Super Bowl halftimes: Kid Rock fumbles where Wayans brothers scored | Opinion
Turning Point USA turned arguably decent numbers with its alternative Super Bowl halftime show Sunday.
But it didn’t come close to the time that a handful of Black dudes — and a white DEI hire — stole the show from CBS and forced the NFL to change its halftime entertainment forever.
If you haven’t been following the culture clash between the Turning Point and the National Football League, well, congratulations.
I have, and it’s been kind of embarrassing to be an American this Super Bowl season.
It started with various right-wing figures up to and including President Donald Trump objecting to the NFL’s choice of Puerto Rican international superstar Bad Bunny (who sings in Spanish) as the halftime headliner.
TPUSA, sensing an exploitable moment of outrage, counterprogrammed the official halftime show with the “All American Halftime Show” headlined by Kid Rock, who during the time of Trump has emerged as the right wing’s alternative to entertainment.
I’ve probably read at least a thousand comments on this; these two were Internet-winning:
“The only good that will come of it is my catalytic converter on my Explorer will be safe while they are all inside watching the redneck halftime.”
“For a box of Sudafed, Kid Rock fans can have their tickets digitally downloaded to their ankle monitor.”
In these days of fragmented media, no one really knows how many people actually watch anything anymore. In the interest of avoiding being accused of liberal media bias, I turn to what Fox has reported about the turnout for Bad Bunny versus Kid Rock.
Fox Live reported that Nielsen ratings for the Bad Bunny show hit 128.2 million viewers on NBC TV. TPUSA’s main conduit was YouTube, where Fox reported the audience numbered about 5 million.
The New York Times was slightly more generous in its estimate, crediting TPUSA with 6.1 million YouTube viewers. And TPUSA no doubt picked up a few more from simulcasts on a bevy of C-list TV networks that Nielsen doesn’t cover, including One America News and the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
‘In Living Color’ still undefeated
Those are OK numbers. But they’re not even close to the reigning champions of Super Bowl halftime counterprogramming, a Fox show called “In Living Color,” that blindsided the NFL in 1992.
A little stage setting is in order here.
Super Bowl halftime shows until then were saccharin-sweet celebrations of wholesome Americana, seemingly designed as the perfect respite for freshening up the snack tray and hitting the bathroom before the second half.
The 1992 halftime show was called “Winter Magic,” a tribute to the winter Olympics. It featured Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano briefly skating around on a snowflake-shaped ice platform and riding snowmobiles on the field; the University of Minnesota marching band; a dance number set to jazzed-up Christmas songs and a two-minute medley by Gloria Estefan of Miami Sound Machine (whenever I think winter, I think Miami).
The upstart Fox Network was only six years old, and had yet to really emerge as a significant competitor to the Big Three, ABC, NBC and CBS.
In Living Color was one of Fox’s most popular programs, an irreverent sketch comedy show with a nearly all-Black ensemble cast.
It was led by Keenan Ivory Wayans and his siblings, Damon, Marlon, Shawn and Kim; and up-and coming comedians Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier and Tommy Davidson. The show was the breakout role for future movie star Jim Carrey and marked the Hollywood debut of Jennifer Lopez, a member of the show’s dance troupe, The Fly Girls.
On Super Bowl Sunday 1992, they brought the heat with an alternative halftime that melted Winter Magic into a puddle on the Astroturf.
The show was performed live and featured an onscreen clock counting down to the start of the second half, so, as Carrey put it, “You won’t miss any of the senseless brutality.”
Sketches included the “Homeboy Shopping Network,” with Keenan and Damon Wayans selling purloined Super Bowl field passes and players’ credit cards out of a locker; and Carrey performing his signature role as “Fire Marshall Bill,” a maniacal fireman ostensibly dispensing safety tips, but leaving fiery destruction in his wake.
Damon Wayans and Grier were “Men On Football,” playing a flamboyantly gay pair explaining the Super Bowl “from a male point of view” — hilariously spoofing early 90s mainstream American stereotypes of gay men. It sparked controversy, due to an unscripted joke by Wayans telling a popular American track star “You can run, but you can’t hide from your true self.” The joke was censored out of future video releases of the show.
When the ratings came in, In Living Color had drawn 22 million viewers away from the Super Bowl, about a fourth of the game’s audience average.
The NFL, rattled by the incident, restrategized. A year later, they signed pop megastar Michael Jackson to headline their halftime show.
Bear in mind that this all took place in the dial-up days before Internet video was a thing.
When In Living Color challenged Winter Magic, you had to pick one or the other. I picked In Living Color and glad I did, because it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on television.
In Sunday’s game, the Seattle Seahawks thrashed the New England Patriots 29-13. Bad Bunny trounced the other (self-proclaimed) patriots 128-6 on game day, and the margin of victory has grown wider since, with NBC reporting a record 4 billion social media views of the official halftime show worldwide since Sunday.
There’s a lesson here for Turning Point USA: If you want to take on the Super Bowl halftime show again, you might want to bench Kid Rock and see what the Wayanses are up to these days.
