• by Joe Mandese , February 11, 2026

First and foremost, let me say I am and always have been one of the greatest fans of Adam Buckman’s TV criticism. Even if I often do not agree with him, I think he does what a great critic should always do: Make people think, even if they don’t agree with what they’re thinking about.

So let me address the elephant in this column’s headline. The truth is, his review of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show performance actually was a good -- maybe great -- “TV Blog,” and you should read it if you haven’t already.

It got me to thinking, disagreeing -- a lot -- and even writing my own take to rebut some of what he opined on.

More importantly, it got me thinking about why Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime performance wasn’t just great TV, but just the sort of thing that will make America, well, great again.

Because as Buckman reminds us, most of us are descended from immigrants who made America great in the first place.

Now, here’s where I disagree with Buckman about Bad Bunny’s performance being "exclusionary" of all Americans, because the Super Bowl -- especially the halftime show -- was never inclusive of all Americans in the first place. Sure, while it’s historically one of the most-watched shows ever in America, it never represented all of us.

I mean, take this year’s Super Bowl LX -- which was the second most-watched Big Game ever. Nielsen estimates 125 million of us watched it (slightly more for the halftime show). That means about two-thirds of Americans did not watch it. At least not in Nielsen’s TV+ universe.

As a trade journalist who has covered the Super Bowl for nearly half a century, I’ve always considered it over-hyped and not truly inclusive of “all” American values.

I mean, take it’s content itself. Amazingly, a significant share of its televised audience isn’t even watching it primarily for the football game, but for the commercials that run in between it. And let’s not forget the halftime show itself, which in recent years has increasingly become a spectacle as big as -- and maybe bigger than -- the game itself.

The truth about America -- even our media culture -- is that we have always been comprised of different subcultures within it. And that has been what makes America great, whether it’s in faith, business, politics or culture. It’s the diversity of who we are that has always been our greatest strength.

So kudos to the NFL for not just picking Bad Bunny to make the Super Bowl even more relevant to segments of the American culture that historically have been underrepresented, but also for having him perform entirely in Spanish.

I’ll admit that, at first, I was bit frustrated that I couldn’t understand all the lyrics Bad Bunny was singing, but I almost immediately realized that was what was so cool about it.

Music isn’t always meant to be understood -- make that felt -- literally, and it’s not just about words -- i.e., lyrics – whether they are spoken in English, Spanish or Icelandic.

It’s the reason why music often is referred to as the "universal language," because even if we can’t understand the lyrics, we can feel the artistic expression of it. I mean, there are plenty of English-language performers whose lyrics I can barely understand, but that doesn’t prevent me from enjoying their musical performance.

But perhaps the best reason Bad Bunny’s performance was great Super Bowl halftime TV is the same reason why Buckman’s "TV Blog" is great criticism: Because it got all of us talking, thinking and weighing in.

If I have one gripe with Buckman’s column, it’s the case he makes for why it was inappropriate for Bad Bunny to perform entirely in Spanish, asserting that only a tiny number of us Americans have "cultures, customs and languages" that originated elsewhere.

Personally, I feel the opposite is true. With the exception of the less than 3% of our population that is Native American, I believe all of us are part of cultures that originated elsewhere, including our use of language.

In fact, upwards of 80% of English vocabulary is derived from foreign languages, with only about 20% to 25% originating from Old English.

But what do you expect from someone who grew up in the melting pot of New York City? In fact, one half of my family would describe Buckman’s assertion as “fakakte,” while the other half would say it was “stonato” (or as many Italian Americans pronounce it: “stunad”).

For those of you who don’t understand either Yiddish or Italian, they both basically mean tone deaf or completely wrong.

As for those of you who are still kvetching about Bad Bunny singing in Spanish, I asked NotebookLM to translate the halftime show lyrics into English for you: