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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.
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.
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