,1559,1560,28,1471,178,180,179,8208],"class_list":{"0":"post-109140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-chris-kelly","9":"tag-lackawanna-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-opinion-columnists","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-puerto-rico","16":"tag-scranton","17":"tag-scranton-headlines","18":"tag-scranton-news","19":"tag-super-bowl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}