Caffeinated Politics

I think it is most telling and rather entertaining to follow the statements and mental gymnastics that occur in the far-right when it comes to their obsession with attacking gay rights.

Republican Congressman Brian Babin, while attending the Family Research Council’s National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance on February 4th, during a prayer, thanked God for sending Donald Trump to stop children from being led “down the path of homosexuality and perversion.” Grabbing unsuspecting women between the legs, as Trump proudly stated in a recording, was not mentioned to be a violation of moral principles during the public chat with the Almighty.

As we know, conservatives dived gleefully off the deep end following the Super Bowl Halftime appearance of Bad Bunny. As if their rejection of the show was not goofy enough, by complaining that it was in Spanish and that not enough white people performed (I don’t need to ever embellish, given what the far-right provides for copy), they also offered a unique take: It was a form of “gay pornography.”

Republican Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles said the halftime show was a disgrace and mocked American families. “Depicting gay pornography on prime time has no place in our culture.”

I had to laugh when I heard a commentator say in response, “Gay pornography? You were ogling the wrong tab on your browser.”

Ogles went on to say that he was offended by the “overtly sexualized movements, including widespread twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts, and other sexually suggestive conduct”. Oh, you poor lost sheep trapped in the winds of modernity. Except that those winds blew past the nation in the 1950s. Grow up!

The congressman’s words caught my attention on Monday, since we had only watched the Halftime Show of the Super Bowl on Sunday. This is, after all, Olympic season! With all the women on the football field dancing, it reflects far more about men like Ogles that they would catch the snippets of men dancing together, and that it lingers in their minds. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks“

Meanwhile, the self-professed saintly in the MAGA world were turning into the alternative halftime show being offered on YouTube. There, they could hear Kid Rock, who in 2001 recorded Cool, Daddy Cool a song that contains the lyrics, “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see some say that’s statutory (but I say that’s mandatory).”

What is it with pedophiles and the Republican Party?

I surely was not the only one who laughed out loud when Ogles described the Super Bowl halftime show as “gay pornography.” I viewed the show as stylized and choreographed in the same tradition that has defined pop‑music halftime shows for decades. But all of a sudden we are to believe that a cultural emergency has befallen the country. The only thing these mouth breathers have left is a political impulse to manufacture outrage where none organically exists. The absurdity is very clear. Over 130 million people watched Bad Bunny, and now we are being asked to believe that an overt assault on American morality took place.

What makes the claim even harder for many people to take seriously is the selective moral alarm behind it. Ogles has aligned himself closely with Trump, an absurd and clownish personality whose own public record includes the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he boasted about grabbing women without consent. Take a minute to ponder this matter.

On the one hand, we have a choreographed dance routine framed as a dire moral threat, while Trump’s own words about sexual misconduct and abuse are minimized, dismissed, or reframed as harmless banter. I suggest that Ogles be the photo that best exemplifies political hypocrisy in Webster’s Dictionary. Once again, conservative outrage is being deployed not as a consistent ethical stance but as a strategic partisan weapon aimed only at cultural targets that fit a preferred narrative.

When a halftime show (that is loved by the mass public) becomes the focus of hyper-partisan language, it diverts attention from substantive issues—like too many Americans not being able to buy a home, or afford the groceries they need, or pay for health coverage. The goffiness on full display from Republicans over Bad Bunny only reinforces a cycle in which cultural flashpoints are exaggerated for political gain, while more serious policy goals languish. I understand politically that the only thing the GOP has left is controversies in their own lame version of moral theater being played to a dwindling number of white people. So they need to be loud, dramatic, but ultimately hollow. And in that sense, the thing we need to watch now that the halftime show is over is the performative conservative outrage that followed it. It is laughable.