Some Super Bowl Half Time Show History For Super Bigot Megyn Kelly
It was never 'yours,' Megyn.
A whopping 135.4 million normal people watched Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half time time show on Sunday. This ranks as the biggest audience in Super Bowl history. Meanwhile, Turning Point USA’s sloppy seconds event featuring Kid Rock and anyone else who answered the Craigslist ad managed about 6 million viewers who resent entertainment. If MAGA wonders why people are laughing at them right now, it’s because, as Billy Flynn says in Chicago, “They can count. Can you count?”
You’ll notice that the list of top 10 Super Bowl half time audiences does not include Kid Rock, who’s never headlined a halftime show. He did appear as a guest during 2004’s show, where he performed “Cowboy” and “Bawitdaba” — don’t worry, MAGA, that last one has English lyrics, more or less.
(The 2004 Super Bowl half time show is infamous for the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” incident, when Justin Timberlake exposed Jackson’s breast on live TV. I recently had to explain the entire “scandal” to a 20something. Time is the fire in which we burn.)
Kid Rock has had six career entries on the Billboard Hot 100. Bad Bunny has had 113, which is more. Rock’s biggest album was 1998’s Devil Without a Cause, which sold 14 million copies. It’s hard to make an apples to apple comparison on physical album sales in 2026, but Bad Bunny is the most streamed artist on Spotify. He’s in Taylor Swift’s league. Kid Rock would have to hustle for a spot on The New Hollywood Squares.
Jay-Z picks the half time show performers and Kid Rock had the audacity to claim he’s a “DEI hire” by the NFL.
[NFL commissioner Roger Goodell] had all sorts of problems,” Kid Rock told Laura Ingraham. “So he brings in Jay-Z. What's Jay-Z going to do? He's going to do right by his base. That's where you had Kendrick Lamar last year, which a lot of people didn't get. I respect Kendrick Lamar, but wasn't my cup of tea. And you know, then this year, like, wow, they're going to double down. And to me, it was kind of like another middle finger to the conservatives, to the MAGA, you know, crowd, to my base, to everything.”
Kid Rock is the one who insists on politicizing music. I’m a middle-aged liberal who wouldn’t recognize a Kendrick Lamar song, but I imagine that there were conservatives among the 133.5 million viewers who enjoyed Lamar’s performance. Lamar is a critically acclaimed artist who has sold millions of albums. Jay-Z selecting Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny aren’t “middle fingers” to aggrieved white people. It’s just good business. The top 10 most-watched Super Bowl half time shows include Beyoncé, Madonna, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Usher, Lamar, and now Bad Bunny. If there is a “DEI” hire in the room, it’s Kid Rock.
Turning Point USA booking Kid Rock and the other people left in the bar at last call is like going to the prom with your cousin. That wasn’t a real date, and Kid Rock isn’t real competition for Bad Bunny.
The Super Bowl half time show has had far more effective counter programming. In fact, that’s why the half time show exists in its current form. In 1992, Fox ran a live episode of the sketch comedy series In Living Color during the half time show. There was a little countdown clock in the corner of the screen so you wouldn’t miss the second half — if you cared about the game, which I didn’t. (Watch below.)
The Super Bowl half time show was normally a dull affair with marching bands and Elvis impersonators. My wife (and legal counsel) advised me to speak respectfully about the marching bands, so I’ll just say I appreciate all their hard work.
The 1986 half time show featured Up With People, which promoted multiculturalism, racial equality, and positive thinking. MAGA would’ve freaked out. One of the numbers performed was “Born In The U.S.A.” but the Super Bowl wouldn’t think to actually book Bruce Springsteen until 2009.
In 1990, the half time show’s theme was “40th Years of Happiness (Salute to Peanuts)” and the next year, it was “Small World (Tribute to 25 Years of the Super Bowl)” with New Kids on the Block, Disney characters, and “2000 local children.” The marching bands did their best. Fox reasonably saw an opportunity here, as the network’s motivation wasn’t just seething cultural resentment. There was no personal animus against marching bands and Charlie Brown.
The 1992 half time show was “Winter Magic (A Salute to the 1992 Winter Olympics)” featuring Gloria Estefan, Olympic figure skaters Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill, and the University of Minnesota Marching Band. They performed some Christmas songs for the winter theme … in January. There’s a recent interview with some of the “Winter Magic” dancers who gamely discuss their experience and pretend like their loved ones didn’t flip over to In Living Color.
The 1992 Super Bowl half time show was a critically panned, ratings disaster. Instead of boosting viewership for the network’s exclusive Winter Olympics coverage, 22 million people switched the channel from CBS to Fox for the In Living Color special and they didn’t all come back for the second half. The NFL took this significant ratings hit seriously, so in 1993, they broke the bank and booked Lee Greenwood … no, of course not, don’t be silly. They got Michael Jackson for what was billed as an “An Unprecedented Super Bowl Spectacular” and from that point, America’s marching bands started watching the half time show at home.
During one of her increasingly unhinged racist rants, white Santa Claus purist Megyn Kelly shouted at Piers Morgan, “Football is ours!” She’s consistently auditioning for the villain in every 1950s-era civil rights movie. She calls Bad Bunny’s performance in Spanish a “middle finger” to Americans who don’t speak Spanish. (Kelly and Kid Rock both regard the existence of different cultures as an obscene gesture.) She was in high school when “La Bamba” topped the charts.
American pop culture has never been the restricted club Megyn Kelly craves. In Living Color broke the Pat Boone-stylized Super Bowl half time shows, and the NFL immediately turned to Michael Jackson — the biggest pop star on the planet who was Black underneath all the spackle.
The 1994 Super Bowl half time show went country with Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, The Judds. That probably delighted a young Megyn Kelly but it’s hardly “ownership” of the half time slot. Country music is no more American than R&B, rap, and queer-forward pop. Only weirdos deal in absolutes. The headliners over the past three decades have been diverse and — most importantly — popular. There was no other political message. The 1950s-era Megyn Kellys lamented the eventual loss of whites only water fountains and segregated schools but 2026 Megyn Kelly is whining about a world that has already changed. She might wish America was less culturally diverse but in the years before In Living Color and Michael Jackson, even the marching bands were integrated.
"Megyn Kelly is whining about a world that has already changed."
At least Stephen Miller comes by his virulent racism honestly. The Megyn Kellys of the world may be actually racist, of course, but I truly doubt even they would have given a Bad Bunny Super Bowl show a second thought if Trump hadn't won in 2016. Gutter racism has reached the place where it's performance art these days.
My spanish is so so at best and I couldn't understand a word of it. I realized it's not so much the spanish when Ricky Martin started singing and I could understand him. But I watched it with subtitles on and it was fantastic, it made me tear up a little. Love is stronger than hate, we are going to win.
I wonder if Megyn ever gets tired of being the racist lady from The Help?