[[link removed]]

BAD BUNNY AND JINGOISM LITE: WAS THIS THE SUPER BOWL WHERE WOKE
ROARED BACK?  
[[link removed]]


 

Aaron TImms
February 9, 2026
The Guardian
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ As always, the ads said the most about the state of the world
today. The NFL appeared keen to welcome the sport’s non-Maga
contingent back. But this Super Bowl offered a powerful advertisement
for the theater and violence of capitalism as usual. _

Bad Bunny performs at Super Bowl XL halftime show, screen grab

 

Roger Federer smiling wolfishly to the crowd: a return to woke? Adam
Sandler hangdog in the Levi’s Stadium stands, Jon Bon Jovi mooching
on the sideline like a retired dentist on a cruise, Billie Joe
Armstrong belting out American Idiot during the pre-game show under
his motionless meringue of fogey-blond hair: were they a sign? A New
England Patriots team who were neither favored to win nor widely
reviled, then promptly repaid a grateful public by losing
[[link removed]]:
was this the Super Bowl which proved that history really can move on,
that America is not fated to remain hostage to the tremors and hatreds
of the past? Well, yes and no.

A year after Donald Trump made American football’s showpiece all
about him
[[link removed]],
Sunday’s game in Santa Clara always promised a sort of correction
– a cooling of the mood, perhaps even an end to the manipulation of
sport for political ends. As always the best way to gauge the success
of this mission was as the gods intended: through a TV screen. Trump
– saddled
[[link removed]]
with historically low approval ratings, facing a massacre in this
year’s midterms, and no doubt wary of risking a public appearance in
the deep blue sea of the Bay Area – was absent on this occasion, and
he kept the F-22 fighter jets that were scheduled to be part of the
pre-game flyover away from Levi’s Stadium too. (Unspecified
“operational assignments” were the reason offered for the jets’
withdrawal, which means there’s probably a low-ranking member of the
Trump administration putting big money
[[link removed]]
on a US military strike somewhere in Latin America as we speak.) And
yet, the absent autocrat still weighed on proceedings, his curdling
influence turning every moment and gesture on Sunday into a referendum
on the prospects for a post-Trumpian sporting future. Could football
be normal again?

The Seahawks and the Patriots did their part by offering up a game of
punishing defense and attritional offense that had all the carefree
charm of a medieval torture procedure. Can football be normal again?
That remains unclear, but on this evidence it can certainly be boring,
which is maybe a form of progress. Despite the best efforts of
professional jaw surgery
[[link removed]] patient Jake Paul
[[link removed]], the pre-game
chatter was mostly about de-escalation: even the ESPN host Pat McAfee
felt moved to point out
[[link removed]],
on his first visit to San Francisco, that the city was nothing like
the urban hell described by the catastrophizers of Fox News and other
rightwing media outlets. Perhaps, for once, the Super Bowl would not
be dragged into America’s tedious and interminable culture wars.
Between Paul’s racist critique
[[link removed]]
of the half-time show and the alternative spectacle offered by Turning
Point USA, maybe all the right can do now is squawk impotently into
the void.

On the field, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning and a bunch of other
footballing legends got things moving by throwing out peace signs
through a pre-game honor guard of young women with violins, and from
there the tone of this Super Bowl
[[link removed]] as a grownup affair,
all strings and restraint, was set. Even the pre-game ceremony to mark
this year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence had a shrugging, almost apologetic quality to it, the
sermonizing brief and symbolism feathery: this was jingoism, but on
Ozempic. YouTuber Charlie Puth was a surprise choice to sing the
national anthem, and no one seemed more shocked than the man himself:
dressed in the style of a fun dad on his way to parent-teacher night
– button-down shirt, tie, brown leather jacket and straight-leg
jeans – Puth dispensed with the standard bombast and delivered The
Star-Spangled Banner in a feline whisper. Perhaps more than any other
recent installment of American sport’s biggest day, this Super Bowl
seemed determined not to draw attention to itself. “I know we won
the Super Bowl, but we could have been a little bit better on
offense,” victorious quarterback Sam Darnold told sideline reporter
Melissa Stark after the game. Even in triumph there were learnings to
glean, takeaways to digest, improvements to plan. This was the Super
Bowl as corporate retreat, a moment to pause, reflect and reset for
the year ahead.

In Mike Tirico and Chris Collinsworth, NBC boasted two play-by-play
announcers with the character to meet the soporific moment.
Collinsworth, calling his sixth Super Bowl, offered a clinic in
stating the obvious, noting midway through the second quarter that
“this is shaping up as a defensive game”. He’s certainly not Tom
Brady bad, but then no one apart from Brady is
[[link removed]].
Meanwhile Tirico, realizing the dream that fired his defection from
ESPN in 2016 to call his first ever Super Bowl, had to juggle duties
at Levi’s Stadium with his role anchoring NBC’s coverage of the
Winter Olympics, a fact viewers were reminded of approximately once
every 30 seconds on Sunday night. “Champion will be crowned in 30
minutes,” Tirico announced at half-time with a theatrical pause,
before adding with an elongating flourish: “Mmmmaybe more.” It’s
a good thing NBC has the big man locked down to a long contract,
because it’s unclear whether anyone else working in media today has
the talent to produce material this strong. Tirico is the most
white-collar commentator in American sports; he has an unparalleled
skill for making every in-game call and on-set interjection sound like
something your accountant might say to you as he’s walking you
through your tax return. In that sense he was the perfect on-air
complement to this turgid encounter, an anti-hype guy to suit the
times.

Yes, but was it _woke_? Was the stagecraft behind this Super Bowl,
both in the stadium and on TV, some kind of “statement” about
America Today? Is progressive culture now “back” in any meaningful
sense? The choice of Bad Bunny to headline the half-time show may have
been ragebait for Red America, but however convincingly the field at
Levis’s Stadium was terraformed to resemble the hinterland of San
Juan (it was not very convincing), the Super Bowl did not ultimately
herald some permanent “turn” on the part of the NFL toward
cultural progressivism. No one, not even Benito Antonio Martínez
Ocasio himself, “libbed out”; however welcome or unexpected it
might have been, the half-time spectacular saw no big protest about
ICE or lament of the country’s rapid descent into authoritarianism.
After last year’s Super Bowl turned into a Trumpified debacle,
Sunday was all about evening up the ledger, about welcoming the
sport’s non-Maga contingent back into the tent – a project in
which the inclusion of Bad Bunny, the day’s lack of on- or off-field
drama, and the bipartisan shock over $180 burgers
[[link removed]] all played a
galvanizing role.

As always it was the ads, rather than events in the stadium, that said
the most about the state of the world today. Apart from a few outliers
– Guy Fieri as “some guy” in an ad for Bosch power tools, Adrien
Brody going method for TurboTax, William Shatner as a near-incontinent
ambassador for Raisin Bran named “Will Shat” – this year’s
commercials advertised products that fit a dependable number of
recurring categories: AI, gambling, food delivery and insurance. Here,
in taxonomical miniature, was a brilliant summary of what culture has
in store for us: slop, speculation, a retreat from the commons, and
indemnification – if we’re lucky – against the disasters that
await. Amid the tedium of action on the field, this Super Bowl offered
a powerful advertisement for the theater and violence of capitalism as
usual.

_Aaron Timms_ [[link removed]]_ has
written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Salon and The Daily Beast. He
likes sport._

_The Guardian_ [[link removed]]_ is globally renowned
for its coverage of politics, the environment, science, social
justice, sport and culture. Scroll less and understand more about the
subjects you care about with the Guardian's __brilliant email
newsletters_
[[link removed]]_,
free to your inbox._

* super bowl
[[link removed]]
* Bad Bunny
[[link removed]]
* sports
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]