The Pop Corporation

In 2004, Kid Rock appeared at the Super Bowl halftime show, and performed a song called ‘Bawitdaba’, where he rapped “all the crackheads, the critics, the cynics and all my heroes in the Methadone clinics, all you bastards at the IRS… for the shots of Jack and the caps of Meth.”

That was the same halftime show that is no remembered for such apparently vile lyrics, but because Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast, and cue the American puritans going mad at the site of some flesh.

In 2010, The Who did the show after Pete Townshend was collared by Met Police some years before, to check his hard-drive. No worries for the pearl clutchers there, as it was that good ol’ boys’ rock ‘n’ roll. They were saving their outrage for the following year when, blink and you’d miss it, M.I.A. briefly flipped the bird at cameras.

Fast forward to 2018, and Justin Timberlake has grovelled enough to get in the NFL good books again, and starts his set with ‘Filthy’, which contains the line “what you gonna do with all that meat?” And in ‘SexyBack’, we’ve got “I’ll let you whip me, if I misbehave.”

Soon after, we were treated to Jennifer Lopez and J Lo tagteaming their show, which incidentally, also featured Bad Bunny. It seems that this was a nice, safe version of Latin America that the yahoos didn’t mind. Good, wholesome music that’s sometimes in Spanish.

However, people started complaining about the show which featured Dr Dre and Snoop & friends, wringing their hands about all those terrible, violent people on stage. And would Eminem take the knee during it? Either way, there were relatively few official complaints through to the FCC, so the show must have been something of a success.

Things ramp up by the time Kendrick takes the show by the collar and has the audacity to be proudly Black, featured Samuel L Jackson as Uncle Sam, and variously called Drake a pedophile and reignited the Civil Rights movement on the biggest TV audience in the States and beyond.

Then, to Bad Bunny, singing entirely in Spanish and Puerto Rican slang, and that was a bridge too far for American conservatives. How dare he? Is he acting a bit gay? Who are all these people? We’re going to put all his lyrics through Google Translate and see if there’s any references to things we don’t like and get mad about that!

Conveniently ignoring the fact that the US has no official language, what with it being a (formerly) proud nation of migrants, and the fact that people from PR have American passports, Bad Bunny is clearly Anti American and bad news.

President Trump – clearly nothing better to do with his time – bitched and whined on his silly little social media platform about it all. Conservatives didn’t watch Turning Point’s halftime show, because they tuned in for Bad Bunny with their pencils sharpened.

Ever the snitch, conservatives grassed on the show to the FCC. They dutifully investigated, and obviously in a massive waste of time and resources, they found that Bad Bunny’s show didn’t violate any rules or decency standards.

In a letter to the FCC chairman Brendan Carr via Consequence, Florida Republican congressman Randy Fine wrote earlier this week, “What Americans witnessed during the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny was despicable and never should be allowed to be shown on television again”

“In America, our laws are not suggestions, and no matter what foreign language you speak, you must comply,” with Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee, added that the “performance’s lyrics openly glorified sodomy and countless other unspeakable depravities.”

Grow up.

Any offending songs were scrubbed of any saucy lyrics and with that, the FCC is said to “have shelved any additional scrutiny barring further evidence”, happy enough that this was all much ado about nothing.

Meanwhile, Bad Bunny landed 128.8 million viewers, which is the fourth biggest turnout in Super Bowl history.