Mostly headlines today, to catch up.
Slate, Nadira Goffe, 9 Feb 2026: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Performance Was Pure Joy, subtitled “The Puerto Rican superstar’s halftime show wasn’t what conservatives feared. It was something else entirely.”
Slate, Heather Schwedel, 9 Feb 2026: I Watched the “All-American” Super Bowl Halftime Show. It Was Even More Embarrassing Than You Imagined.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 9 Feb 2026: Kid Rock’s alternative Super Bowl halftime show was just boring, subtitled “Turning Point USA’s bid for cultural relevance — and more money — just couldn’t compete with Bad Bunny”
Predicably, Trump hated Bad Bunny, and Laura Loomer said the half-time show wasn’t “white” enough. Once again, they’re all about racism. At the same time, I didn’t see any of the haters praise the alternative show.
\\
The Bulwark, Joseph Ramos, 7 Feb 2026: Trump 2.0’s Most Racist Moments, Ranked, subtitled “The Obamas-as-apes video is the latest in a long line of racist acts and statements from this administration.”
Paraphrasing: Obamas as apes is #1, followed by blaming the Reagan airport crash on DEI; disparaging Somalis; depicting Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero; nominating Paul Ingrassia; cutting refugee admissions from Africa except for whites from South Africa; Vance dismissing outrage over Young Republicans calling black people monkey; supporting a DOGE staff fired for racist posts; allowing Border Patrol to arrest peple based on “how they look”; and Vance saying that it’s totally reasonable for Americans not to want to live next to people who speak different languages or come from different cultures.
Then there was a Fb post from someone quoting an outraged MAGA person tired of being accused of being a racist.
\\
The point of noting this story…
NY Times, 6 Feb 2026: JD Vance Is Booed at Olympic Opening Ceremony in Milan
…is that NBC and Peacock edited out the boos. No one watching the Olympics on TV heard them.
\\
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 9 Feb 2026: The “He Gets Us” campaign has a PR problem no Super Bowl ad can solve, subtitled “You can’t rebrand Jesus while ignoring the damage done by modern Christianity”
The article is about why this four-year-old campaign hasn’t had much effect. My reaction from the start is the presumption of these people thinking they know what Jesus would have wanted, or how he would have understood modern problems. It’s pure speculative, fatuous fantasy.
\\\
Slate, Fred Kaplan, 9 Feb 2026: Pete Hegseth Is Taking the U.S. Military Backward
This of course is the theme of the entire Trump administration. The point here:
Pete Hegseth, perhaps the most thuggish, toadying, all-around underqualified secretary of defense in the job’s nearly 80-year history, has now shown himself to be the most institutionally destructive as well.
His announcement on Friday, that he was cutting the department’s ties to Harvard University—and possibly to other centers of higher learning too—reflects not only a smug anti-intellectualism, which is out of sync with a high-tech modern military, but also a total misunderstanding of how and why its ties to academia first came about.
\\\
JMG, 9 Feb 2026: GOP Rep Thanks Jesus For Sending Trump To Save America From “Blasphemy, Homosexuality, Perversion”
I have to keep saying this: this is just another example of how the religious are addle-brained. They live in a fantasy world, and have no grip upon reality. Yet note again their concern for children, which reveals their base motivation of reproduction and survival, explained by evolutionary motivations that they don’t believe in, channeled through Biblical directives that amount to the same thing.
\\\
Compare and Contrast:
Media Matters, 6 Feb 2026: Fox News has completely ignored Trump’s since-deleted racist Truth Social post, subtitled “Fox has so far failed to cover the post, which depicted the Obamas as apes, and the uproar it generated”
and
Media Matters, 6 Feb 2026: Study: Fox News smeared Alex Pretti dozens of times following his killing by federal agents, subtitled “In the week following Pretti’s killing by DHS, figures on Fox News made at least 75 claims blaming Pretti for his own death or contradicting video evidence”
\\\
Bits from Facebook:
“If a blue state gets hit by a hurricane, it’s because god hates gays. If a red state gets hit, it’s because democrats control the weather.”
And
Why is MAGA so hateful?
I get asked this a lot. The short answer is: because hate is the point. But let me break it down.
Grievance as identity.
MAGA isn’t a political movement built on policy. It’s built on resentment. The core message has always been “you’ve been wronged” — by elites, by immigrants, by cities, by universities, by the media, by women, by minorities, by anyone who isn’t you.
This isn’t a coalition that comes together to BUILD something. It comes together to tear things down. Hate isn’t a byproduct of the movement. It’s the fuel.
\\
John Pavlovitz, 5 Feb 2026: To “Pro-Life” Christians, The Epstein Victims Were Sacred in the Womb, But Worthless Outside of It.
A point long made.
\\
This is actually happening, even if conservatives refuse to believe it.
Vox, Bryan Walsh, 8 Feb 2026: The quiet revolution that made your home, car, and wallet a lot safer, subtitled “The decline of burglary and robbery, explained.”
\\
Humor him?
The Atlantic, Gal Beckerman, 8 Feb 2026: Let Trump Keep Building Monuments to Himself, subtitled “The president’s penchant for gilded statues and self-glorification might at least help clarify the nature of his leadership.”
\\
Feeding America’s credibility into the woodchipper.
NY Times, Jeremy Konyndyk, 8 Feb 2026: What We Lost When We Lost U.S.A.I.D.
\\
NY Times, guest opinion by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, 8 Feb 2026: We Shouldn’t Want to Eat Like Our Great-Great-Grandparents
The whole natural food movement, and suspicion of processed food, is just another aspect of the conservative fear of contamination, and drive toward purity. The same applies to GMOs. Many examples and details in the article. Don’t worry so much. And don’t listen to RFK Jr.
\\\
These Are the Days, My Friend
Listening to Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach again after many years.
