By Robert Dean
Carter County Times
“Who’s that guy?”
“Is this a car commercial?”
“I think that’s Rock Kid.”
“I feel like I’m at a Chili’s at midnight in the suburbs.”
Being at a Super Bowl party with a bunch of comedians is an exercise in patience. Everyone’s firing off jokes, and if you want to survive, you’d better keep pace. One-liners only. No long setups. Meanwhile, the game itself was a snooze fest—milquetoast football that made the Bears vs. Rams look like a tent revival. So, out of morbid curiosity, we flipped on the Turning Point USA halftime show.
Holy crap.
What was that supposed to be? What did anyone get out of it? A performance that felt like it was hosted in a local VFW hall, where Kid Rock didn’t even wander onstage until Bad Bunny was already done, only to lip-sync so poorly it didn’t line up with his own mouth. Then it ended with some weird, deflated bummer song, like a funeral for internet comment section relevance.
My dude, Jesus was not in the building. He wasn’t even in that parking lot.
Watching the Turning Point goat rodeo felt like witnessing your friend’s tacky mom order Mexican food in broken Spanish—“Quay-sa-dillas”—then giggling like she nailed a punchline while everyone else quietly dies inside. That’s the energy. That’s the Turning Points vibe. Secondhand embarrassment with a light dusting of entitlement.
Now, on the actual official side of the ball: Bad Bunny’s performance ruled.
And I say that as someone who does not like his music. At all. Whatsoever. Actually, I can’t stand it. But I can recognize when something rips. His set was a celebration of family, culture, and people. It was joyous. There was movement. Smiling. Dancing. It felt alive. It felt like America as it actually exists, not the hollow cardboard cutout version sold to people who think “values” means vibes and vibes mean red hat, cult exclusion.
Meanwhile, over in Erika Kirk’s Weirdoville, the TPUSA show was a soulless performance staged in a dark box that felt more like the gulag than entertainment. If I were Charlie Kirk’s ghost, I’d be so mad that this is how they chose to honor me. They got Cardi B twerking with a margarita, and you got Lee Bice? Damn, homie, they did you dirty.
Republicans couldn’t stand that the Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t made for them—couldn’t stand that a performance centered on culture instead of catering—so they took their toys and went home. All this outrage over a fifteen-minute spectacle that has always been one big pop-culture commercial. That’s the whole point. It’s pageantry. It’s branded excess. It’s not meant to validate performative identity politics; it’s an Apple Music commercial. That’s such a fragile take in the face of a whole lot of people smiling and all the Right can talk about is the performance not being in English.
Kid Rock doesn’t have that kind of ingénue firepower. He’s not an icon. He’s not a social disruptor. He’s a two-bit huckster in boat shoes and a fedora, yelling about America while doing the fried Oreos circuit. This wasn’t a rebellion; instead, it was nostalgia cosplay. Trump’s America is a depressing box, and Bad Bunny’s is filled with people smiling. That sounds way better to me. And I don’t even like his music – I’m more of a Rage Against the Machine kinda guy. But boy, did we have fun cracking jokes about Brantley Gilbert performing at the opening of a new strip mall. Bad Bunny won’t be there; he’s probably going to be on a world tour. Contact the us at news@cartercountytimes.com
