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I have a general political theory on the current Democratic Party that no matter what gift Trump gives them they will find a way to mess it up.
ICE has had a lot of bad vibes lately. Enter the Bad Bunny Super Bowl show. I had never heard of him before Trumps rants on the Bad Bunny being in the Super Bowl. I don’t know if he was picked by the wokes or simply the NFL trying to find away to grow the game outside the US.
I think a general view of the center-left is to be nice to immigrants (empathy) even if they are closer to economic migrants than asylum/desperate. This feels like a cooking the frog too fast type moment where the message seems to be we will replace your culture and you will like it moment. The Super Bowl to me is perhaps the American Holiday most linked to Americana and they did the event completely in Spanish. The performance was trashy with some sort of sugar plantation theme (which were never in America and most of Spanish-Speaking Americans are not sugar plantation culture).
My hope is that this has gone too far and even my liberal mother will have an issue with explicit replacement.
sugar plantation sex
I was also starting to consider Americans thoughts on what is generally referred to as LATAM which is basically anything south of the Rio Grande. Most Americans probably group them into one group even though they are distinct economically and in their ethnic makeup. I don’t think the other south of the border types would be happy with their presentation when we could have found other groups with positive cultural traits if the goal was marketing to LATAM. Maybe I am missing a group but when I think of south of the border I think there are a few broad groups.
If the NFL goal is to grow the game I don’t see how highlighting sugar cane field sex would be viewed as a good way to reach out. Groups from these regions only have significant presence in Miami and Puerto Rico within US territories. From what I can tell southern cone twitter hates the performance.
After viewing the performance I will rate it worse than my fears. Politically I will rate it as good for my side in the category of the wokes always find a way to ruin electoral chances for the Democrats.
Edit: Empire which America is should never degrade itself especially on the big stages. It’s actually one reason the stupid amount of money we spent on the new Fed I can understand. When Milei comes to Washington (any Leader) and signs some currency swap the building he meets with Bessent or Powell needs to loudly say Empire. In Dunk and Egg show the bad Targaryen gets it right the dragon never dies even in a puppet show. The Super Bowl is one of those stages for the US.
Not everything is culture war material.
NFL ownership leans Republican. They aren't culture warring against Trump. The choice of Superbowl performer is a maximally capitalistic decision meant to increase viewership. And looks like it worked. Bad Bunny garnered the highest viewership, is generating conversation the day after and caters to an audience that might not have usually tuned in for the game.
The Superbowl halftime show has never cared for Americana, as can be seen from the last 10 Superbowl performers. It's a well known strategy too. Never pander to a captured audience. What are middle-Americans going to do ? Not watch the NFL ? Ofc not. You see this happen everywhere. European football is now trying to cater non-Europeans because Europeans are a captive audience. The locals hate it, but they won't vote with their feet. They can't.
Bad Bunny isn't some DEI choice. He was the #1 streamed artist for 5 of the last 7 years. If anything, he had to wait a lot longer than the other top artists to land a Superbowl performance.
2026 is when you decide to be mad about the values portrayed by the artist ?
Here are the last 5 performers:
So yeah, idk what you are complaining about. The half time show has always been about spectacle and popular music. Turns out, pop music is about sex & drama because people want sex and drama. For Bad bunny, his performance was about sex and drama, but with a Puerto Rican twist. In line with with people have come to expect from the Superbowl.
The US mastered capitalism, and the Superbowl is its biggest performance. It represents allegiance to market forces and to the over-commercialized sellout culture it creates. In that sense, Bad Bunny is a worthy representative for what the Superbowl half-time show represents.
Yeah funny thing about that timing:
The NFL Super Bowl halftime show selection is a collaborative process led by the league's entertainment team and Roc Nation, which has acted as the official consultant since 2019. Jay-Z holds significant influence in choosing performers, focusing on cultural relevance, genre diversity, and massive appeal to create a "cultural moment".
You keep using the word "Always" but only referencing about 5-10 years ago. Many of us old folk have a much longer memory than that.
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We have low expectations on black people and policing their behavior was complete social suicide for a while.
I don’t think for Latinos we need to set the same standards for them as blacks. And I don’t think this country can have a non-assimilated Latino population and continue to function.
There is a middle ground between appealing to Latinos and what we saw. I’ve dropped brands before over there behavior. Buds still banned. Jordan’s Nike is iconic to me and I haven’t bought from them in years. I won’t go to a NFL game but I may cut back on viewership.
NFL is surviving on gambling now. That is the main thing leading to booming revenues. My gut says the main problem with the current show is RocNation.
Depends on what you mean by "function." We can probably maintain Brazilian levels of "functional" under such conditions, at least for awhile. (As a South African guest on one of the podcasts I listen to put it, the US has already become Brazil, Brazil is becoming South Africa, South Africa is becoming Haiti, and the whole chain will continue down to the inevitable outcome of Global Haiti.)
I agree with this and it’s basically what I meant by function.
The left prefers to say that the right “hates” immigrants. If they used the term “fear” I would agree with them. It’s not fear that they are better than me etc. it’s fear that they can not reproduce the American Civic Religion.
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There's some nuance here.
NFL ownership doesn't select the half-time show performers. Jay-Z and his production company likely do. As the article indicates, there's some contractual language wherein the NFL, meaning the NFL front office, probably has the final say technically, but the whole operation has Jay-z's company steering it.
You're right in pointing out the low likelihood of fly-over American's not watching football for six months because of one half-time show. You're also right in that the mission for the NFL, explicitly, has been to tap into new markets. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce were probably somewhat "planted" by marketing to attract young, female viewers. The recent games in Mexico and Brazil try to capture those markets.
But the culture war angle is valid. It's subtle but then not. The whole thing was in Spanish. Your "sexy dancers" of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez didn't do that. Dr. Dre, Snoop et al celebrated gangster culture, but deracinated Disney gangster culture - low riders and gold chains, not actual murder and drug running. They censored their own lyrics. Rhianna and Usher sell sex and sex sells. That's been true since, at least, the Janet Jackson fake wardrobe malfunction. The normies can deal with it - my aunts cross their arms and slap on resting bitch face when the ass shaking starts, but they don't leave the room the way Grandma may have. Kendrik Lamar was somewhat a flop because the "lore" of him and Drake was too deep for easy access during the superbowl.
There are often attempts to emulate American half-time entertainment for European sports (like football) for the big championships, but they never really get off the ground.
And reading all this about the Superbowl half-time show, I'm rather glad they fail. People don't tune in to the Champions League final to see people simulating sex to sultry Latin rhythms (not that I'd put it past UEFA to try that, though God alone knows what FIFA have planned for the World Cup seeing as how, like the Trinity, it is going to be three locations in one contest co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico).
Okay, there is always an official World Cup song but that can be good (depending on the artist) and countries may have their own song (historically, 'sung' by the representative team, though England did up their game with Three Lions in 1996 when they were hosting the UEFA European Championship).
I don't even want to imagine what kind of awful Europop plus fake gangsta rap/hiphop dancing they'd serve up as entertainment. They do have something as pre-match entertainment, but most people don't bother watching that until the game starts. Seems like it was Linkin Park last year for the Champions League? As this article tactfully puts it:
EDIT: Oh, God. There's an Official World Cup Theme, to be remixed by producers in the host cities. And it's as dire as you might fear. No wonder people are trying to create fan remixes and updates of Waka Waka.
We already have the Eurovision song contest. We don’t need another one.
Combine the two! Champions League plus Eurovision! Vote for your favourites after they are the half-time show for every match, until we get to the Grand Final! 😁
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I think Jay-Z is the issue. NFL if they are smart should fire him tomorrow. We have done multicultural Super Bowl shows before. We have done them without simulating sex that were family friendly. They have been done in ways that were not explicit replacement politics ideology.
Super Bowl 50 was great. Coldplay, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars (Puerto Rican). That’s a unity show of one country of different people. Coldplayshow
This show feels like it came from agitators trying to tear us apart.
Bruno is Hawaiian
Last name Hernendez
He's Filipino - Hawaiin
Wikipedia says dad’s Puerto Rican. I guess he’s just mystery meat is you want to call it that. Regardless you can find a more Latino person for the job.
Sure, mystery meat. Damn talented mystery meat though.
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Do you believe that the personal is not political?
What sort of Republican? Trump has been fighting a bitter civil war within the Republican party since the 2016 primaries, and that numerous establishment Republicans have explicitly sided with Blue Tribe in opposition to him. "But these people are Republicans" is a line that's been abused for a full decade now. Sure, this person who is voting Democrat and wants me to vote democrat and agrees with the Democrats on all major issues and has nothing for scorn for me is a "republican" because he used to be high-up in the party that took my money and gave me nothing for decades. Obviously he wants to resume that occupation, and obviously democrats would prefer that my choices are to vote for them or for someone who bends the knee every time but who they still get to call names. I have zero incentive to play along with this farce.
"The only thing stronger than hate is love" is a slogan popular among people who take pleasure from publicly contemplating the violent death of my children. I do not believe anyone is actually confused about what is going on here. Some people, even here, simply find it convenient in the moment to pretend.
(Insert Jesse Plemins gif)
One of the more effective lines in cinema history.
Which movie and which line. I'm ootl
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At some point, I want to write a review of that movie, having never actually seen it beyond clips. It seems extremely obvious to me that most of its target audience badly misunderstood it, which is a shame because I think it's an amazing example of explicitly Culture War film. As with Ex Machina, though, it seems like the target audience is willfully determined to miss the point.
@me and I’ll add my two cents
When I watched it my first few thoughts were: that’s awesome, people are going to misunderstand it, people are going to be upset it didn’t pick a side because they misunderstood it
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From the comments I heard about it, it's a bit of a missed opportunity, specifically because it' not a culture war film. The boogaloo, happens because reasons. What could have caused such a rift that Americans would go to war with each other is left unexplored, so I'm not sure it's even making a point that could be missed, and so people are left memeing on it.
That said, I haven't watched it either.
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scratches beard “OK. What kind of Republican are you?”
“Ch-Ch-Cheney …”
“Cheney? Neocon?”
gunshot
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Gonna go ahead and click X to doubt
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Republicans as in the majority which voted Trump into power in 2024.
That majority consists of Hispanics, disgruntled centrists, pro-business capitalists, single issue Christians, conspiracy theorists and white nationalists. Most NFL owners fall into the 'pro-business capitalists' category.
Trump-2 won the election by using the standard populist playbook of big gestures, saying little and letting the opposition self-destruct (which the democrats did splendidly). The spectacle meant there was little discussion about Trump-2 being bankrolled by an unfamiliar type of Republican. In the process, the Donroe wing (you can call them white nationalists, isolationists, iconoclasts, I don't have a clean phrase, so Donroe wing it is) took control of the White house.
Now, I believe that the Donroe wing has little public support. The polls agree with me. If the aforementioned big-tent knew that electing Trump to power meant Donroe policy-making, they might not have voted for him. In contrast, the Donroe minority acts as if their are endorsed by the entire big-tent. They aren't. In fact, I believe the opinions of the Donroe wing are repulsive to many in the big-tent.
The Donroe wing complains - "Everyone in the media hates us". It's not just the media, everyone outside their small group does hate them. It isn't propaganda, it is a reflection of reality. Republicans did not vote the Donroe wing into power. They voted for Trump2 - return of Trump 1. The Donroe wing seems to hate everything about America that doesn't fit into their limited definition of America. So the rest of America reacts accordingly. It started with hating on the excesses of woke culture. It has quickly slippery-sloped into hating on everyone who doesn't agree with them. Fuck all LGBTs. Fuck all non-Heritage Americans. Fuck all academics. Fuck all American allies. It sounds more like - "We won, we deserve this power, and you will bow to us or else we will end you."
Problem is, this is a Democracy. Arrogant over-extension gets punished. Now, there is a clear way for them to grow their power to be inline with their ego, ie. the midterms. But, The midterms giveth, and the midterms taketh away. By Nov, citizens will have had 2 full years of mask-off Donroe.
If my belief is correct, November will be a washout and Trump will become a lame-duck. If I'm wrong, Trump will retain a triple majority and I'll seriously reevaluate my impression of the US. Either ways, there is a convenient date where the rubber meets the road.
Personally, I'm glad they're going mask off. The incompetent Dems will need all the help they can get for these midterms.
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