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“World’s Second-Biggest Pop Star to Play Super Bowl Halftime Show” is not the kind of headline you’d think would make a political faction explode in outrage. But because that artist is Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who sings almost exclusively in Spanish and endorsed Kamala Harris in last year’s election, conservatives have cranked up the Wurlitzer of aggrievement.
It’s a familiar routine: An element of pop culture becomes slightly less exclusively white, male, straight, or some combination of the above; right-wing media figures tell their audiences that the America that used to belong to them is being stolen; then they advocate boycotts, legal action, or performative displays of anger. Eventually it peters out and a new reason to be indignant must be found, renewing the cycle over and over.
But it has a darker cast this time, because the Bad Bunny situation comes at a moment when the Trump administration is using the power it has and the power it has assumed for itself in what is nothing less than a white nationalist crusade to cleanse the country of immigrants.
While ICE is invading immigrant neighborhoods and kidnapping people by the thousands, the fact that a hugely popular artist would sing in Spanish at the Super Bowl is a sign that America is still a polyglot nation. And that is unacceptable.
Can’t we all just get mad?
The NFL tries to get big stars to perform in the Super Bowl halftime show, and they don’t come much bigger than Bad Bunny. The Grammy winner was the most-streamed artist on Spotify for three years running through 2022, and last weekend he hosted Saturday Night Live for the second time. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s only because you don’t pay any attention to pop culture.
Booking Bad Bunny is a savvy business decision in many ways, and not just because of his huge American fan base. The NFL claims it has 39 million Latino fans in the US; Latinos are its fastest-growing audience. According to the census, well over 40 million people in America speak Spanish at home, which doesn’t account for the millions more who don’t speak it at home but know the language to one degree or another. The league has also been working to broaden its appeal outside the US.
But it isn’t just about how many viewers can understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics (or are happy to bop along even if they can’t). The Super Bowl has a symbolic value that makes it all the more important for the right that it remain a bastion of the kind of America they want America to be. It is arguably the last, closest thing we have to a national communal experience. The fragmentation of media means that there are almost no other occasions in which the vast majority of us watch the same thing at the same time. The Super Bowl is it.
Which is why it made conservatives just so damn mad to hear that a Puerto Rican would be headlining the halftime show — and worse, one who has said he’s worried about touring the mainland US because ICE might show up to harass his fans.
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When the news broke, MAGA influencer Benny Johnson raged on his podcast that “the NFL leadership has decided to hire a cross dressing, America-hating, ICE-hating Puerto Rican dude whose music I haven’t heard any of, but his name’s Bad Bunny.”
Johnson’s guest, Homeland Security official Cory Lewandowski, issued what sounded a lot like a threat to send ICE to the Super Bowl: “Benny, there is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally, not the Super Bowl and nowhere else. We will find you. We will apprehend you. We will put you in a detention facility, and we will deport you.”
Word quickly spread through the MAGAsphere. “Is this who you want as your halftime entertainment for an English-speaking American audience?” asked a Fox News pundit. “Yeah, it’s pretty grim,” replied host Laura Ingraham. “I have to say it’s just not my thing, that’s for sure.”
Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, hates the English language. He’s just a terrible person,” fumed Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, who told people not to watch the game. On Glenn Beck’s podcast, Jason Whitlock suggested conservatives should counter-program the Super Bowl with a concert featuring Creed, the 90s-era second-rate quasi-religious Pearl Jam knockoff. Trump, on Newsmax, called the choice “absolutely ridiculous.”
Anyone looking to pump up their own follower count got into the act. “No songs in English should not be allowed at one of America’s highest rated television events of the year… not just for sports,” tweeted former NASCAR driver and Trump supporter Danica Patrick, with the clarity of one who wields her mother tongue with the appropriate dexterity. “Football happens to be a uniquely American tradition and there is nothing American about a Bad Bunny performance,” said another Newsmax talking head. “Bad Bunny seems for all intents and purposes to hate America. So this is a humiliation ritual.”
Which was an interesting choice of words. Why would watching someone sing in Spanish be humiliating? Or to put it another way, why would it be important for conservative media figures to tell their audiences that they should feel humiliated if they see someone sing in Spanish?
To top it off, Benny Johnson buttonholed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and asked her what her message to the NFL is. It’s worth quoting her response in full:
“They suck and we’ll win, and God will bless us and we’ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day and they won’t be able to sleep at night because they don’t know what they believe, and they’re so weak. We’ll fix it.”
And how will the Trump administration (with God’s assistance) “fix” the fact that the Super Bowl will feature Spanish songs? It seems it’s not the Super Bowl in particular Noem is promising to fix. It’s an American culture that is too diverse, too vibrant, too dynamic.
Deport enough of the wrong kind of people and make the rest live in fear, and maybe things will go back to the way they used to be.
All the political power, but not enough
Republicans in modern times have never more power than they do right now. That presents a problem for a movement built on anger, resentment, and the feeling of victimhood.
The essence of the war over pop culture that the right has waged is to tell people that they are surrounded and oppressed by a liberal culture that wants to destroy them. Every “Happy Holidays” sign, every gay couple in an IKEA ad, every chart-topping song that isn’t quite to their taste is a weapon thrust at the heart of all that is right and true.
To keep people in that state of agitation, you have to feed them a steady diet of outrage stories, no matter how ridiculous. Cracker Barrel changed its logo – retweet those bots! There’s a show with a trans character on Netflix — call a boycott! A beer brand enlisted a trans influencer — get out your automatic rifle and shoot a bunch of beer cans so everyone knows you’re totally not gay! Mr. Potato Head went woke — post about it, or something!
There is a truth underneath all this fake outrage. Conservatives really are at a disadvantage in popular culture because most creative people are liberals, which has always been true and probably always will be. While the right has had some success recently building its own culture machine, most of what it produces is artistically banal, even if the production values have improved.
The continued cultural dominance of left-leaning artists is a particular affront to conservatives right now, when they are wielding their political power with more aggression and cruelty than they ever imagined they could. Yet they know that no matter how many of Trump’s enemies the Justice Department prosecutes, how many federal workers he fires, or how many housekeepers and landscapers the masked thugs of ICE kidnap off the street, thrilling to the anguished cries of their children, there are some battles MAGA will never win.
This is still a land of immigrants, because that’s what it always has been. Americans are going to keep eating tacos, because they’re delicious. Non-white artists will keep making great music. America will continue to change and evolve, just as it always has.
But maybe Trump can issue an executive order demanding that the NFL feature an act more to his liking at the Super Bowl. I hear Up With People is available.
That’s it for today
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This isn’t about Bad Bunny. It’s about behavioral threat detection.
When a Puerto Rican artist headlines the Super Bowl, sings in Spanish, and doesn’t genuflect to monoculture, it triggers a loss-of-control reflex in those clinging to a shrinking narrative. The phones light up, the grievance machine spins, and the cycle renews…not because the music changed, but because visibility did.
I’ve written extensively on this: from Voice of My People in Switzerland, where pluralism is designed into the system, to my pieces on incentive architecture and cultural signaling. This is textbook backlash: when dominant groups lose symbolic control over shared rituals, they mistake inclusion for erasure.
I’m not arguing politics. I’m mapping behavior. And the pattern is clear: when creative expression reflects a polyglot reality, those invested in purity panic.
— Johan
Professor of behavioral economics and applied cognitive theory
Former Foreign Service Officer
Trump needs stay out shit that is or should be no business of his. He has a stupid idea that every company in the US wants him to be in control of their business. I wouldn’t doubt that the NFL will back down to him. Please surprise me and don’t back down