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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.
Old men yelling at clouds again. You just happened to watch a reggaeton show for the first time probably. The US has rap music which features girls shaking their asses, that just how it is. Puerto Rico, part of the US, happens to have the world’s biggest reggaeton star, which is a musical style where people grind on each other.
Latin America has some classy as hell music and dance. Actually a lot more so than the US does. I’ve never been in the US and seen an old couple dancing salsa outside of a cafe. We could never, lol. There’s a level of classiness in that culture we’d have a really hard time replicating here, just like we’d struggle to do so you put us up against Italy or something.
But the youth tend to listen to songs about sex. Or violence. They’re just crazy fools who like to dance with their underdeveloped PFCs to stuff that shocks stuffy older people from whatever culture. You’ve got no room to talk, being from a culture that has a moral panic every decade or so about what the kids are listening to. Most of what we consider classic Americana music was considered devil worshipper music by the conservatives of that time, and people freaking out that the Super Bowl show was too sexual has been happening for decades now. Come on, you grew up here, you knew that.
In the end, the difference is that conservatives just don’t like Spanish and get frustrated by it. Their blood pressure tends to rise if they hear Spanish on the street, pobrecitos.
Thought about this the other day- there's an interesting historical gap in PMC/upper-middle-and-above Universal Culture that it's almost wholly absent from any form of dance. Some might claim to appreciate lower-class entertainment, but few would participate. Salsa would be one of very few exceptions that's seen a degree of adoption, but nothing homegrown from that culture (such as it is). I'm not counting modern swing or ballroom, as they're self-consciously retro more than a vibrant live tradition.
This is because formal dance is dead (aside from the retro forms you aren't counting -- those are the proper PMC+ dance forms, but the PMC+ isn't comfortable with them except as retro) and informal dance is a peasant/prole thing.
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