I felt a bit embarrassed yesterday when I left a voice mail message for someone that ended with “Have a good weekend; not sure if you’re a football fan, but I’m rooting for Seattle since they’re closer to Oregon than the Rams.”
Oops. After I hung up I realized that I’d just demonstrated how little I follow the NFL (not at all, basically), since the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams for the NFC championship a few weeks ago, and Seattle played the New England Patriots in today’s Super Bowl.
Which I did watch, this being the first NFL game I’d seen this season.
It was the most entertaining not-at-all-close Super Bowl contest in my lengthy Super Bowl watching memory. Seattle always had the lead, but it was just 3-0 after the first quarter, 9-0 at halftime, and 12-0 after the third quarter, with the final score being 29-13 after Seattle scored 17 and New England 13 in the fourth quarter.
The game felt like more of a blowout than 29-13, since the Patriots only scored after the outcome was basically locked-in. Seattle’s defense was overpowering, and their quarterback, Sam Darnold, outplayed the New England quarterback, Drake Maye.
So much for the football game. The real action for many viewers was the Bad Bunny halftime show. I’d been looking forward to it ever since I heard that Donald Trump hated the fact that the NFL had invited Bad Bunny — who isn’t a big fan of Trump.
Almost always, anyone Trump despises is someone I like. This holds true for Bad Bunny. I watched the Grammys recently and enjoyed what Bad Bunny had to say in one of his acceptance speeches. They mostly were in Spanish, but he criticized ICE in English.
Accepting the award for best música urbana album, Bad Bunny began his speech saying, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say: ICE out!”
The crowd inside the show, which took place in Los Angeles, overwhelmingly responded with cheers, according to what was heard on the telecast.
“We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens,” he said. “We are humans and we are Americans.”
Not surprisingly, Trump trashed Bad Bunny’s halftime show in a rambling nonsensical Truth Social post.
Well, anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish couldn’t understand what Bad Bunny was saying, because he only spoke three words in English: God bless America. By the way, the show’s focus on Puerto Rico wasn’t a “slap in the face” to the United States, since Puerto Rico is part of the United States and the people of Puerto Rico are citizens of the United States.
Trump was correct, though, about the mainstream media giving the halftime show great reviews. Here’s a New York Times story, “Bad Bunny Delivers Joyful Super Bowl Halftime Show.”
Would he be political? Would he stick to the hits? And would Lady Gaga — or Ricky Martin — make an appearance?
In the end, Bad Bunny managed to hit all those notes at his halftime performance, walking out in an off-white football jersey labeled “OCASIO” (after his full name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) and the number 64, and leading a show that featured a joyful celebration of Latin heritage, before he spiked a football in triumph.
His performance included Lady Gaga doing a salsa-style version of her streaming smash with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile” (in English), and later Ricky Martin — who arguably began the crossover process for modern Latin pop that led to Bad Bunny — performing Bad Bunny’s track “Lo Que le Pasó a Hawaii.” (Both stars had been cited by online bettors in the run-up to the show, with decent odds.)
Featuring a sugar cane field, a wedding seemingly officiated onstage, a New York-style street scene complete with a bodega and a pan-American parade, the show spanned country and city, family and hemisphere, work and play and dancing everywhere. It placed Bad Bunny’s beloved Puerto Rico at the center of a communal celebration, where vintage salsa and traditional bomba and plena easily segued out of reggaeton and dembow. The sounds were mostly organic, not electronic: a brassy salsa band, a white-clad band of plena percussionists. Bad Bunny was summoning a Latin heritage across generations, one that recognized hard work — cane-cutting, electric-grid repairs — alongside the good times workers sweated to earn.
He drew on his latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” as well as hits from his previous ones, and he put Latin rhythms up front. Cultural and political messages were tucked in. “Lo Que le Pasó a Hawaii” worries that, as in Hawaii, Puerto Rico’s culture could be overwhelmed by outsiders. “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), which mentions Puerto Rico’s too-frequent power failures, accompanied a sequence of workers on utility poles.
The set was densely packed with detail, Easter eggs and celebrity cameos. (Pedro Pascal and Cardi B were among the revelers onstage.) As he did during his 2025 residency in Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny performed some of the set on the pink and yellow porch of what he has dubbed “La Casita,” a replica of a humble house associated with Puerto Rican architecture. He also nodded to his historic win, just last week, of the Grammy for album of the year, handing the award as an inspiration to a young Latino boy.
The lead-up to Bad Bunny’s performance was weighted down by speculation, culture-war controversies and the overall solemnity of this tense moment in American politics. But the performance itself was a kaleidoscopic blast of merriment — a showcase of some of the most ecstatic and celebratory aspects of Latin culture.
Bad Bunny delivered a message in English: “God bless America,” but went on to name countries across the Americas, leading a parade of flags. And before he ended with the spiked football — imprinted with the English words “Together, We Are America” — he said in Spanish, “We’re still here.”
I thought his show was one of the best Super Bowl halftimes ever. It was joyful, uplifting, and inclusive. Yes, it did include quite a bit of booty-shaking, which was part of the appeal for me. That offended Trump for some reason, even though he isn’t exactly known for endorsing puritanical behavior, to put it mildly.
I doubt that any children were bothered by the female dancers. Seeing a 5-year old child in Minneapolis being taken into custody by ICE agents would harm children’s psyches hugely more than some booty-shaking.
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