A Tale of Two Halftime Shows

This year’s Super Bowl halftime conversation felt less like a cultural moment and more like a cultural tug-of-war. On one screen, the NFL’s headline act featuring Bad Bunny delivered exactly what many expected: flashy production, high-energy performance, and a vibe that spoke to one segment of the audience. On another screen, Turning Point USA offered an “All-American” alternative halftime show, giving viewers a different option rooted in patriotism, country music, and a tone that resonated with people who often feel culturally sidelined.

Here’s the honest truth: I appreciated having the choice. I watched pieces of both. And that, in itself, felt like a small but important reminder of what a healthy society is supposed to look like—people being able to choose what they consume without needing to tear down what others enjoy.

Different Tastes, Same Country
We’ve reached a strange place culturally where everything feels like a referendum on values. For some, the issue wasn’t just musical preference—it was symbolism. A lot of people felt that Bad Bunny’s past comments denouncing aspects of America made him the wrong choice to headline what many still view as the most “American” cultural stage we have. For others, that critique felt exclusionary, narrow, or missing the point of what the NFL says it wants to represent: global reach, diversity, and pop culture relevance.

Both reactions exist. And here’s the thing: they don’t have to cancel each other out. Taste isn’t ideology. Preference isn’t prejudice. Feeling proud of American culture doesn’t mean rejecting international influence. Feeling represented by global artists doesn’t mean rejecting patriotism. We used to understand that complexity. Somewhere along the way, we lost the ability to sit with it without turning it into a moral showdown.

The Online Pile-On Mentality
What stood out more than the performances themselves was the social media aftermath. The online swings came fast and furious. Comment sections are filled with people who seem less interested in conversation and more interested in scoring points.

I say this all the time: social media is the ruination of civility. The platforms reward outrage. They incentivize the loudest voices, not the most thoughtful ones. The more cutting the comment, the more engagement it gets. The more dismissive the take, the more it spreads. We’ve built an ecosystem where cruelty travels faster than kindness.

Rewriting People’s Past to Fit Today’s Outrage
One of the more predictable pile-ons came from resurfacing Kid Rock lyrics from decades ago, back when he first came out, as if shock-value lines from an earlier era suddenly determine whether someone is allowed to love their country today. The suggestion that someone must be morally flawless in every chapter of their life to express patriotism now is both unrealistic and unfair. People grow. Artists evolve. Loving America doesn’t require sainthood—it requires a belief in the country, its people, and the ideals we’re all still striving toward. Trying to rewrite someone’s entire story to fit a moment of online outrage doesn’t make us more virtuous; it just makes the conversation smaller and meaner.

When Humanity Gets Lost
What’s missing in all of this is humanity. There are real people behind these performances. Real fans behind the opinions. Real stories behind why someone might connect with a song, a lyric, or a message. But online, we strip all of that away. We flatten people into avatars and arguments. We dehumanize them because it’s easier to attack a profile picture than it is to grapple with the complexity of a person.

Civility isn’t about agreeing with everyone. It’s about remembering that disagreement doesn’t require degradation. You can critique a performance without mocking the performer. You can reject a message without rejecting the person delivering it. We’ve removed that middle ground, and in doing so, we’ve lost something essential about how a healthy society functions.

Living Civics in a Digital Age
Living civics is about how we show up in the everyday moments of public life, not just in voting booths or town halls. It’s how we talk to each other about culture. It’s how we respond when we don’t like something that millions of others do. It’s how we resist the urge to dunk on strangers for sport.

Choosing civility today is countercultural. It means not joining every online dogpile. It means pausing before sharing the snarky post. It means letting people enjoy things without needing to ruin the moment for them. It means remembering that we’re neighbors first, not hashtags.

Choosing a Better Way Forward
I enjoyed having an alternative option to watch during halftime. I appreciated that different voices and styles were available. That’s not a threat to unity—it’s a reflection of a diverse country. The threat comes when we decide that difference is dangerous and that mockery is the default response.

We don’t have to feed the online beast. We can starve it of the outrage it craves. We can choose to bring back a little humanity, a little kindness, and a little grace into how we engage with culture and with each other. That’s not naïve. That’s civic responsibility in a digital age.