How the Superbowl turned into an all-American identity crisis |
There weren’t just two football teams going head-to-head during Super Bowl LX. There were two distinct cultural movements clashing at a time of great upheaval in the United States.
At a time when American cities are teeming with ICE agents searching for illegal migrants from South America to round up and eject from the country, it doesn’t take a political analyst to predict that Bad Bunny’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show would serve as a lightning rod in the country.
Bad Bunny – real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – is a three-time Grammy Award winner from Puerto Rico who was chosen to entertain American football fans during one of the most-watched sporting spectacles in the world. In the past, the entertainer has made critical remarks about the ICE raids so many were anticipating something similar during the Super Bowl.
Earlier this month, for example, Ocasio won a Grammy Award and during his acceptance speech taunted the Trump administration by saying, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ICE out.” He then gave a nod to the millions of immigrants who “leave their home, land, their country, to follow their dreams.” He casually ignored the fact that in their effort to “follow their dreams” so many immigrants chose to break the law and enter the US illegally.
During the Super Bowl halftime show, the Puerto Rican avoided any mention of ICE and the current war on illegal immigration. But that doesn’t mean his 15-minute performance was void of political messaging. Instead, he threw his support behind a different political flashpoint: cultural diversity, the exact thing that an increasing number of political conservatives say is destroying the American way of life.
Many on the political right fear that the US is being destroyed from within by so-called ‘white replacement’ in which immigrants are flocking to America for the precise purpose of making the white population a minority. MAGA adherents are of the opinion that the main reason that the Democrats opened the floodgates to illegal migration in the first place was to bolster the number of Democratic voters.
At the end of his halftime set, Martínez Ocasio’s backup dancers appeared on stage hoisting flags of countries in South America. This also appeared strange and out of place to many conservative commentators, who wondered what place foreign flags have at one of America’s greatest national traditions. In any case, having a Super Bowl halftime show where the main performer sings entirely in Spanish and waves other nations’ flags is an obvious political statement that should not be tolerated at a sporting event where 78% of the viewers speak English.
The only time the performer spoke in English was to say, “God Bless America,” before reading out the names of all countries on both continents.
He also held up a football emblazoned with the words: “TOGETHER, WE ARE AMERICA.”
It’s unfortunate that the message of brotherly love quickly turned into utter degeneracy. Critics were particularly appalled by the immoral lyrics of the music, especially the song “Tití Me Preguntó” (“My Auntie Asked Me”), which sings the praises of promiscuity.
In the song, Bad Bunny celebrates his many sexual conquests, singing “let the ones I already f**ked smile” and brags about a girl who “came by plane” from Barcelona and says his “d**k is on fire.”
The chorus responded in typical libertine fashion, “Today I have one, tomorrow I’ll have another, hey, but there’s no wedding.”
The lyrics were aired live to millions of viewers of all ages.
US President Donald Trump was not impressed with the performance.
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” the US leader fumed on Truth Social.
Today, millions of Americans – many of them born and bred conservatives - share that same opinion. In fact, Turning Point USA, the conservative youth movement founded by the late Charlie Kirk, decided to throw their own alternative halftime party, which was notable by the excess of white faces, both in the audience and on the stage.
“We want to celebrate America; we do not want to crap on it,” Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet said, previewing the organization’s alternative halftime event on ‘The Charlie Kirk Show.’ “When the other guys are doing their queer celebration, speaking Spanish – whatever you want to do, that’s fine – but we’re going to be celebrating this country.”
At the same time, One Million Moms, a Christian group, announced a boycott of Bad Bunny’s performance over his support of LGBTQ+ rights.
It’s unfortunate that the one American tradition that should unite the American people seems to pull them further apart year after year as the halftime show dabbles more and more in utter depravity. Some observers have gone so far as the call it ‘satanic.’ For some reason, the producers of the event willfully push divisiveness and degeneracy on the audience instead of just giving Americans a wholesome show. The solution to the madness of organizing dueling halftime events underscored the notion that the US is, in fact, becoming two separate warring camps inside of one country. Whether all of this ends in some sort of civil war is anyone’s guess, but the current trend does not look promising for the future of the nation.