Yes, It’s OK to Not Like that Halftime Show

Yes, It’s OK to Not Like that Halftime Show

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Yesterday, the NFL hosted what was one of the most boring championship events in recent memory. Right in the middle of that snoozefest was an ostensibly musical performance that has lips a-flappin’ and epithets a-flyin’. It turns out that if you didn’t watch and love, love, LOVE! Bad Bunny’s performance, well… you’re just a first class racist. I’m here to tell you, though, that just isn’t true.

I’m going to confess upfront that I did not watch the performance. I saw bits and dabs live, and I’ve seen a few clips on the interwebs since then, but I chose not to watch it. Way back when the halftime show was announced, my first thought was, “Who’s that?” Pretty quickly, I learned that he’s a rapper. A Spanish-language rapper. I don’t like rap, so it was a pretty quick no for me, and that it’s in Spanish, a language I don’t speak, sealed the deal on my indifference. There was just nothing there to appeal to me.

I don’t mind the foreign language, though. In fact, I love languages in general. I spent 4 years in college trying to learn French and had an almost 1,100-day streak on Duolingo trying to remember what I’d forgotten. A favorite memory from one of my trips to Barcelona was sitting in a restaurant listening to speakers of six different Spanish dialects compare their differences. It was fascinating. And I’m the dumb American who can only speak English, so I just had to sit and admire. C’est la vie, huh? Speaking of French, I have several French CDs from Celine Dion, which I enjoy, mostly, but can hardly understand, so they’re in a box somewhere.

Having said that, since the line up was announced, more people started finding out who Bad Bunny is, and things didn’t get any better for me in terms of interest. Rap? Sexually explicit rap? Gross. Pass. Won’t stand for the national anthem? Cool, his choice, but doesn’t endear him to me at all. There’s just nothing musically or ideologically appealing, so I passed.

I am, however, being told — even if collaterally as people who think they’re important rain fire on people who are more significant than I — that this disinterest/dislike makes me racist or something. Whatever, I guess. That word lost any real meaning or power a decade or more ago before everything became Nazi or fascist or whatever the pejorative du jour is (hey! more non-English!). It was “beautiful expression of Hispanic culture”. Peace. Love. Family. I’m supposed to love all of that, but I hated the show because a “brown person” was performing, they tell me. Sometimes I don’t even know my own mind, but these experts have me pegged. It’s kind of a relief. I can quit trying to figure me out now.

But were those lyrics really beautiful? The evidence seems to say otherwise. (Now, before presenting the evidence I should note (again) that I don’t speak Spanish, so I have to trust computers for this, but those things have never let us down, so I think I’m safe. I’m also told that he altered the lyrics a bit to make them less vulgar. I can neither confirm nor deny that, but let’s look at the unaltered song lyrics.)

I asked Grok what songs Peter Rabbit sang and the English lyrics are. The songs included

Again, according to grok, that’s what he sang, either in part or not, and I tried to find links to the English translations for the super curious. Most of those lyrics are pretty banal, but other parts… It’s a good thing he didn’t sing his songs unedited on national TV. I won’t quote them directly, as I’d rather not have that kind of language on my blog. Super trashy, regardless of accent or skin tone. You may dig it, but it’s just not for me.

While the halftime show has been a celebration of debauchery draped in awful music for years, this year there was an alternative, Turning Point’s All-American Halftime Show, which I did watch most of. Ordinarily, I just mute the TV (and often change the channel, depending on the visuals to be expected from the show), but I was curious about this alternative, and I’m glad I did. I’m not a big country music fan, but the artists (of whom I’ve mostly never heard, granted) were solid performers, great voices and bands. Just really well done. And at the end, Kid Rock Robert Ritchie shared the Gospel in a nutshell. It was amazing.

You’d probably like to think that most people would find a wholesome alternative acceptable, but, dear, sweet summer child, you’d be wrong. Kid Rock, you see, has some really terrible songs, and this is certainly a valid criticism. If even cleaned up Bad Bunny songs might introduce very young audiences to some truly terrible lyrics, might a cleaned up Kid Rock? Absolutely. I won’t argue that. What I will say, though, is that Robert Ritchie, the name under which he closed the program, seems to be a different person. While I am open to the idea that I’m seeing what I want to see, it sure looks like he started the song that made him famous, but stopped in the middle, paused for a beautiful violin and cello duet, then came back to sing a song about second chances (which contained the aforementioned Gospel nutshell):

There’s a book sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off
There’s a man who died for all our sins hanging from the cross
You can give your life to Jesus and he’ll give you a second chance
Till you can’t.

Someone who claims to have spoken with the production staff says that “This was supposed to be an artistic way of portraying a redemption story.” and concludes by saying “I don’t know Kid Rock’s walk with Christ, but he used this moment to point people to Christ, and I rejoice in that (Philippians 1:15-18).” And I’d have to agree. One can argue (and many have) that we need to quit idolizing/lionizing Kid Rock. “He may be a degenerate, but he’s our degenerate,” and that’s fair in principle.

As Jon Root noted, though, I don’t know Robert Ritchie’s heart. I don’t know if he’s larping as a conservative and/or a Christian just to advance his career, or if he truly Believes. People closer to him may know, but from where I sit, hundreds of miles away, cocooned in obscurity, I just can’t know with any certainty. I can, though, look at the fruit, and wait and see. Even then, I will probably never really know. What I can say, though, is that if you put both shows side by side and asked me which one I’d rather have young families watch, one where men and women (and sometimes men and men) grind on each other, or another where the name of Jesus is praised, it’s an easy decision.

No racism required.

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