Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you
so much for your support. You know what, I think,
I'm going to do this entire hour and Espanol in
honor of the Malevolent Rabbit and his performance at El
Supero Bolo. Yeah, I think that. No, I can't. I
did Yo Tango Singo Anyo's de Espanol. I did have
five years of the Spanish training, but it was never
really immersed in it. If I like, you give it
to me in a written format, I can like, it'll
take me a while, but I can translate it. But
like the conversational Spanish, I was not very good at
I was always like my brain never heard the words
and then automatically knew what was being said. I was
always like translating it back and forth in my head,
And I don't think that's the way you're supposed to
to learn a language. You're just supposed to learn the
language and then it just becomes second nature. And I
could never do that, but I could read it, and
then I could translate if I had, you know, a
Spanish to English dictionary or AI nowadays. But all right,
So I had a bit of a unique experience watching
the Big Game yesterday. I was at a friend's house
watching the game, and he and his wife, they are
Puerto Rican, and there extended his extended family, like his mom,
his brother, his brother's girlfriend. They all came down from
the Northeast to visit, so they were all there too.
So there's a whole bunch of and they're all Patriots fans. Okay,
so they're all Puerto Rican, they're all Patriots fans. There
was another friend who was there also from the Northeast,
a Patriots fan as well. So I did a lot
of therapy for the Patriots fans after, you know, during
the game. Yeah, and look, I know for you Patriot fans,
I know it stinks to lose like that. They were
completely underwhelming, But honestly, like as a Panther fan, we
have been to the super Bowl twice in thirty years.
You guys have been there like a hundred times. Okay,
So like let's just kind of keep this in perspect
you have, like you have patriot privilege if you will. Okay,
you have been so many times, you have won so
many times, and you have not won all of them,
to be sure, but you've been so many times. And remember,
every single year, every team in the NFL except for
one will lose. Every other team, all the fans of
all those other teams, they all lost like you did yesterday. Okay,
So like let's just put it in perspective. And I
know like you wanted to see a better performance. I
mean I did too. It was really boring the first half.
But I mean there's a reason why they say offense
wins games and defenses win championships. There's a reason why
that axiom exists. And also I would point out you
know that if you like as a I know people
hate on Chris Collinsworth, but he was correct. Like, if
you can't stop a four man defensive front from getting
to your quarterback, like every play, you're not gonna have
anybody open and you're gonna take a lot of sacks
and that's exactly what we saw. But it's a young team, right.
You got the two blind side offensive linemen, they were
both rookies, and so they're gonna get better. That quarterback
is gonna get better. And I'm sure the Patriots will
be going to like a bajillion more super Bowls in
the future. Okay, So like just put it in perspective.
So that was so I had to do some bit
of the therapy, you know, for them like that. But
it was a very interesting dynamic because like the family
from Puerto Rico, they knew who Bad Bunny was. They
know who he is, they listen to his music, they
like him. I was not aware of who this individual
was prior to the announcement that he was going to
be playing the Super Bowl, and even then I was like,
I don't know who this is. Oh and one of
the so the the brother from out of town. He's
also a huge Trumper. He loves Donald Trump. And so
it was a very interesting dynamic. Watching the game and
watching the halftime show as I did, is very unique.
It was a very unique experience. Here's what I took
away from it. This is what I told Christy after
the halftime performance, I recognize that I was not the
target demo. I'm not the target audience for that show.
And chances are if you are a football fan, particularly
a dude, you were not the target audience either. Okay,
because they already got you. The NFL's already got you, right,
If you're watching NFL games, then you're already part of
their audience. You're going to watch the games no matter
who the halftime show is. You're going to watch the
super Bowl. What they're trying to do is get people
who don't watch football are tuning in to see the
Bad Bunny Show. They want them to try to start
watching football. So I recognize, like, I was not the
target demo for that show, And to be fair, like
I don't really feel like I've been the target demo
for many years. Their halftime shows are not meant to
attract me to watch football because I already watch well,
I only watch the Panthers games, Like, I don't spend
my whole Sunday watching all of the games. If I
got nothing going on, I'll put it on in the
background whatever, especially towards the end of the season. Then
I start watching the late season games. I'll watch some
of those. I used to watch a lot more football
than I do now. Now it's basically like for the
first three quarters of the season, I just watched the
Panther game or try to. But that's about it. What
has been interesting is the way that and look, I
think Jim Garretty, I think it was I saw he
called uh yeah, he called bad Bunny became a litmus
test before he even performed a single syllable. Bad Bunny
became a litmus test on the Trump administration's immigration enforcement.
He stepped onto the field as a human rorshack test, right,
So everybody already had sort of an idea of how
he was going to transgress Trump voters because of his
statements that he has been making, right, because this is
what he has made part of his public persona. He
attacked Ice during the Grammys, so like people were like
waiting for this, you know, overt resistance type of performance,
which it really wasn't, although it was kind of odd
that I felt like he was kind of celebrating the colonizers,
which was weird, right, because the Spaniards they colonized like
the whole like southern or a South America and Central
America and the Caribbean. Right, they colonized all over the place.
But that was what they seemed to be celebrating. People
were upset that he did the entire performance virtually except
for like one line in Spanish. And I thought Jim
Garrity had a national review, he had a I thought
he had a good point here he says some object
because the he raps in Spanish, and thus they cannot
understand what he is saying. And that is a big
part of this is because you don't know what he's saying.
And they provided no subtitles so we could know what
he's saying. So we have no idea if he is
engaged in political rapping or what, or he's you know,
he could be calling us all sorts of names. Right,
That's part of the problem when you bring on somebody
to perform in a language that you know eighty five
percent of the audience does not speak. So and I did,
I did go and I found the stats. It's a
forty five million people in America speak Spanish at home,
which is about fourteen percent of the US population. And
so that's who they were catering to. That's the target
audience they're trying to get those people that speak Spanish
and that know who bad Bunny is, who is like
and I didn't realize like the's guy, like all of
these YouTube downloads and all this stuff. Some people went
over and they watched the alternative programming over on the
Attorney Point, USA. They did a halftime show too, which
is also not new that that has been done before.
Counter programming during the halftime show. That has occurred many
times over the years. So I don't object to that either.
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Jim Garretty writing about this, you know, this complaint that
people didn't understand what the halftime show singer was singing
because he was singing in a language that you know,
more than eighty percent of Americans do not speak. Okay,
and I point out that you were not the target
demographic for this show. Okay, I'm going to get into that.
But he goes on to say and I think this
is a very astute point is as you can say,
you can say the same about plenty of hip hop
performers who are rapping in English, or depending on the
song and performance, you could say the same of Bob
Dylan or Tom Petty or Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
With Willy Bully, there are those of us who will
go to our graves insisting the chorus on Creden's clear
Water Revivals, Bad Moon Rising is informing the listener that
there is a bathroom on the right. So if you
don't understand what bad Bunny is saying, you're just following
in the footsteps of a proud American musical tradition. There
is some truth to that, right. The concern, though, is
that he's saying stuff that you would disagree with. I
have seen some of the lyrics translated, and the lyrics
to some of these songs are gross, and I'm not
a fan of taking the halftime show and having women
towerk their butts into the camera. I don't think that's
an appropriate, family friendly type of entertainment. But they've been
doing that for a long time too. Thing to know
is that this guy has a massive fan base. These
fans may or may not be NFL fans, but they
likely tuned in because they wanted to watch his performance,
and so that would boost the Super Bowls already massive
ratings even higher. The NFL has maxed out its audience
among people who actually, you know, enjoy watching football. One
survey last year, he says, estimated that approximately seventy percent
of American men follow the NFL to one degree or another. Okay,
so they've already they've already captured that demo seventy percent
of American men. So how do you get the other
thirty And how do you get a larger female base?
How do you get an international base? NFL Commissioner Roger
Goodell is determined to make his league important, relevant, and
worth following among the portion of the population that does
not like football. There was a report from the ad
company Apex Marketing about Taylor Swift between her first appearance
at a Chiefs game in late twenty twenty three and
then through the AFC Championship contest in January of twenty four. Okay,
so like, over the course of about four months, she
generated somewhere north of three hundred and sixty six million
dollars for the NFL across all equivalent brand value. That
figure is measured across social media, TV, radio, digital news,
and print news. That's what you call earned media. In
the league's most recent season, her appearances drew and estimated
six hundred thirty four million dollars from equivalent brand value
through the AFC Championship game. Much of that came through
social media and digital news, right. Because the Swifties, people
who love Taylor Swift right, they are now watching the
game in order to see her in the in the suite,
to see the cutaway shots. That's why I know, Like,
like football fans were just rolling their eyes. They were
so sick, like, oh my gosh, they keep cutting away
to Taylor Swift right. But the Swifties love it, and
the NFL loved it because it gets people who don't
want to watch football. It gets them to watch in
order to see something that they want to see. Then,
whether you like it or not, the NFL is trying
to sell its product overseas, right, They're going to try
to sell the game to people who are not that
into football. Next year, the NFL is going to play
nine regular season games overseas. Melbourne Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Munich, Madrid,
Mexico City, and three games in London. Roger Goodell, seemingly
with the consent of the owners of all the teams,
is determined to turn the NFL into a global game.
And that does not just mean geographically. He means across
all demographics and corners of society. I think Jim Garretty
is exactly right on this. You can see the vision
that Goodell is pursuing. And so if you're going to
try to attract new people to the sport, then you
go for this guy who has this massive fan base
and following. Guy's got billions of downloads for his songs
all online. So there's obviously a massive demand for what
he is doing. And so the NFL sees that and
they're like, let's put this guy in the halftime show
because you're not the target demo. I'm not the target demo.
They've already got us watching. All right. I hope you
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remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred?
And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are
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meaning to but I just having gotten around to it. Look,
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Kid Rock, he was part of the turning Point USA
counter programming that occurred during the halftime of the Super Bowl.
They did their own streaming event called the All American
Halftime Show with quote no Woke Garbage. It featured Kid
Rock along with country singers Bramley, Gilbert and Lee Brice.
This is the story from the New York Times. They
had let me see here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen fifteen reporters that were doing the coverage of the
Super Bowl at the New York Times. Okay, so fifteen
contributors to this New York Times piece. Kid Rock headlined
the show, and he had said in a statement that
the performers planned to play great songs for folks who
love America. There were sets by Brandley, Gilbert, Gabby Barrett,
Lee Brice. Right around the moment that the Bad Bunny
performance ended, Kid Rock took the stage with an abbreviated
rendition of his nineteen ninety hit ball with the dab
dab dab Dicky Diggy all of that Yeah. For a
second song, he was reintroduced as Robert Ritchie, which is
his real name, and he performed Cody Johnson's song Till
You Can't. Kid Rock then changed one of the original
verses and concluded, you can give your life to Jesus
and He'll give you a second chance. He first performed
that verse last year and indicated that it had been
inspired by Charlie Kirk, which people are seeing this perform
Men's as an affirmation of Kid Rock's faith. He starts
the show with his hit song and Look. His original
songs were very vulgar, much like Bad Bunnies were, but
nobody knew because he spoke in Spanish. He wrapped it
all in Spanish, so he was saying very vulgar things
while grabbing his crotch, and the chicks were twerking up
onto the camera lenses, but he was he was saying
it all in Spanish, and so people couldn't tell. This is,
by the way, this is a big deal in uh
Spanish speaking radio as well that the FCC like we
say something in English and it's going to get caught
and we're going to get fined. But the Spanish stations
they have they have less enforcement against them. So this
is and this has been going on for a while anyway.
So same same dynamic at play here, but the Kid
Rock performance where he comes out as Kid Rock, he
does that song, then he's reintroduced by his given name,
Robert Ritchie. He does this song and says you can
give your life to Jesus. He'll give you a second chance,
sort of like his his finding Jesus, his own personal
journey to God. So that's how that's being interpreted. I
did not watch the Turning Point. I did not have
control over the TV. I was at somebody else's house
and they all wanted to watch the Bad Bunny halftime show,
which I've seen described all over the place as joyful.
It's about the vibes. It's about the joyful vibes. We're
back to the vibes thing. I thought we had. I
thought we had dispensed with all of that with the
flame out of the Kamala Harris campaign, but apparently not.
We're still We're still dealing with the vibes. A joyful
celebration of Latin heritage, which is a lot of it
is Spanish. So again like for this, like, there was
another piece over at Time magazine Time dot com. I
don't even know if they publish a magazine anymore, but
they had their guy Andrew Chow or Chow correspondent. His
headline was exuberant act of resistance. See. So, for some reason,
people on the left have deciphered all sorts of political
messaging that came out of that halftime show, which is
what people on the right feared it would be. Right,
and so, you know, how dare you, you know, prejudge
the show before it airs. You know, you don't even
know what he's going to do and all of this,
and so you're a bigot, you're a racist or something,
right because you you know, have heard about this guy,
his comments about Trump, his comments about ice, right, and
then like he goes and performs and they're like, oh,
but look now, what a unifying, joyful message. He said
God Bless America, and he did. It was the only
English he spoke during the entire performance. He said God
Bless America. However, he then started listing all of these
different countries, which I think he's counting as America, which
is part of a larger project. I'm not sure people
on the right are aware of this. Right, when you
say God Bless America and then you make it clear
that you are referring to all of these Central and
South American countries, that that is a political message, and
it's a message that the left understood, but they're telling you, no, no, no,
he only meant the United States of America. Right, But
then why did he list all of the other countries.
He said, God bless America and then listed all of
these countries. It's because to the left, that's how they're
viewing all of the Americas. Although he did list Canada too,
which was especially nowadays. I don't think the Canadians are
very happy being conflated with America, you know, so a
joyful celebration. This is from again, This is from the
New York Times, all the fifteen reporters. The lead up
to his performance was weighted down by speculation, culture war controversies,
and the overall solemnity of this tense moment in American politics,
but the performance itself was a kaleidoscope blast of merriment,
a showcase of some of the most ecstatic and celebratory
aspects of Latin culture. Bad Bunny delivered a message in English,
God Bless America, but went on to name countries across
the Americas, leading a parade of flags, and before he
ended with the spiked football, the football have having the
words together we are America. So he lists all of
these other countries, shows the football together we are America,
and then he says in in Spanish, we are still here,
and then he spikes the football right, So he injected
politics into his performance precisely as people on the right
had predicted. Because it's who he is, that's his shtick,
it's part of his it's part of his act, it's
part of who he is. All right. If you're listening
to this show, you know I try to keep up
with all sorts of current events, and I know you
do too, And you've probably heard me say get your
news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you
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with ground News. It's an app and it's a website
and it combines news from around the world in one place,
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I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to
every feature your subscription then not only helps my podcast,
but it also supports ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. From Twitter, mcdellinger says Kid Rock's
performance on the Turning Point USA show was testiment. Was
his testimony that he had Jesus in his life. Now, yeah,
I think that's accurate. The most cringe response came from
John Kasik, whose father was a mailman. If I recall correctly,
this is the guy I remember he ran for president.
He refused to get out when Trump was knocking off
all of the other Republicans, and Casks stayed untill the
very end. He said on Twitter. Love the halftime show,
which celebrates the wonderful Latino culture, great pick and great show.
Bad Bunny hit a grand Slam home run, which it's like,
I'm not sure, like I could say this. I'm a
white guy, Like that's the whitest guy white guy ever.
Like he's doing the meme of Steve Buscemi sidling up
to the high schoolers like he's an undercover narc. Hello, fellow, students.
Aj Ziegler, a writer, said he was He's amused by
elderly white guys who actually did not enjoy the halftime
show but feel they must fake it because they disliked
Trump very much. And of course everything must be political.
So sometimes you fake liking music you actually find bizarre
or even terrible. Yeah. Andrew Colvett from Turning Point said
that the All American halftime show pulled in over twenty
five million views on YouTube alone. Oh sorry, YouTube and
rumble with a lot of large groups watching together, so
the numbers of viewers is likely much higher, and the
numbers are still climbing. They got broadcast partners, fast channel partners,
Final counts in coming, he said. Based on the success,
they've already committed to doing it again next year. It'll
be back in twenty twenty seven. Nellus, welcome to the program. Hello, Nellis,
Hey Pete, how are you? Hey, I'm good? What's going on? Hey? Good?
Speaker 2: Just quick comments. So last night, after the TPUSA halftime show,
I posted or shared that video of Kid Rock singing
the Cody Johnson song, and this morning when I woke up,
it had magically disappeared. So I think they're trying to
hide how well the concert went and how much people
loved it and that testimony.
Speaker 1: Where did you post it on Facebook? On Facebook page?
And they took it down? Oh, is it like a
copyright violation or something?
Speaker 2: I mean it was. It was from the Turning Point website.
I just shared their post. I didn't take it off
the TV or anything.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't matter though.
Speaker 2: It was a Facebook post and they just suddenly said
the content is no longer available.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I don't know about that. They yeah, because
like you run a foul of copyright uh law if
you're sharing stuff like that sometimes. Yeah, I mean, if
it's a musical performance, they guard that stuff. So I
mean that that that was.
Speaker 2: I shared it from Facebook to Facebook. So it's something
that they had on there originally.
Speaker 1: Right, right, But if they're if you were sharing it
from their source, their source may have locked it down
and that therefore your video isn't isn't available now because
the post was still there, just said the content's not available.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that's what happened, and it's probably
due to copyright. Trust me, man, Like the music industry
with this stuff, it's like there's a reason why we
say the Big Game, you know, because we can't. We
can't say the s B words if it in relationship
to like any kind of like promotional event or anything
like that. Like I can say the Patriots lost the
Super Bowl, I can say that, but I cannot use
the words when it comes to like any kind of
promotional event. So anyway, so like they do guard that stuff.
I think that might be what happened if the if
the post is still there but the content isn't, it
sounds like they locked it on their end so to
protect the copyright infringement. Good, thank you, Yeah, man, all right,
appreciate the call. Now, if they had deleted the whole post,
like if your post was just gone, that would indicate
that Facebook deleted your post. Let's see here, what else? Oh,
Ali Beth Stucky, she's a conservative pundit, she said, doing
an entire show at an iconic American event in a
language most of the country does not understand feels like
a humiliation ritual. I saw this, this sentiment expressed by
a lot of folks too, right, Like this is like
they view it as the equivalent of the the Muslim
prayers in the middle of the streets. Right where they
take over a street, right, it's a show of force,
it's a humiliation, right, that kind of a thing. But
then again, Puerto Rico is part of America. I don't
know where do they stand on the uh on the
independence thing. Didn't they have a chance to, Like I
kind of feel like it's something that pops up every
couple of years where there's like, yeah, we need to
be independent, be our own country or something. I did
find it kind of funny though, the part of the
performance where they had all of the power polls that
were like blowing up basically, which like like this is
a problem. Do you know? They had a blackout in
Porto ric Go like Christmas Day or Christmas Eve or something,
and the US government has apparently like given them somewhere
in the neighborhood of like one hundred billion dollars to
fix their power system their power grid, and for some
reason they just can't figure it out or something. I
don't know. I'm not really clear as to what's going
on with the power system there. But I mean, obviously
was a Hurricane Maria that that plowed through the island
several years ago, is probably about five years ago now,
left everybody in darkness and all that. So, yeah, I
don't understand, but I mean it's obviously a problem. I
don't know if I would highlight it in the Super
Bowl show, but uh yeah, but I'm not. I don't
know this from Johnny who says, Pete, why doesn't good
old Roger Goodell for nothing change the field to meters too?
Oh that would be interesting. So if he's going to
play more games, if the idea is to make it international,
but all the international measurements are in meters, right, that
we're gonna go to the metric system for the football field.
It's like, all right, okay, unpopular opinion, Okay, the meter
system is better. The metric system is better. It is.
I mean, it's just from a math perspective, it just
makes more sense. Now that being said, I am not
a proponent of going to Celsius, Like that's stupid, Like
one degree Celsius changed. That feels like a big difference.
You know, Like you look at like the weather forecast
and it's like today is twenty five, and so is
every day for the next month. That doesn't tell you
anything because it could be like it could be pretty chilly,
it could be pretty warm. All within that twenty five
degrees or whatever, like one degree celsius change feels like
a lot more. That's why the fahrenheit that we use
is much better. But I do kind of feel like
the metrics system is better just as a system. I'm
not saying we convert, we're Americans, but I do feel
like it's a superior system. And by the way, my
favorite ed, of course was the Mayo ed obviously, and
Neil Diamond Mayo and Neil Diamond one, I mean somebody
that played him, but a Neil Diamond song in a
Mayo commercial for Hellman's Like, that's obviously the best in
my opinion. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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