MAGA lawmaker wants a federal investigation into ‘explicit and indecent’ Bad Bunny halftime show
An ultra-conservative lawmaker is calling for a federal investigation into Bad Bunny’s “explicit and indecent” halftime show at the Super Bowl.
In an open letter, Rep. Andy Ogles wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee to demand a “formal congressional inquiry” into the National Football League and NBCUniversal for airing the rapper’s performance.
Ogles took umbrage with the show’s “sexually explicit lyrical themes and suggestive choreography during the most widely viewed family broadcast of the year,” and said it called into question whether the broadcaster had adequately “fulfilled its responsibilities.”
The Tennessee congressman was offended by the singing of Bad Bunny’s track “Safaera,” which he slammed for its “graphic lyrical content, including references to analingus, sexual intercourse, and other explicit themes.”
While that song does include Spanish-language lyrics detailing various sex acts, the version performed during the 13-minute Super Bowl medley did not include those explicit words.
Bad Bunny’s show was far more than “pure smut,” as Ogles described it on X, with heartwarming tributes to his native Puerto Rico including old men playing games at a table, a real live wedding attended by fellow pop star Lady Gaga, the handing over of a Grammy award to a five-year-old apparently representing his younger self, and a giant message displayed above Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Those wholesome moments were overlooked in the complaint from the lawmaker, who also took issue with the track “Yo Perreo Sola,” which he described as “a twerking and perreo-themed song accompanied by choreography featuring overtly sexualized movements including widespread twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts, and other sexually suggestive conduct.”
Ogles has previously called for Christian nationalism in the U.S. and opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. He has proposed a constitutional amendment to allow President Trump to serve a third term, and has filed articles of impeachment against judges who do not rule in Trump’s favor.
Complaints about sexually suggestive musical performances are nothing new, with moral outrage stretching back as far as the 1950s, when there were claims that young people were being corrupted by the “indecent” dancing of Elvis Presley.
The Super Bowl itself is also no stranger to such complaints, with 17 Republican lawmakers penning a letter that ranted about a performance by Jennifer Lopez alongside Shakira in Florida in 2020, saying she “wore little clothing and was groped by male and female dancers on stage,” and also “made sexually suggestive gestures and performed on a stripper pole.”
Back in 2004, there was outrage when a “wardrobe malfunction” saw Janet Jackson’s right breast exposed to an audience of 150 million during the halftime show in Houston.
Rep. Ogles said that while Bad Bunny’s set was performed predominantly in Spanish, “It relied on songs whose sexual content remained readily apparent across any barrier.”
The rapper’s performance celebrating love and unity was widely seen as a rebuke of President Trump’s tough immigration crackdown, with Mark Beaumont writing in a review for The Independent that the singer was a “colorful maelstrom on a mission to show the world the vivacious worth of his people.”
“The lyrics, when translated, might be all love, sex and tequila, but their overarching message is clear,” wrote Beaumont. “Would you rather be here shaking multicultural booty with Bad Bunny, or watching a bunch of bitter country bores in a miserable Texan bar?”
Ogles, it appeared, was not a fan of “multicultural booty,” and asked the Energy and Commerce Committee to examine what knowledge the NFL and NBCUniversal had “regarding the explicit nature of the selected songs.”
He also asked Congress to look at the show’s translation and approval processes; broadcast safeguarding protocols; and “the broader implications for broadcaster accountability.”
