SASHA STONE: The NFL Used Bad Bunny to Divide America to Boost Ratings.

So what’s the play? Well, if these are the performers slated for the Super Bowl, they know exactly what the response will be. They needed the people who ordinarily wouldn’t watch the Super Bowl to turn out like they did when Taylor and Travis were the happy couple kissing after the Chiefs’ win. Bonanza ratings, like 150 million people tuned in. You think they’re going to get that number with only football fans watching?

So it was an easy way to generate a culture war and manifest a fake controversy to do two things: allow the Left to bloviate and virtue signal (mission accomplished) and force every social justice warrior and wine mom to watch the Super Bowl just to see Bad Bunny and then make their teary or angry TikTok video about HATE and RACISM and ICE!

This is their religion and their manifesto. We’ve arrived at the “No human is illegal” part of the lawn sign.

Actually, it’s even further than that, Abe Greenwald writes in his daily Commentary newsletter:

Bad Bunny’s performance at the Super Bowl last night was the first halftime show that would have benefited from the addition of a study guide. Not only was it almost entirely in Spanish, but the action and scenery were largely inscrutable, as well. I’ve now read enough supplementary material to get a general sense of things. It was a mini musical about labor exploitation, American colonialism, social inequity, Latin American pride, and Puerto Rican independence. Turns out that one of the songs Bad Bunny sang is considered a “resistance anthem” and the flag that he waved was not the official flag of Puerto Rico but that of an old independence movement. It was, in short, about trolling MAGA and owning the right.

Conservatives who are worked up about the performance are making a mistake. The halftime revolución spectacular didn’t do the left any favors. The whole thing struck me as one of those “the resistance is going too far” moments—another out-there gambit that liberals and leftists see as triumphant but that actually makes them seem unpleasant to most everyone else, not just right-wingers.

The unpleasantness has nothing to do with Bad Bunny’s being Puerto Rican or the pride he takes in his Puerto Rican heritage. I respect ethnic and national pride. I’m a Jew and an American, so how could I not? (National parades are a different story, but that’s only because they make it inconvenient to get around the city.) It’s unpleasant because devotees of a beloved American pastime don’t want an exclusionary, anti-American extravaganza shoved in their faces halfway through the fun.

But Roger Goddell does. Bad Bunny accomplishes many things for him simultaneously. He got the right – including Trump – bigly angry, which guarantees plenty of positive news coverage for the NFL from the DNC-MSM. Bad Bunny “singing” in Spanish is great for the league, because it helps sure up the next big market for expansion. A week ago, the NFL Website announced: NFL announces multiyear return to Mexico City for regular season games starting in 2026.

We all had lots of fun at the start of the day dunking on the Washington Post for running a story about Colin Kaepernick:

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was top of mind for The Washington Post ahead of Super Bowl LX on Sunday.

Kaepernick was described in the story as Super Bowl LX’s “most relevant” figure despite the 49ers not making it and the subject of the story being out of football for nearly 10 years.

“The game will be played in his former home stadium, in the place where his protest made him a national lightning rod and a global symbol,” Adam Kilgore wrote of Kaepernick. “The social issues swirling around America’s largest sporting spectacle carry distinct echoes of what prompted his actions and what led to his exile. And yet he remains outside the conversation and invisible within the confines of the NFL.”

Outside the conversation? Last night was the culmination of everything he set in motion in the twilight of the Obama era. Back in January of 1976, a decade in which most Super Bowls were blowouts (err, just like last night!), long defunct Sport magazine had the headline, “Let’s Have A Super Bowl The Pre-Game Show Can Be Proud Of.” Last night’s Super Bowl was so boring that the controversy surrounding its halftime show completely overshadowed the game on the field. Which Goddell probably doesn’t mind one bit.