Mark Alford is ‘investigating’ Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show. For being fun? | Opinion
Missouri U.S. Rep. Mark Alford is very concerned: Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny might have said some bad words at the Super Bowl.
Speaking on the “American Sunrise” show on the Real America’s Voice network Tuesday, the Republican congressman who represents part of the Kansas City area said: “We are still investigating this. … The lyrics from what we have seen from Bad Bunny are very disturbing.” And he threatened action. “We’ll be talking with Brendan Carr from the (Federal Communications Commission) about this. But this is, this could be much worse than the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction.”
Yikes, worse than that 2004 stunt when Justin Timberlake unsnapped part of Jackson’s costume that was clearly designed to be removed, revealing her pasty-clad breast at their own Super Bowl show? I don’t know who still buys the lame excuse that it was an accident, but it remains memorably outrageous. So if a sitting U.S. representative is comparing Bad Bunny’s performance to that notorious incident, it must have been pretty bad, right? Let’s go to lyrics website Genius.com to see just what he sang.
The song says it’s for the “topless dancers” right in its second line, adding, “It don’t even matter if their veins are punctured, all the crackheads” to its dedications. It also salutes “my heroes in the methadone clinics,” “all you bastards at the IRS,” “crooked cops” and “the hookers all trickin’ out in Hollywood.”
Wow, rough crowd that Bad Bunny’s running with, huh? Oh wait, sorry — I clicked on the wrong link. Those are the lyrics that the super-MAGA Kid Rock sang as he performed his 1998 hit “Bawitdaba” at Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show.” That program was hyped as conservative religious counterprogramming for football fans who object to the supposed anti-American content in the NFL’s official halftime.
Alford actually admitted to watching Bad Bunny himself (“switching back and forth” with TPUSA’s show, he quickly added), though he doesn’t speak Spanish, so he’s not sure what was sung. But it isn’t hard to find English translations of the lyrics of the songs Bad Bunny did both in their original bawdy forms, and the toned-down versions he performed on Sunday.
Do his lines celebrate the company of women, enjoying adult beverages and partying hard? Of course, they do: Have you ever heard about this thing called pop music?
But those mildly suggestive lyrics were decidedly secondary to the real, meaningful themes of Bad Bunny’s performance, which included guest appearances by Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin. “My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio,” he said proudly into the camera. “And if I’m here today at Super Bowl 60, it’s because I never, ever stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think — trust me.”
That’s exactly the kind of self-reliant bootstrap-pulling red meat I hear celebrated all the time from the right. And really, who exemplifies the American dream better than a man who was raised in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico — population 54,000 — by a truck driver and a schoolteacher and went on to become arguably the biggest star in the world?
Many American homes speak Spanish
Bad Bunny’s rap-reggaeton-pop hybrid was in Spanish, but that’s hardly a niche: It’s “the most common non-English language spoken in U.S. homes (62%) in 2019 — 12 times greater than the next four most common languages,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, as they have been for more than a century. So that’s why Bad Bunny held up a football emblazoned with the slogan “Together, we are America,” as he declared “God bless America!” to the crowd. Perhaps he offended the America-first crowd by also giving a shout-out to the other Americas — Chile, Mexico and Guatemala among them.
I’m not giving Rep. Alford guff for simply not enjoying the expressions of a culture he doesn’t appreciate. Artistic taste is inherently subjective. While Bad Bunny’s halftime show drew 128 million viewers and got a record 4 billion social media views, Turning Point’s prerecorded alternative turned out to be a dud. Beset with playback issues, a meager live chat and allegations that a lot of its claimed viewers were fake bot accounts, it drew a live audience of just 5 million on YouTube.
Today’s Republican Party doesn’t count many A-list entertainers among its numbers. And although rapper Nicki Minaj is a recent MAGA convert, I’d suggest those concerned about vulgarity not dive too deeply into the work of the artist behind “I Endorse These Strippers” and “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.”
Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again chief strategist Steve Bannon has always been right about one thing: Politics is downstream from culture — meaning you can’t govern counter to what the electorate wants and not get significant blowback. Because of multiple factors, Trump defied the odds twice to snatch the Oval Office, and it’s no surprise he’s historically unpopular, again.
So complaining about a beloved entertainer performing an explicitly positive, pro-America show under a jumbotron reading “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” because it’s somehow divisive? Sorry, but that’s a little weird. Bad Bunny was inviting everyone in, and it’s your own choice if you slammed the door to the party.
This story was originally published February 11, 2026 at 1:16 PM.
