Retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre is not happy with the league’s decision to have Bad Bunny headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
Favre, 56, joined the recent swarm of conservative figures whining about the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican singer, 31, on Monday’s episode of his 4th & Favre podcast.
“I’d pick someone who — maybe Jason Aldean … someone who loves this country and that everyone could relate to,” Favre said about who he would choose if he were the NFL commissioner. “I think Jason Aldean right now is as big a patriot and has a great voice.”
“I like George Strait, that’s old school,” the Pro Football Hall of Famer said, going on to say about Whitney Houston’s performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” before Super Bowl XXV in January 1991: “There are a lot of choices out there. I remember when Whitney Houston sang the National Anthem and I was blown away. If you didn’t have tears in your eyes watching and listening to that, something’s wrong with you.”
Favre, who publicly supports Donald Trump, concluded, “I envision a national anthem and a halftime show, they’re two different things, that it really grabs you. Those are just two people off the top of my head.”
While he didn’t directly say why he would have picked Aldean or Strait instead, other critics have insisted that Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, doesn’t represent all of America because he opposes Trump and his crackdown on immigration.
Speaker Mike Johnson said picking Bad Bunny was a “terrible decision” and said they should have picked a better role model for children watching. Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had a meltdown over the fact that the rapper will likely perform songs in Spanish. Trump himself slammed the decision as “absolutely ridiculous” and said he had never heard of Bad Bunny, one of the most-streamed artists globally.
Despite the complaints and ICE threatening to attend the massive event, NFL isn’t considering dropping Bad Bunny’s act on the global stage in February, which fans are considering to be a milestone for Latin-American artists.
“I'm not sure we've ever selected an artist where we didn't have some blowback or criticism. It's pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said at a press conference. “We're confident it's going to be a great show. He understands the platform that he's on, and I think it's going to be exciting and a united moment.”
Bad Bunny seemed unbothered by the backlash when he hosted Saturday Night Live’s season 51 premiere, joking to non-Spanish speakers during his monologue: “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”
