The Super show

MAGA was the big loser on Super Bowl Sunday

When I heard the name, Bad Bunny, my first reaction wasn’t to think of a Puerto Rican rapper. I wondered if they meant Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, a group from the 90s that mixed old Big Band songs into techno hits, or maybe the Energizer bunny. As a white, Gen X man, I’m not the target demographic for a lot of modern music, let alone Super Bowl halftime shows. I’m fine with that. Music peaked in the 80s anyway.

I don’t generally enjoy the Super Bowl halftime entertainment because my tastes go more to rock than hip hop. I would have enjoyed the U2 and Tom Petty shows, but I missed those due to work. As a professional pilot, zero-dark-thirty starts that require going to bed early and missing pop culture events are an occupational hazard. I was present to witness (at least virtually) Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, but that’s another story.

Photo credit: Twitter screenshot from Jamie Raskin

Going into last night’s Super Bowl, I wasn’t expecting much. I didn’t have a dog in the fight so I leaned more against the Pats than towards Seattle due to New England team owner Robert Kraft’s affiliation with MAGA. I tuned in as much for the commercials as the game. I didn’t have high hopes for halftime, but I had zero interest in Kid Rock and the TPUSA Christian Nationalist alternative.

I was surprised.

I’m not sure I had ever heard a Bad Bunny song before last night, and I want claim to have understood many of the lyrics, but the show definitely exceeded my (low) expectations. The concept of transforming the football gridiron into a sugarcane field on Puerto Rico was a novel idea that was worthy of attention in itself, but the execution of the idea was so stunning and joyous that it really didn’t matter if I could understand what was being said.

Comprehension isn’t necessarily a requirement for enjoying music. It is definitely possible to enjoy music without understanding the lyrics. For example, Andrea Bocelli often sings in Italian. His music is beautiful, even if you don’t understand the words. From a more pop culture standpoint, “La Bamba” is and enduring hit that almost no one understands (although I have translated the lyrics in the past). “Macarena” is similarly popular for its tune and beat, despite Spanish lyrics. At the other end of the spectrum, there are English language songs that I’d probably enjoy more if I didn’t understand the lyrics.

Speaking of Kid Rock, I didn’t watch the TPUSA alternative show live or recorded, but I have to question the lineup of supposedly family-friendly, Christian entertainment. I’d only heard of half of the four acts with Kid Rock being the biggest name by far, but Mr. Rock’s reputation isn’t stellar, and it was made worse by the rediscovery of song he released in 2001 about statutory rape. The lyrics, “I like ’em underage, see. Some say that’s statutory, But I say it’s mandatory” hit hard in 2026 and could be featured on a Jeffrey Epstein tribute album. I come away with the feeling that the alternative wasn’t so much focused on clean morality as it was MAGA politics.

In contrast, the Bad Bunny show featured an honest-to-goodness wedding. Yes, an unnamed couple actually tied the knot in a Super Bowl halftime first (and probably last). How pro-family is that?

Another memorable moment was when Bad Bunny gave his Grammy to a child. In the aftermath of the show, rumors spread that this was Liam, the little boy unlawfully imprisoned and recently released by ICE. It wasn’t. It was child actor Lincoln Fox Ramadan, who may have represented Liam, but more likely was meant to be symbolic of Bad Bunny’s younger self.

To the extent that there were political messages in the show, they were embedded so deeply that it wasn’t obvious. There was a lot of symbolism and history, including a power pole dance alluding to Puerto Rico’s blackouts that often occur even without hurricanes and Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial song. However, the song was in Spanish so the MAGA imperialists advocating for control of Venezuela, Panama, and Greenland can’t be directly offended, and they probably wouldn’t be if it was Amy Grant singing, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” an Eagles performance of “The Last Resort,” or any number of other anti-imperialist ballads in English.

They could be offended at a Spanish language show, however, and they were. Well-known platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter satirist, Three Year Letterman, was very close to the real reaction when he posted, “If the Bible was written in English, there’s no reason the Super Bowl halftime shouldn’t be as well.”

In fact, I was similarly told in another Twitter exchange, “In America, we speak English. It should be the official language--just as Spanish is the official language of most Spanish speaking nations.”

But English is not our official language. In America, we speak a lot of different languages. Spanish is a very common one, especially in the part of America known as Puerto Rico, where Bad Bunny is from. The US now has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world (Mexico is first). Many of those Hispanic Americans voted for Donald Trump, but MAGA now seems happy both to attack their culture and marginalize them as second-class citizens who can be detained based on their appearance or accent.

Ironically, today’s Hispanic immigrants are assimilating at the same rate as previous waves. In just a few generations, children of immigrants no longer identify as Hispanic and consider themselves American. One of my son’s friends is a second-generation Mexican-American, but he doesn’t even speak Spanish. Selena, the Tejano pop star murdered in 1995, also did not speak Spanish and had to learn her Spanish lyrics phonetically. The stories are similar for a lot of the people that ICE is rounding up and imprisoning.

Bad Bunny’s show ended with a patriotic call to unity. One of the few English phrases in the performance was “God bless America,” followed by a roll call of American countries. This hearkens back to the MAGA argument that the Gulf of America denotes all the countries of America, but they don’t see that logic in the Super Bowl show. That might mean their claims about the gulf were less than forthright.

“Together, we are America,” read the message on a football carried by the singer as billboard echoed Christ’s greatest commandments with the words, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” If your movement is offended by unity and love, marriage and joy, you might want to schedule some time for introspection.

The hypersensitive snowflakes on the right have proven themselves wrong again. I can remember how they were up in arms over the supposed gay relationship between Finn and Poe in the Disney films. That never materialized either. People might want to start questioning more of their alarmist claims. Or better yet, turn them off.

The Super Bowl does have a history of sexualized and offensive halftime shows, but Bad Bunny’s was not one of them. The MAGA predictions set up the faction for a massive troll by Bad Bunny when he produced a very positive, intelligent, family-friendly show. It was the best Super Bowl performance in recent memory.

My prediction is that MAGA will be further isolated and marginalized as the people who watched and enjoyed the show see how different their experience was from the angst generated by the MAGA right. This will be exacerbated by the quasi racism of people who just don’t want to hear any other languages in America.

Last night was a victory for the Seahawks and a triumph for Bad Bunny, but politically MAGA was the biggest loser. Not only did the Trump-friendly team get trounced by a team from a liberal Left Coast city, the Christian Nationalist alternative show failed to gain traction and MAGA further distanced itself from the American mainstream.

Now let’s get back to the Epstein files, which were the subject of a Super Bowl ad by Epstein victims. Three million files have still not been released and many of the files made public have been redacted to protect the rich and powerful.

Watch the full show here.

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