As counterprogramming to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime show, Turning Point USA's 'All American Halftime Show' was a failure, drawing something south of 20 million viewers to Bad Bunny's 300+. Except that's not what it was. It was not supposed to be viable competition to the biggest televised event of the year, it was simply supposed to exist. At this, it succeeded. It happened.
As such I'm writing about a victory. Unlike every other left leaning cultural commentator I can find, who all took this at face value, if for no other reason than, to write headlines gloating at how puny its audience was. But at no point in the conception of the 'All American Halftime Show' was there anything like a goal except for it to happen. So it did. I still haven't seen it, I can't find a reliable YouTube upload that doesn't feature 'reaction' streamers reacting to it and I'll be goddamned I watch those, but as a protest to Bad Bunny's Puerto Rican cultural extravaganza it only needed to happen and it did.
Ah, right. The nu-metal moment. Kid Rock performed.
Kid Rock's nu metal status is a bit of a moot point, I've posted him and his music a single digit number of times, I try not to platform bigots that still have enough of a platform of their own to make vulnerable people miserable with. Unlike a presumed majority of those writing about this thing I'm not even going to pretend to you that Devil Without a Cause doesn't go hard. That album goes hard! Kid Rock finding his lane, party songs about partying, and gunning it. The A-side is bulletproof, the B-side has "Only God Knows Why" and an on fire Eminem. It also has "Black Chick White Guy" which is even worse than the song title suggests, a dramatic swerve out of his lane and into a concrete embankment. It would not be the last time he rammed this embankment at top speed.
The reason I've rarely acknowledged Kid Rock is because he's an ass. Racist, sexist, bigoted in all the boring and predictable ways an aging out of touch one time TRL sensation would be. He's such a boilerplate of stock grievances it's impossible to even be offended by him. The guy wrote a 'millennial snowflake' song in 2021, how can I even begin to be triggered by something so lame. But it didn't have to be this way. Fred Durst has some iffy political ideas if you dig for them but he also had a starring role in I Saw the TV Glow, a proudly trans film by a proudly transgender filmmaker. That's the kind of cultural second life Kid Rock could have had if he kept his mind's door just a bit ajar but no. Now Kid Rock, a guy who performed during the actual Super Bowl halftime show once, has to throw his back out jumping around to "Bawitdaba" for an audience of idiots showing up just to stick it to the libs.
I could imagine an alternate reality in which Kid Rock rejects the easy pivot into right wing retirement home rage. He doesn't even have to a proud leftist just not... this. If he had then maybe Generation Z would have thrilled to Devil Without a Cause's diamond certified anthems, dug his pretty great country crossover "Picture," remembered that time he became an out-of-nowhere pop concern again with "All Summer Long" but nope! He can't be that now or ever. Not that it matters but I don't think the guy is even an actual bigot, he just fell into the path of least resistance and is now stuck in that ditch forever while his era peers find new and younger audiences without him.
There's one particular Kid Rock interview that truly haunts me. That I think about all the time. When Rolling Stone's David Peisner ventured down to Detroit to figure out how this happened in 2024 he didn't find a political firebrand, he found a sad old man wishing it was still the glory days. Someone so lonely he traps a reporter that he already knows is there to hit piece, hold him hostage to watch YouTube video after YouTube video from the times when he was still relevant, just for some company. And isn't that a familiar scene? Standing in some guy's aging basement while he pulls up yet another video of something you're trying to get away from. For one moment there's a brief shimmer of lucidity, as Rock laments he'll never be remembered like Prince because his behavior has well overshadowed his songs. He says, "Prince is known for ‘Purple Rain.’ I’m known for shooting up Bud Light cans!"
This is what happens when you give all the way into the conservative mindset, when you stand athwart history and yell stop. History doesn't stop, it just runs your ass over. Our entire political moment is these sad old men trying to impose their nostalgia upon us all. They will fail. They'll succeed at making all of us miserable along the way but ultimately fail because time doesn't work like that. You can have as many 'All American Halftime Shows' you want, you'll still just be a little man throwing a meager tantrum to an audience that sees nothing in you except their sad and lonely selves. In all the wrong respects this really is America's halftime show, an unpleasant break while the rest of us wait to start moving the ball forward again.
You know what's funny? I still haven't actually watched the TPUSA 'All American Halftime Show.' I really meant to but forget it. It's for the best. Nobody watched it. They consumed it. They consumed it like the content it is, digested it, shit it out and flushed. It's gone now. It never mattered, it never will.
